Leavitt Garden

We had a plan to build two 8x4 Raised Garden Boxes on Saturday.  Casey had picked a design out of a Garden Manual, gathered the materials, and started working on the Boxes before I had arrived.  It quickly turned into a major undertaking when we all realized the volume we were dealing with.  Kevin and Casey went to get two cubic Yards of Raised Bed Soil.  That's 54 cubic Feet of Dirt.  It completely filled the bed of his Dodge 2500 HD pickup.

We had to start by marking off the area where we wanted to put the Raised Beds.  This spot is on the North West corner of the yard, and has good light all day long.  We used frame pieces to mark off the area, and then started using my new Pick Mattock to remove the Bermuda lawn.

 This was a fairly warm Spring Day, perfect for building another Organic Garden.  After removing the grass from the area, we dug the post holes to anchor the frame to the ground.  We didn't use concrete, instead we filled the holes with the native clay soil, then compacted the soil around the holes.  The posts are well planted.

After thee posts were planted then we added the sides of the box.  The Raised Bed is three 2 x 4s deep, about 10.5 inches.  We picked up two cubic yards of soil.  The Raised Bed is 16 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 10.5 inches deep (0.875 feet).  That works out to 56 cubic feet, and the two cubic yards of soil is 54 cubic feet, so the load of soil almost perfectly matched the size of the box.

So during the construction process the design of the Raised Bed changed, and it became on 16 foot, by 4 foot box.  The number of posts changed, not a bad thing.  The finished Raised Bed has a clean, and symmetrical look.  Now we are ready for some Tomatoes.

After we finished the Raised Bed we made some Smoked Chicken Tacos, Vegetable Kabobs, with fresh Pico de Gallo.  We all needed some proteins after this job...