This past weekend, my husband and I took on the big project of fencing in my garden. In a matter of 4 and a half hours, the garden went from two 4×3 foot raised beds to 11 beds! It’s a big jump from the 2020 season to the 2021 season. There are plans in the works to expand more for the 2022 season with in ground growing and fruit trees! My yard is slowly being taken over by food plots! Yes!
I started back in April with two 4×3 foot raised beds which I filled with everything humanly possible. I quickly realized that I would need more space. Well more space came when I purchased 6 more beds. When I started planning my garden space, I knew this would not be enough. So, this past week, I ordered 3 more beds and all the materials to fence it in. I am never letting my dog near my garden again!
We started in the morning. It was so cold on Sunday here! I had to take a before shot of my sorry looking end of Fall garden. You can see the remnants of stability poles (I used an old mop handle at one point), and you can see some of my parsley still going strong. That parsley somehow survived two frosts!
I like the metal beds just because they last and won’t rot. These I found were $50 each, which isn’t terrible considering all they do!
I had so many new beds to put together! I am in no way handle, in any sense of the word. It took me forever to out these together. My poor thumb and index finger still hurt from twisting all the wingnuts!
While I put the new beds together, my wonderful husband moved the current beds in order to make room for the garden fencing. He is handy, and moves furniture for a living so he’s strong too and is great with manual labor. I digress.
I was taking so long to put together those raised beds, that he had to come help me. He would finish two beds in the time it took me to complete one. He was modest when I brought up this point and said it’s from all his experience putting furniture together.
After we got all the beds put together, we started to lay them out in the pattern that I envisioned. As a teacher, I’m a Type-A planner. As we laid them out, the hubby started setting the fence posts.
I found the posts on the Facebook Marketplace. Someone was getting rid of them and they were going to throw them away. In no way would I let this happen, and seized the opportunity to reuse them! They were perfect, just dirty which doesn’t take anything away from their value (in my humble opinion).
Once all the beds were in place and the poles in, we set forward on the task of rolling out the chicken wire. I got 1/2 inch welded wire for this because I didn’t want bunny nor dog finding a way into the garden. We attached the wire to the fence post spikes and added zip ties for extra support.
Prior to starting the project, the hubs and I had a lively discussion on how to build the gate. My ideas were half cocked and whimsical and his didn’t make sense in my brain. On Saturday, I was sitting on the couch looking at the dog gate that blocks the kitchen and realized we had a cat gate in the basement that we didn’t use anymore. I just shouted out that we could use that cat gate for the garden. He thought that was brilliant (I may or may not be exaggerating), so that’s what we did.
We covered the gate with chicken wire and then attached it to the fencing with loads and loads of zip ties. Its not going anywhere!
Is it the most attractive looking garden? Hell no! Am I really proud of it? Oh yes!
Not only were we able to put together all the beds, but we also built an awesome fence. Bonus, the fence allowed us to repurpose something that was just sitting in the basement!
I pulled out the parsley and I was floored by the size of the main stem and roots on that bad boy! It also reminded me of a Mandrake from Harry Potter.
And scene!
My Urban Homestead by Sarah 