2009 Kitchen Garden Expansion Complete

After about a month of hard work and backaches, the kitchen garden expansion is finally done. All that's left now is to cover the paths in between the beds and finish planting them.

The dimension of the new area is 18 feet wide by 21 feet long. That was supposed to be reversed (21 feet wide by 18 feet long) but I made an error on my drawing and in my communication to the guys who were helping me remove the old Vanhoutte Spirea and the sod from the area.

When they alerted me about the error, I couldn't imagine removing any more of my flower beds to make the kitchen garden bigger, so I just went with it. But, because of the error, I lost the extra 3 foot compost space (now it'll just be a one 3 foot bin system) and the space for the two narrow 1 x 10 foot beds that I was planning to use for strawberries. Still, I love this size. I think it's perfect!

Also due to the measurement error, I have this wide space at the front of the garden. I'd like to build an arbor in the center for grape vines and either build a couple of small narrow strawberry beds, or place pots and a couple of benches there.

The dimensions of the raised beds are 2x8 and 4x8. They are all 8 inches high and I used 2x2x8 foot boards to make them. Did I mention I made these all myself? And that I purchased and used a circular saw which was terrifying?

If you've been following me on twitter you've probably already seen pictures of the new pie garden where all the plants that used to live in the now kitchen garden were moved to. If not, I'll be posting about that in the next few days.

Here's the before picture (left). What do you think about the transformation?