We Did It!

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To say we’re exhausted just doesn’t cut it.

We spent all afternoon putting up the last of the six raised bed planters. Part of the process went well. My husband had made the stakes come to a point on the lathe. The drilling on three of the four holes went well and the stakes went in pretty easily. It went down hill from there, though.

We had trouble getting the 4×4 template up off the stakes, bringing two of them back up in the process. We managed to pound them back in, and then brought out the metal legs and square box frame. We had trouble getting the frame at the right height, having to move vice grips one at a time and moving the legs from the inside of the frame to the outside, trying to get all to fit and be level.

We discovered that one part of the frame didn’t have a hole drilled in like it was supposed to. We had to rig to bring the drill out and do it in the garden. We got the legs cut off and the extra hole drilled and finally got the bolts in.

The last step was bringing the wooden box out and placing it into the frame. Except this time it was too big to go into the frame! My husband said he thought this frame was the first one he made. After this one, he decided to give an extra 1/8th of an inch or so on the frame dimensions to give us more slack. This time we had to use a chisel, pry bar, and a sledge-hammer to move down the edges and force the wooden box into the frame.

We finally prevailed, but the installation of this last box took us about four hours and completely exhausted us.  The next step is to install the sprinklers in the three planters on the north side of the garden and unite them with lengths of hoses, attaching them to the irrigation system for the garden.

Tomorrow I’ll put the Mel’s Mix into the planter. We also plan to remove the fabric shade from the garden now that the 90 degree + weather seems to be behind us. (The first year we had the garden, we had an ice storm. The weight of the ice pulled down one half of the garden completely. Usually we roll up the fabric shade and attach it to one side of the garden. This year we’ll take it down and dispose of it, putting up a new one for the spring planting.

Tomorrow I also plan to harvest lettuce and maybe some broccoli! I’ll take some pics of both the planters and the fall garden to share with you.