Building a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden - Part III

I am already remiss in maintaining this blog. It has been a couple of weeks since my last post. In that time, Dan and I finished building the garden. It was a lot more work than we thought it would be.

Dirt...I mean soil. We had 3 cubic yards of a compost/topsoil mix delivered by SoilDirect.com. Actually, we think they delivered more than that. It was hell to move all of that soil to the beds in the backyard. No wheelbarrow, which made for back breaking work. We were exhausted but we got it done. And, we had leftover soil. We ended up using it for our other garden beds. They desperately needed it.

The next step was acquiring pea gravel for the paths. We decided to shop local like we did for the lumber for the beds. In fact, we shopped at the same place, Eagle Rock Lumber & Hardware. Their customer service was great...helpful and friendly. I was so glad to be able spend money locally rather than at a big box store like Home Depot or Lowes. It took 30 bags of pea gravel to fill the paths. That was 2 trips in my Jetta. All the time I was wishing I had a truck.

Once that was done,Dan and I couldn't wait to go get plants. So, it was off the Burkard's Nursery in Pasadena. Again, we stayed local and avoided the big box stores or the chain nurseries like Armstrong's. Burkard's had an amazing selection of vegetables and herbs to choose from, including a lot of heirloom varieties. So we loaded up and headed home to start planting.


Now, we just have to keep those little babies alive and thriving. And, learn how to properly harvest celery.