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Monday, June 15, 2009

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?

16 comments:

  1. Pretty cool.

    Look good, congrats. All that hard work paid off.

    MBT @ Chicago Garden

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  2. It looks good! I can see quite a few veggie sin your future. Raised beds are the best way to go for the home gardener!

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  3. I love it! And you will too. Congratulations on finishing a huge project!

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  4. What fun. It looks great! I hope you have time to enjoy it a bit before the next project takes over.

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  5. OMG, Gina! I've been following this for a little bit here and there, but somehow I missed that you made these things yourself! You have no idea how impressed I am!

    It looks fabulous, really. I can only imagine how good this must make you feel, now that they're done.

    Can't wait to see them filled to overflowing with veggies!

    GOOD JOB!!!!

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  6. Gina, he mis-math reminds me about a comic strip I read some 20+ years ago about an accountant bemoaning the importance of a decimal point. It looks like things more or less worked out though... and veggies are good!

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  7. Wow- what a grand project! We put in some raised beds two years a ago, but not to the scale you have..

    you are going to have some yummy-ness coming out of that garden soon!

    Congrats

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  8. Looks great! I love the rain barrel I see in one of the photos!

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  9. They look great! Can't wait to see the progress of your garden during the coming months! Good luck!

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  10. Mega awesome! You have got SUCH a nice setup now, and I bet you'll have so much fun with it. Way to go!

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  11. Very cool! I've used the circular saw on my own and holy cow is that scary lol.

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  12. Your raised beds look fabulous :) So full of potential. Impressed that you made them yourself-woohoo.

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  13. Great vegetable garden! I hope to do this next year.

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  14. Thank you for sharing, reminds me of another SFG here: http://cli.gs/NatGreeneVeg2009

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