Friends left us 12 SQF beds!

I'm new to the forum and the reason is.....guess I will really be doing SQF gardening this year as some friends who lived at our place built 12 gorgeous beds with bark below, raised a bit off the ground, PVC pipe framework around it, covered with this bird netting and chicken wire at the bottom, put in some watering hoses....filled it with peat, vermiculite and ? and then NEVER PLANTED ANYTHING!

So.....hubby and I are disassembling it all and hauling it little by little from the valley(where our friends had lived on our property there) to the mountains where we currently live...and have two other gardens. One is a double raised bed garden in the meadow with an 8 foot deer fence around it and a large plot for corn, beans, etc down by the creek.

We plan on reassembling the SQF gardening beds and framework just east of the raised bed garden.

We live about 50 miles from the nearest grocery store so having our gardens are invaluable! I'm looking forward to "testing" out these SQF beds. 10 of them are 2X4 and 2 are 4x4.

We will be raising them more than they are above ground...and giving that a go, hoping it will be easier to harvest and weed.

Thanks for letting me share this post about this year's garden project! We look forward to learning more and sharing what works and what doesn't! Chime in with suggestions or questions!

WELCOME!!! I am SOOOOOO jealous! 12 free beds! I wish you lots of success moving and setting them up and remember......WE LOVE PICTURES!

TC

hi VeggieO, your garden moving project is a lot of work (and it sounds like the price is right) but will be so worth it. Can you get some pictures and start an album that we can all see? I am excited for you

Wow, what a windfall. (And welcome to the forum and to SFG!) Don't lose any of that Mel's Mix!!!

So funny because I would bet for most of us here, now, that finding 12 SFGs would make us instantly put a contract on the house....just to claim the gardens....lol. It would be a total selling point to us "smart people." The other head-scratchers would just look at us like we were nuts.

Welcome, again. Anxious to hear how things go in your little microclimate, VeggieO.

Welcome to the forum and SFG.
Its a great way to grow foods and like most others here, I can't wait for my gardening season to begin each year.
Enjoy sticking your hands in the dirt.

Whew...just made a trip down to the valley to get four more beds and soil and bark. I took my camera and have photos downloaded to my computer...but I'll be hornswoggled if I know how to post them here! I did go to the FAQ but there wasn't a help there so....help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks,
Nancy

Upload them to a hosting site like Photobucket, then grab the IMG code from there and copy/paste it into your post.

Thanks so much for the Photobucket idea!! Here goes!


Well, I'll try this one first to see how it posts. This is the structure around the 12 beds. In this photo there are only 8 beds since we had already removed four of them, hauling them 50 miles uphill to where we live.

I did want to make one clarification. I had said the folks never grew anything..well they didn't but they allowed the neighbors to plant in a few beds. All that died when they moved. I found some little variegated lettuce growing that had reseeded and one strawberry that survived.

Well, yeah, it worked. I'll post some more!

Here is how the beds were configured within the structure. Nicely done and they were also screwed together. Last night I read about TT beds...We had already planned to replace the short 2x4 legs with longer ones to make them waist height! I'm glad others don't like bending over either!



Here is Mel's mix plus....all the weed seedlings that blew in! I'm hoping that these don't like our cold weather and altitude. This is a very nasty weed and I don't want them where we live!


The guy who made this structure and beds is a perfectionist. He very carefully put it all together! Here you see lots of bark (which we are putting in bags to bring up as well) put on top of black material that prevents weeds.


Our little truck is loaded up. Glad that a young man from church helped me to lift and fill bags and put the beds in the truck. We even had room for Tye, our dog!


Here you see the place that we are planning to reassemble the structure and beds, which is right next to our "meadow garden raised beds" which were built three springs ago. You can as well see the first load of beds and bags that we brought up last week.


Thanks everyone for your help and for your interest!

WOW! What a goldmine! So glad for you!

Wow is right!

Glad you checked into the Table Tops. I built mine at 30 inches high instead of waist height. I think (not sure) that I will be more comfortable bending at the hips instead of waist.

Hope you can get those weeds out. That Mel's Mix is usually so friable that they will pull out without too much trouble,

Because it has been a while since those beds were used, you might want to add some fresh compost to rev them up a bit.

Enjoy!

Well, we'll see about the TT.....we are trying to get hubby's bro to participate in gardening, something to get him up and going. He has an incredibly bad back and can't bend at all so we put the TT at "no bend level" hoping to encourage him to enjoy the beds! I'm excited! We did get five of the beds raised yesterday and decided to leave the deep beds short as we will try to incorporate potatoes in them.

As well, in surveying the location yesterday, we decided to put the structure just south of the raised beds instead of east of them since the ground is much leveler there. I'm down in the valley today and will remove more of the dirt to attempt to get all of the beds home today. It's a project for sure!

On another note before I go....the raised beds are so so wet! We've had incredible rain this fall/winter season and they are saturated! I am hoping to revitalize them with some new compost and maybe some of the mix from the other beds as I am adding new compost to them as you say, to "rev" them up.

We have a place where we put all of our oak leaves and compost them. So far that has worked well these past two years. Ok, off to be grandma!

Hello!!!!!!!!! Whew, we're sore and tired after all the bags of soil and bark loaded, the beds loaded and unloaded, the structure taken down and reassembled, new taller legs for table top beds screwed in....Today the bird netting goes on and then we can get the beds moved in and the soil back in them and plant!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are the pics from yesterday.

First we laid down the weed free black stuff and then on went the bags and bags of bark. I got tired spreading and raking it! LOL


Here is our boss....Tye definitely has that supervisor look, don't you agree? LOL


You can see that we got the new and taller version of legs on the beds. We've left the two deep beds the same height and will try potatoes in them.


sacks of soil and bark...I have to tell you they are heavy!!!



New legs going on!


It is Erector set time! We labeled each part and then laid it out. Luckily it went together well and we had no parts left over! LOL


Now..we are screwing the pvc back together and pounding in the rebarb to hold it up and rescrewing the top for the support. Long but very productive afternoon!

@TheVeggieO's wrote:


It is Erector set time! We labeled each part and then laid it out. Luckily it went together well and we had no parts left over! LOL

No parts left over is the best!! It all looks FABULOUS! the price is so right!!! Congratulations.

fantastic! I hope you can get BIL to participate. I also have a bad back so I know what that means,,,I often feel like I can't do anything but I am giving SFG a try and I think it will be great. Good luck!

Lookin' Good!

So much work to move from your neighbors and set it up, but you will love it.