Raised Beds

I garden in the back yard.  It's a decent size but I have to share it with two storage sheds, a line of 60 foot tall spruce trees, a few rabbits and three dogs.  Add the challenge of modeling clay for soil and you see the need to get a little creative for space and location.

We built raised beds to eliminate the challenges of rabbits, dogs and clay.  Okay, it also made it really easy to weed as well.  It's nice to go out in the morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and be able to stand upright to weed your strawberries.

These containers have evolved over the past six years and have been moved around the garden to test the best place for the light and space.  It's nice to be able to relocate a fully established 3' X 8' garden bed to another location without ruffling a leaf! 

The biggest change came after a devastating hail storm last year.  In the space of 10 minutes, my beautiful garden looked like a victim of a mass attack by lunatics with butcher knives.  Everything was slashed to shreds.  We set to work the next weekend and came up with this...

The shade cloth deflects heavy rain and hail and a bonus is we've noticed that the plants are less stressed during really hot sunny days with the little bit of shade.  It also helps to keep the birds away from the strawberries although this year, a few have figured it out so we are going to have to put full netting over the strawberry beds.  Forward thinking, we are also in the process of making green house covers for the beds to extend the season. 

Just a note here--you can see through these pictures that I can grow just about anything in the containers in these raised beds.  Admittedly, some plants have done better than others but they do grow.  I will talk more about these containers in a separate post.