Getting a late start due to a move but...

I'm getting a bit of a late start this year because of moving but that's life. Anyway I just ran across this group so I figured I'd share how it's coming together so far.

So here's where it all begins...



Mix it by hand? Not when you've got a cement mixer. LOL



So far so good.











All laid out and ready for seeds. (We get hot dry summers here sometimes so might as well run the hose now)



This was how I made the gate hinges...



And the gate latch.

Love the pics!! Wish you the best growing! to the forum!

Awesome job! Welcome to the forum! I tried to use a cement mixer but none big enough for rent in our little town.

Mine isn't all that big actually. I mixed in stages which is why all the garbage cans. I started out by mixing all my composts together and putting them in a trash can. From there I can stage the mixer next to a box and stage all the cans of ingredients on the flip side of the mixer. Turn it on and shovel in ingredients a bit at a time. When it's full I flip it and pour it in and rake it out a bit at a time till it's full. Then it's on to the next one.

I was able to fill all four in one day this way with little trouble. It was WAY easier that having done it by hand back at the old place. It does get pretty dusty this way though so a mask helps as does putting down a tarp to catch spillage because you ARE going to hit the opening with the shovel and drop stuff. No sense wasting it.

I had my helpers lol..

two grown daughters and two little grandsons...

we made a couple of afternoons of fun out of it when I added two 4x6 beds this month...

Did one one mothers day and one the next..

My daughters actually got along! They are oil and water and it takes something, like helping mom when she needs, it to get them to enact a cease fire!

They both knew health wise I couldn't do it by my self very fast so they made it a mothers day project.

Welcome to the forum. You have made a terrific start. BTW, which Charlestown are you in?

Kay

Great set-up!

GG

Thanks.

I'm in Charlestown, MD. I've been trying to figure out how to change that so that it's right but I can't seem to find it in my profile to save my life. Ah well I'm sure I will eventually. LOL

So far so good with it. Learned a number of lessons from the last time around at my old house so things went a lot smoother this time around (not to mention a lot of time spent container gardening while hoping all over the world for a number of years before getting settled in one place. Then again I just moved again so how settled am I? LOL).

All told with the 64 sq ft we just added we've got about 950 sq ft of garden space including a 24'x36' patch for growing all the things that really spread out that was the original standard row garden and all the assorted containers and hangers that we've got spread here and there about the place (not counting flower beds...). It doesn't include the assorted fruit trees and grape arbors that we've got here and at the old place. (I've still got the old place so still have access to all the trees and such there, I just don't maintain them as regularly since I'm here more these days.)

I left enough room at both ends to add 4 more beds in both directions (8 total) if I ever get the urge to but this is plenty for the moment (I'm not THAT crazy, yet).

I will probably be adding a couple more potato barrels (the blue barrels in the photos) as soon as I can get my hands on a couple more (they are heavy walled food grade barrels with screw off lids used to bulk ship olives for import). My source for them dried up so I'm looking for a new one because they are great for all kinds of things.

It was a productive day here today. I got everything in the ground in the new beds (then found the 75% off section at Lowes and bought more...... Guh!). Some store bought pre-started stuff and some seeds. Even with the late start I'm hoping for pretty decent results. It's been heating up here pretty quickly the last few days but if I have to I can shade the beds I've still got my hoop covers from the old place, they just need a bit of TLC (in fact the trellis frames are from the old place as well and they stood up to the move pretty good, I just replaced the netting and that was that). Still working on getting a few things in the ground in the old garden but that's minor at this point. The big push was to get these ones started.

What an awesome gated garden! Loving the gate, and thanks for posting detailed pictures.

Here's to a happy growing season!

Welcome to the forum. Your garden is very well planned and I love that its fenced, too. Good going. I hope you can get some good crops started even tho its a little later in your season. For me, the heat hasn't even started yet in Maine.

I'm in Charlestown, MD. I've been trying to figure out how to change that so that it's right but I can't seem to find it in my profile to save my life. Ah well I'm sure I will eventually.

Go to the green bar at the top, profile, change info and the save button is on the bottom.

Kay

I enjoyed looking at your pictures. Welcome to the Forum.

I can see you don't mess around...nice set-up.

Dang.. that is so nice, you deserve a prize.

Thanks Kay, I thought the same thing myself. Under the profile settings seemed to make sense to me. Unfortunately when I tried it the other day my location didn't even show up under any of the profile tabs for some reason. The other way of getting to this information and changing it (clicking on your name and then hovering over the info) opens up the option to change on some entries but not all of them and of course location would be one of the ones that it won't open the option for. I'm not sure but it may have something to do with the fact that my account is linked to my Facebook page since it read and filled in the info from there. However, in the meantime someone (I'm assuming one of the mods) has fixed the problem and updated the info. So ultimately problem solved, thanks for the help though.

Quiltbea, the fence is out of necessity since the deer like to hang out in the yard all the time and unlike the Hostas which they LOVE to snack on I'd rather not have to spray if I don't have to. One thing that I didn't do that I'm hoping not to pay for not doing so is to dig proof the fence by putting 12" or so of it folded out on the ground around the outside. My old place it helped a lot with the digging critters. The groundhogs eventually got around that by just climbing the old fence until I put a hot wire around the top. I haven't really seen any here or even evidence of them so I'm hoping I don't get bit in the butt by hindsight.

Hauled over a pickup load of cinder blocks from the old place today to get the compost bins set up (I was there so I figured why waste the trip. I've been collecting them for a good while anytime I find them free on Craigslist anyplace within a reasonable drive and they come in handy for all kinds of things.). Not sure where I'm going to put it yet but I'll pop in some photos once I do.

Thanks for all the warm welcomes guys!

Your garden looks great, but is that fence high enough? I had a 4' x 12' box several years ago with a 4' fence right at the edge of the border planks, and the deer got in it anyway. I got up early one morning and a deer was standing right in the middle of the box.
What did you spray on your hostas? I haven't been able to have any for more than one or two days. The same with my snowball tree which was four feet high, but is now about two feet high.

Great work in such little time, it is nice to see such order compared to my chaos.
As far as deer are concerned, they CAN jump over high fences, but they cannot jump very far.
So it is basically up and down. If you can create a hurdle to prevent them from getting right to the edge of the fence, they will not be able to jump it.


SO even putting bales of hay around the outside of the fence will prevent them from being right next to the fence.

Liquid Fence Deer and Rabbit repellent about every two weeks is what we use and it seems to work pretty good unless we get a lot of rain then it needs to be done more often.

I've actually had more problems with the groundhogs then with the deer. Nope they aren't deer high or goat tough. They aren't really mean to be though. They're there as a deterrent measure only. To stop deer they'd need to be closer to 8' or double fencing of one sort or another I did give some thoughts to a chicken moat actually (for that reason and to control bugs) but the chickens prefer to have the run of the place and we like having them out and about. But even though the deer come right up to the house at times (close enough that I could probably fill my freezer with just a club) to browse they've never challenged the fences in the old garden here or the one at my old place which was even larger so it's not a matter of them shying from the enclosed space. It would seem that they'd rather browse all the available foliage and the like around here (I'm rural, part woods and part open space, and there's quite a lot for them to eat naturally) rather than to bother even making the minor effort of jumping the small fence. So for the time being it's more to keep them from just wandering into it rather than to prevent them from jumping and to keep the other critters out. If they do decide to change their habits and start jumping it then I'll cross that bridge but for now it's not been an issue thankfully.

I got the prize " King for A Day' of square foot gardening"

Well even though I got to it late so far so good.

About time to add some more fill.



One potato, two potato, three potato, four..



Bed #1



Bed #2



Bed #3



Bed #4