MBrace it!

Erik and I finished emptying the last half of the side garden plot today, but as you can see the bougainvillea  still needs to be trimmed & shaped up and we need to haul away the rocks and debris to the local dump. He plans to come by next Sunday to throw everything into his truck and haul it away.

We are keeping the bougainvillea as a partial shade and I have later hopes of possibly building some type of decorative fence across the front of the area that begins the "car pad" (see photo 1) with a lovely walkway trellis in the middle that the bougainvillea can grow up onto. It would be a beautiful entrance to my garden area plus a great way to keep my future hens penned into that part of the yard.

After talking to my friend Vanessa (Hi, girl!!!) about the benefits of container gardening, I plan to have a few containers placed around the perimeter to grow in, but I still can't let go of my ache for a beautiful wood raised bed. Especially after finding the MBrace Raised Bed Brackets!

                            

They come in multiple fun designs and they make building a raised bed easy as 1, 2, 3... They're designed to work with 2x4's and there are no tools or screws required, all you need are the brackets, and the lumber ( I'm planning to do redwood ). They can be short beds, or all the way up to 12' long beds. You can get them in stainless steel or powder coated rust ( I love the stainless steel. It'll weather beautifully over time ). All you have to do are drop your 2x4's in and it's ready to go.

I'll admit, when I first saw the price ( $139.99 ) I felt my stomach drop and knew it wouldn't be possible, but after thinking about it a little, basically it's about $35 dollars per brace and as no one else is making anything fun like this yet, I like the idea of being a little bit on the garden decorating cutting edge. The jury's ( Gary ) still out on it, but I'm hoping to persuade him to it. As I doubt I'll be getting that Dream Chair in my last post as a B-Day gift, maybe I can talk him into this.

Obviously the plan is to level out the area where we will put the raised bed, then I want to lay down a sheet of plastic between the bed and existing soil, drop in some gravel for good drainage then throw in the mixture of potting soil and compost to get my soil started. The closet garden hose is 15 or more feet away, and Gary's not keen on having a hose running across the yard for a drip system for the planter. Also, he says I need to be down there tending to it everyday and the drip system would just be an excuse to neglect it. I agree, though do think a drip system could be helpful. Maybe he'll get into that idea at a later date.

As for plants themselves, I originally was going to go with starting from seeds, but yesterday we discovered that the Downtown Upland Farmers Market is back and there was a booth there that sold beautiful, ready to go transplants. After talking with the seller about seeds vs transplants, I definitely want to go the transplant route. It won't be too expensive either. His plants go for about $2 each and I noticed at Lowe's yesterday that they have other transplants for $1. Still, I want to support locally grown farmers, so I hope to buy most my transplants at the Farmers Market.

While at Lowe's I picked up the latest issue of Urban Farmer and saw that the Arboretum in Arcadia will be having a container/raised bed gardening class in May and I'm thinking it'll be really good to go and soak up as much information as I can. Hopefully the class doesn't fill up too quick!