Raised Beds & Grape Arbor

Here are 2 new raised bed gardens I built. We’ve been neglecting our gardening for the last few years and decided to get serious about it this year.

The lower garden was built first. I started by laying a tarp on the grass for a couple weeks before building the 2×6 frames (I used plain wood, not treated for toxicity reasons). I then laid down a couple layers of news papers and started spreading some mostly decomposed grass clippings when my wife raised concerns about seeds sprouting from the clippings so I stopped. I shouldn’t have listened. Can you see where the clippings were put (look in the NE corner, the camera is facing south)?

Last year was a bumper crop for wild grapes around here so we decided to try our hand at grapes. So I built a grape arbor on the north end of the upper garden. The arbor part is wrapped with 2” plastic mesh.

Both gardens are built with unfinished wood, except for the arbor part which is treated with clear preservative to prevent rot where the grape vines will be in constant contact with it, and wrapped with green chicken wire. We’re more into the natural look around here.

I purchased 2 yards of topsoil and am very suspicious of it. It seems nothing is growing properly except for where the grass clippings where put under the soil. My wife started some swiss chard in the house before the gardens where built, planted it in the SW corner of the lower garden and it all died. She replanted it and most of that died too. For this reason, I built a fertilizer tank for watering with. You can see that in my next project.

You can see 2 white buckets hanging from the arbor. This is an experiment. I found on the internet that many people are having great success with growing tomatoes (and other plants) from a hole in the bottom of a bucket. So I have tomatoes hanging up side down from these 2 buckets. I used the same topsoil that I used in the garden so they aren’t doing so well. I’m hoping using fertilized water will solve that problem.

-- Michael R. Harvey