Monday, April 18, 2011

Downscaling our Vegetable Garden

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Two years ago Hillsy and I decided to turn a piece of our backyard into a vegetable garden. That was B.E. before Emma. Now that patch holds a couple of rose bushes, a few Rhododendrons, a Spirea and a few other smallish plants. There's been talk of building vegetable boxes but I finally decided to walk the talk when I read this post on DS last friday. We headed down to Home Depot and bought a few pieces of wood, brackets, screws etc and finally built our box for peas yesterday. It took me about an hour to build (Hillsy assisting) and cost less than $40. The brackets we used were a little pricey ($2.50+ each) but I'm sure you could find cheaper ones if you have the patience to hunt them down. Our heads were starting to spin and wanted to get out of HD as fast as possible, so we grabbed the first ones we saw. I would also suggest springing for the weather-treated wood so you don't have to paint or finish it yourself. *according to one of my readers, you shouldn't use pre-treated wood. I haven't looked into this topic myself, so please do some research before deciding! We'll see how this one goes... there's new talk of building more boxes!

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presproutingpeas

I'm currently pre-sprouting my peas (thanks to this digginfood post, also found via Design Sponge), I already spotted a couple of roots sprouting. I can't wait to plant them in the box at the end of the week!

6 comments:

Ez said...

Oh yay! Your grow box looks amazing guys! Looks like you'll have a delicious harvest soon! What other veggies are you growing along with the peas? We put our box in last week (so far nothing is growing yet, so we'll see). xo Ez

IamSusie said...

Don't use weather treated wood for vegetable beds because the weather treatment leeches into the soil and then, possibly, into the food. I think the chemical has arsenic.. Untreated cedar should be fine and it will weather to a nice natural grey.

Marichelle said...

thanks for the tip Susie! Thank goodness we weren't clever enough to buy pre-treated wood!! I actually sprayed the outside of ours with a little finishing spray but i'm pretty sure I didn't spray enough to worry too much about it seeping into the inside and soil!

Marichelle said...

Thanks Ez! Just peas for now :)

melissa loves said...

You guys are awesome! I love it & am hoping I will be able to taste some of your yummie peas in the near future! :) xoxo
Melis

allthingsami said...

i wonder if i'm too late to grow peas? i hope not. we've had a wet spring. i'm hoping to get our garden boxes planted this weekend.

good luck with the peas!