Winter Gardening and a New Tree

We’re planting our winter veggies right now, in waves, so we’ll be able to harvest at different times. We bought a cute little greenhouse from Lowe’s ($40) to make it easier to grow seeds outside. We’re considering putting some small warmer weather vegetables in there and seeing how they do.

Cute little greenhouse!

This weekend, we planted lettuces, mustard greens, and bok choy.

Ready to go into the ground...

Our new garden beds are working out really well.  They get more sun than our side yard.

YUM! We've got leeks, mustard greens, lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, and cabbage =)

Here's our second garden bed. Green beans and spaghetti squash on the right.

We're getting quite a lot of green beans. They're super-tasty.

We also started pulling up the summer plants from our side yard.  They had a bit of measly production left, as we harvested a tiny butternut squash and itty bitty eggplants, but overall, they’re done.

Pulling up cucumber plants.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a big storm here.  Our big, beautiful eucalyptus tree fell over.  Thankfully it didn’t land on our house, but did damage our spa cover slightly.  We found out later, from our neighbors, that the tree had already fallen over once before!  The people that lived in our home before us propped it back up.  Clearly, a poor idea.  When my hubby was digging out the roots, we saw that the largest root had been broken off from the trunk long ago.  Once a tree falls over, it’s pretty much said “Goodbye, world”.

So we bought a loquat tree and put it in the spot where the old eucalyptus tree was.

We bought it from our neighbors. At a garage sale. Score!

Loquat trees grow very quickly, are evergreen, and produce tasty fruit.  Three wonderful things that both the hubby and I desired.  My mother actually grew her loquat tree from seed.  These trees are very expensive in the hardware store or at the nursery (~$60-$75), so this may be the way to go for those looking to guard the pocketbook.

Raised Garden Beds

The side yard is a fine and dandy place to grow vegetables.  It’s already given us more tomatoes than we can eat.  However, we’re aiming to cut our grocery store trips waaay down (and don’t homegrown veggies just taste better?).  Since we have plenty of lawn, and live right across from a massive expanse of grass, we decided to put a couple of garden beds on our lawn.

We built ours 4′ wide and 8′ long.  22″ tall to keep the puppy from jumping up and rooting through our veggies.  It’s entirely unnecessary to have yours quite so tall, unless you have a small dog that loves to dig!

PARTS (per garden bed):
6 – 8′ long 2×8′s
1 – 8′ long 4×4′s
24 – 3″ long wood screws

TOOLS:
circular saw (or get the wood cut to size at the hardware store)
power drill/screwdriver

We had the hardware store cut some of our wood to size, and we cut some of it at home with a circular saw.  Three of the 2×8′s need to be cut in half.  The 4×4 needs to be cut into 4 22″ long sections.

Cutting the 4x4s into 22" long sections

Put 2 of the 4×4 sections on the ground, and line up 3 of the 4′ long 2×8′s.  Pre-drill two holes on each piece into the post.  Make sure the drill bit is slightly thinner than the screws you are using.

If you're doing this alone, it might be best to do on a flat surface

Screw the 4′ long 2×8 pieces into the post.  Line up the 22″ long 4×4 post on the other side and do the same.  You should end up with a piece that looks like this.  Three 4′ long 2×8′s and two 22″ long 4×4′s.

Devin in a most un-ladylike pose!

Repeat for the opposite side.  Then stand those up, and start putting on the 8′ long 2×8′s. Two screws for each end of the board.

Put your back into it, kid!

A very short time later…

We had the long ends overlapping the short ends for a neater look

Now we have a raised garden bed!  We’ll have to dump dirt in it, and raise up some seedlings, but you get the idea.  Since we have it in our lawn, I’ll probably be sealing the outside to protect the wood from our sprinklers (though we turned off the one that was inside the bed.  We have a hose from our sprinkler system coming up this side of the yard, so we’re going to put our garden beds on automatic sprinklers as well.

DON’T MAKE MY MISTAKE:
Build it where you plan to have it lay, or close by.  It is heavy!

COST:
$43 for the wood + $6 for more screws than we needed = $49

TIME INVESTMENT:
If you include the hardware store trip and the cutting, about 3 hours.