And on Mother's Day....We Built a Garden Box

We moved into this house last August so this is the first chance we've had to work on the yard.  I really wanted a raised planting bed which I keep calling a garden box.  Here is the tutorial.  I scoped the yard out for a sunny spot.  This side of the house gets morning sun.

I started by taking a few sticks and my tape measure and laying out where I thought the border should go.  Seemed like 8' by 3' rectangle would fit the yard (we have a small yard) and create enough room for a first garden.


We went to HD to check out the boards that are available.  The 2x10 treated boards (in the decking material section) looked wide enough and they came in 8' lengths.   We bought 2 of these and had HD cut the second into 2 3' pieces.

We started the digging by creating a 2" trench, just wide enough to fit the 3' board (I used my favorite digging tool:  the back of my hammer--worked pretty well until I got the the part near the house).

When the trench was wide enough and deep enough, we put the board in and checked for level. 

We pulled the board out and adjusted the trench and put the board back in over-and-over a dozen few times before it was leveled horizontally, then checked for vertical level.  I held it in place and backfilled the trench.  Next we started on the trench for the 8' board.  For this trench, we used the spade shovel.

Once this board was in and leveled, 2 screws were used to secure the boards to each other.  Galvanized screws are the proper ones to use for this, to prevent rusting, but we didn't have any so we used some regular screws and plan to replace them later.

We drilled pilot holes first to prevent the wood from splitting.  Lastly we dug the trench and leveled the second 3' board and secured it with 2 more screws. 

I read somewhere on another blog (not sure where??) that newspaper could be used as a weed blocker so I lined the box with a few layers.  Note that we did not remove the sod, the newspaper went right over the grass, I'll let you know how this works out.

There was plenty of room in the box for about 5" of garden soil.

All ready for planting.  :)  What a great Mother's Day gift!

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