Raised Bed Garden (Part 2)

Want to meet your neighbors?  Build a garden!  We had a couple of our neighbors come over to see what we were up to.  Turns out our neighbors are anxious to see how it turns out too!

Today we will show you how we dug the holes, laid down landscaping cloth and cemented the beds in permanently.  Lots of work to be done before we start planting!

If you visited us last week for part 1 you saw the beds raised up in the air on their legs.  We've dug holes and sat them down to see how they will look in the above picture.  I like it!

We rented a one man auger to dig the holes.  The fee was right at $80 but oh so worth it in the end.  I wanted to try to dig holes too.....yeah, I'm just a tiny bit too short to man this one man auger. Eeeek!

When my honey started to dig the first hole it looked all nice and pretty like you see here.  That was not the case moving forward!

Um, anyone want to buy a rock farm?  We wanted to "plant" the legs about 12" in the ground.  With all the rocks, that was not happening!

We had to take 9" off each of the legs to have the base touch the ground.  There is no digging rocks people. Wow!  Oh, do you see the green paint on the leg up there?  We sat the bed in its place and then used spray paint to mark on the ground where to dig the holes.  It still wasn't a perfect science, but hey, it worked.

Here's the bed sitting down in the hole ready for cement.  We dug as much loose dirt out of the hole as we could so that the cement could get a good hold. 

We originally bought 2 bags of cement for each leg.  Since our holes ended up being much more shallow than we first planned for we only used a 1/2 bag per leg.  Good news is, Lowe's will take back what you don't need.  We ended up using (7) bags of cement that were $3.46 per bag with was about $24.22 total.

NOTE: No need to pre-mix your cement, just add some water to the hole, add cement, stir, mix and more water until you have the consistency you want.  We used a wooden paint roller handle and a shovel to stir and mix.

Before we cemented everything down permanently, we laid down the landscaping cloth ($29.98 for 300 sq ft roll) in hopes that weeds wont be bothering our little garden.  The wind was blowing like 60 and we had a big time keeping it on the ground, but we did it.  Since our little garden area will have walk ways, we made sure the cloth covered those areas too.  Join us next week for the dirt and the planting.

Raised Bed Garden (Part 1)
Raised Bed Garden (Part 3)

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:

Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn
The Self Sufficient Home Acre 
The Chicken Chick
 
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac
Between Naps on the Porch
DIY Home Sweet Home 
Keeping it  Simple
The Dedicated House
Skip to my Lou 

Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Wednesday
Lil’ Luna
Clean and Scentsible
Lady Behind the Curtain

Thursday
Bloom
Two Yellow Birds Decor
The Busy B's

Friday 
Tatertots and Jello
Joyful Stamper
Craftionary
Diana Rambles

Saturday
Positively Splendid
I Heart Nap Time
Or So She Says 
Your Homebased Mom 
What's Cooking with Ruthie