We built a pair of raised beds near our back woods — it was a nicely sheltered location, but too shady to grow much. The space is limited, too; and we wanted to have more garden space. The first step was going to be tilling, but we encountered an old tree stump under the grass. A good bit of excavation later, it was a pine tree with a very twisted root system. And several >3″ diameter roots running both horizontally into the garden area and down farther into the ground. Soooo … that’s a no on tilling a big patch to make a garden.

We have the blocks from the existing raised beds, so we’re creating four one-brick-high raised beds in the front yard. We’re going to compost grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps, etc between the beds and create hills for additional garden space next year. We’ll move the soil from the two raised beds into these new ones, and we’ve got some additional compost from the past year.

The first step is deconstructing the existing raised beds

And we’re constructing four new, lower, beds with the blocks

We’ve got two beds completed, and hauled about a third of the blocks for the remaining two

We’ve got to level off the geothermal hill — it’s been settling for a few years, and we can add compost on top if the area happens to fall farther. Unfortunately, a big storm blew in this evening … so we gathered up our stuff and ran for the house!