Raised Garden Bed Update

Cheers to productive weekends and getting a few weeks closer to planting veggies in our DIY Raised Cedar garden beds with irrigation we built a few weeks ago. I wanted to share an update our garden area now, that is feeling more finished and looking a whole lot better than where we began a few weeks ago. On Saturday morning, we got up early and made a quick drive to Hasties Capitol Sand & Gravel to pick up a yard of garden mixture verses buying a ton of smaller bags from a local big box store. Those little bags add up big time (no thanks) In the past we've bought over 12 yards of various yard materials from them and had them delivered to our house for free! Plain in simple when it comes to yard materials buy in bulk and save money.  

We decided to line the inside of our raised garden bed with weed barrier, to help prevent lots of weeds, even thought its not a guarantee weeds won't grow. Now let's take a look of how much progress we've made on our garden area in the past few weeks. The picture on the left was from mid March and the right picture taken Apr 13. Weeds have been pulled, empty boxes have been recycled and our raised garden bed built, along with adding shredded cedar and plants around the garden bed.  

Here's a larger view of our new garden area. We still have to move the long boards behind the garden bed and try and purpose them elsewhere or list them on Craiglist. We also have plans to disguise our waste containers but I'll share those plans in an overall backyard post soon.   

Here's our view from our patio. I can already picture tomatoes growing on the vine and and lots of kitchen herbs growing. We decided to plant only a few flowers around the garden bed that will hopefully grow in nicely and fill out the area without impeding us gardening and weeding in the raised bed. 

I love flowering shrubs, we planted Mediterranean Heather, Mexican Heather and Mediterranean Lilac. The lilac smells amazing and its supposed to attract butterflies (and bees) I think once its grows in its going to looking so pretty against the fence. 

I decided to plant strawberries in a container and for now placed them in front of the raised bed. We're already starting to get a few ripe strawberries. I need to add plastic liner over the soil to help prevent the strawberries from rotting. 

I just love this view and love how the garden bed looks in our yard. 

We still have lots to do! We plan on giving our patio a good cleaning this weekend, build a few tomatoes trellises for tomatoes and bell peppers. We need to give our large terra cotta pots and face lift with some soap and spray paint! 

So looking forward to getting those veggies planted and enjoying dinners outside! Can you picture it too? 

Are you planting a garden this year? If so what are you planting?