Stone raised beds
But we opted for permanence and appearance in these new beds, converted from empty 'driveway' space to growing space for vegetables, herbs, and flowers.
It was a process, but not actually all that difficult, although physically taxing (I knew I should have been spending more time lifting weights this winter!)
The sequence is hard to make accurate, as arranging images in Blogger can be quite exasperating -- but maybe I've fixed them with draft Blogger.
Hopefully, you'll get the idea.
And I'll have plenty of lovely 'top soil' created from vegetable compost and composted manure to nourish our summer vegetables.
We have more than enough stones (and 'soil') to create two more beds below the house.
That'll be a project for another weekend.
That's a lot of work. It looks great. Just saw your post about planting next week. Check the farmer's almanac. There are a few barren days in there in which planting is not advised.
ReplyDeleteSpring is wonderful here in the Carolinas.
These look like so much work, but the end result is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThose beds look wonderful ! Mine are wood at the moment and I've been thinking about converting a few to stone. Were they very expensive ?
ReplyDeleteTom and Jenny- You're right, building stone beds IS a lot of work, but it's very rewarding, and actually doesn't take THAT long.
ReplyDeleteWe built 7 beds over two weekends, and although we were both plenty tired, it was well within our capacity as a team (as reasonably fit folks in our mid-50's), although I definitely needed my husband's heftier shoulders to get the stones and soil moved down below the house. And he's in really good shape.
Miss M, stones are an investment, so I'll have to say that it wasn't a cheap project, but because we did the stone work ourselves, it cost a third of what we would have paid a landscaping company.
I put in a pathway in the front of our house in the Piedmont, with similar cost structure (http://naturalgardening.blogspot.com/2007/10/laying-flagstone-path-1.html) -- the stone was expensive, but by doing the labor, it became a reasonable investment.
And stone lasts forever....
Lisa