Lavender, Sage, Calendula, and Figs?...

flickr.com/photos/7326810@N08/, CC BY 2.0

We caught an ad for a Peace and Harvest Festival at a relatively local organic and natives nursery... So guess where we were on Sunday.
I have a weakness for herbs, so we came home with a six pack of calendula, 3 varieties of sage and two forms of lavender. Also found a fig that would fit in the car and a cute strawberry tree that has the most gorgeous little flowers.
So not only do we need to get the raised bed filled with dirt, I have to find places to plant all my lovely herbs and baby trees.

Raised Veggie Bed Part II

One raised bed is made. It look a few extra trips to Home Depot for silly things like extra screws and clamps. But it looks very nice... and huge. That thing is going to require a lot of soil.
We ended up with redwood, cedar was only available as fencing.
We'll put this one in the ground and make raised bed number two when we feel confident about number one.
Also decided to mostly use purchased soil with this one... so I can plant earlier and we can wait to buy straw after Halloween, when bales will probably be free/cheap. I still plan to use cardboard and grass clippings that we got from a freecycler, on the bottom. And I'll sneak in compostable kitchen items.
I'm crossing my fingers very tightly that the dog doesn't decide to dig in my new bed. She has a fondness for burying her rawhides in flowerpots. The raised bed will probably look like a lovely giant sized flowerpot.

Raised Veggie Bed

I skimmed Lasagna Gardening years ago, before having a yard. So I had the concept and a feeling that determining and finding the ingredients would be tough. But I always wanted to grow my own veggies and fruit trees. The frugal bug was also always there, but organic didn't occur to me until later in life (ugh, that makes me sound old, I'm pretty sure I'm not). I recently borrowed my LLL leader's copy of Lasagna Gardening to brush up on the details, but I never got around to reading it. I finally returned it after 3 months. Happily, there's an abundance of information on the web. Googling "raised garden beds", "no dig gardens" and "lasagna gardening" got me all the information I need.

We're finally getting ready to build a raised veggie bed.
Following Sunset magazine's directions. With a few adaptions from this blog.

We're aiming for organic, so cedar wood (ouch!) and probably lasagna style greens and browns for the soil.

So far, we're getting free cardboard and grass clippings from a friendly freecycler. The rest will come from Lowes, Home Depot or OSH. Now for the price comparisons to begin...