A few weeks later it is filling out nicely and we have strawberries!

They were dead - went and bought new plants.

That is the veggie garden up to date. Now on to some of the other areas, we worked on in parallel.

Have you ever seen those long plastic bags that people grow flowers or strawberries in? Well we did, and thought "why not a post?" You don't need a hook. So we drilled some holes (Chuck drilled) and sunk it in the ground (again Chuck.) I had ordered some strawberries from an online company, but unfortunatly they were in the fridge too long and died. Pretty aren't they? I wasn't sure at this point if they would come back to life or not.

This bed is all tomatos and peppers.

Things are growing! (thank goodness) This bed is: beans, lettuce, spinach, brocolli, eggplant, carrots.

They are all in!

The plants go in! These are the tomatoes.

Chuck bent this conduit, so we can put a cover on it to a) keep it warm and b) keep it from drowning, we have had crazy rain this year.

The beds, full of dirt, that is peat on top, that I am about to mix in. (I didn't use enough however.)

Ah, the dirt is all moved into the beds.

Desem of course, enjoys a little cool dirt.

We started putting the dirt in, by hand!

Here are the plants, pending planting.

Here comes the dirt, this is about 15 CY (cubic yards.)

Then the drainage pipes and the pea gravel to make the soil drain into the pipes.

Then we put the rubber down.

Here we are fitting the pipe (and support plate) over the cistern hole, then we put the rubber over. You can see the hole in the side, made with the drill press, that the drainage pipes will feed into.

Then because of course, we want to be able to pump out of the cistern, we have to put in a pipe so we have access - it's right in the middle of the garden bed. Here is the pipe on the drill press, pre-drilling, Chuck and I lifted it up, it's about 200+ lbs. Egad.

Then we put the rubber into the beds and put in the drainage pipes.

So now that we have finished escavation, we have to put in the rubber, which comes on a big roll. It is actually roofing material.

Sidenote, these are my "pavers." They are from an old crane or forlift, they are the treads. They will run all around the garden and get filled in with dirt, grass and groundcover.

Now you will notice, we haven't put in the good-dirt yucky-dirt border in yet, this was just figuring out the piping, before we put in the rubber.

Second, drainage. A couple of notes. So remember, we can't let the garden bed dirt mix with the bad-old-black-walnut yard dirt; which means a drainage system is in order. We had planned for it, but planned to drain it down into gravel underground - viola! Now we have a cistern to drain it into. And as long as you are going to have a cistern and collect water, you might as well catch it from your gutters. But instead of using rain buckets (yes, people have them), we have the cistern.

This is Chuck running the drainage pipe in the 2 beds and on an angle over to the back of the garage.

Jim, remember how I said the top was concrete and in the concrete they used all their old broken ceramics. Here ya go, a shot from the inside, looking up.

First - checking it out. I climbed down in, after making sure Chuck had his cell phone - so in case I passed out, he could call 911. Then after I was down there for a while and he felt like it must be safe, he came down. :) Please note my fancy head-lamp.

Two more things then happened: we decided, an underground water storage - perfect. We will use it to store water and use said water for the garden. And 2, well, we had to go check it out. This is pre-check-out.

After much deliberation and discussion with my Dad. We decided is had to be a cistern

! Well of course. Basically an underground storage for water. We dug out this bed much deeper and uncovered the entire cistern opening.

That was quite deep....

And a hole....

And then, we hit the roots. I had forgotten that there use to a tree right next to where the bed is, that I had removed when I bought the place. So we dug, and we axed and we came across some concrete....

So the garden will be 6" into the ground and the ground is tough. So Chuck rototilled the beds and the surrounding area.

Got the sides on. The uneven posts are driving me crazy, Chuck loves them.

Putting on the sides.

Whew...got the 4x4 posts in.

Digging holes for the 4x4...HA! This turned out to take ALL DAY. The ground is hard and full of trash - bricks, glass, whatever - the prior owners just buried what they didn't want.

Staking it off.

Weedville

This is where the bed is going to go, this is all weeds all the time.

It's all about the garden!

As you know, I am garden nuts. We have spent weeks building our "raised beds", which are more similar to a roof garden as the soil doesn't comingle with the yard soil. We have black walnut trees which kill lots of plants, so comingle no more! Here is a series of pictures...