Err, the title should have read "very pic intensive", but I guess it was too long, and I didn't realize it'd been cut off. Way to go, me!

Spaghetina,
This is a Major undertaking, both money and labor wise.
I have questions:
-- did you dig and mix any native soil with your mixture?
-- What is NURSARY MIX?.
-- How those timberS are treated? are they safe for veggies, Will they last without rotting?
-- Some of your beds are not very deep; Why is it so?

I think the compost will pack and shrink, unless you mix it with some inorganic soil(good old soil). So you will have to keep adding more top spol and/or compost

Gook luck! Your work is cut out for here after.
cyrus

Why do I have my work cut out for me from here on out? I thought the hard part was already done! LOL.

-No native soil was added. My soil is the hardest packed clay anyone has ever seen. When I say that it's impossible to get a pointed shovel 1cm into the ground, I'm not kidding. The sound it makes when a pick hits it is the sound a pick makes when it hits concrete. I would have had to hire someone to till, and I just didn't want to bother.

-"Nursery mix" is what my local landscaping supply company calls one of their engineered soils. It's mostly sandy loam, with some other stuff mixed in, and then of course, I added 1/2 compost to give it more organic matter.

-When I originally built the beds, I asked not one, not two, but THREE different people whether the timbers were pressure treated or not. All told me no, and there was nothing on the description tag to make me think otherwise. I was told it was just stained, and left untreated, while the pile of green wood next to the ones that I purchased, were treated. I bought those stories because I didn't see any of the dimples that PT wood usually has, and went ahead with the building. It was only after everything had been purchased, cut, and fully assembled that I found out that they ARE pressure treated. However, apparently the chemicals used to treat wood these days aren't nearly as bad for you as they used to be. That's not saying that it's 100% proven safe, but as I said in another thread, living will kill us all someday, so I might as well have some fresh produce in the meantime. From what I gather, there are quite a lot of people using PT lumber for their raised veggie beds, and quite a lot of people who would NEVER think to do such a thing. I wanted to avoid it, and I thought I'd done what I was supposed to do by asking multiple sources whether I was getting treated lumber or not, but what's done is done, and I'm not willing to forgo my original plan. I refuse to have a $300 raised bed flower garden! How long will they last before rotting? I don't really know. I hadn't planned on them originally lasting more than a few years, at which time I was going to reevaluate whether or not I liked the garden the way it was, or if I wanted to overhaul it again, but only time will tell.

- All but one of my beds are 9" deep. This will all be done square foot gardening style, so the minimum it needed to be was 6". I went with the extra 3" to account for soil shrinkage and plants liking to stretch their roots. At some point, likely after the winter growing season, I may add another board to each of the 9" beds to make them all 12" deep, but I'm going to wait and see what the results are before making any more work for myself. I made one bed 12" for growing things like carrots, which I really wanted to try, and to see whether or not the extra 3" of soil would make any difference. If it does, then more boards will definitely be added to the rest.

Yes, the soil will continue to shrink because of the compost component, which is why I overfilled all the beds and will probably top them off until it's mounded up a bit once I get my backyard bed filled up, but it is comprised of half soil that shouldn't really shrink or compact, or otherwise "go anywhere".

Good job!
Now let's see them filled with fall plantings!

Spagh, nice work! Don't fret about not digging down into the origional soil. I have total adobe and just had to dig out my 1st raised bed cause gophers ate through the wire and found the softest, lovely soil underneath! Those worms work wonders!
6-9" is fine. Roots are strong and help break up the soil anyway! My raised beds are the same depth and have been doing fine!
I hope you don't have gophers! You didn't mention putting wire under the beds.
Finally, I have found to ALWAYS do your homework before going to HD!
One day I went looking for a water filter and waited and waited for someone to help me out! After about 10 min, a guy came and spent about 10 minutes going over all the filters and their pros and cons. I asked if they had one that wasn't stocked and he said "I don't know, I don't work here!" LOLOLOOLOLO
The best help I have ever gotten is from someone who didn't work there!
Needless to say, I tell this story every time I go to Lowes!
Lastly, all the work you have cut out for you will be gardening "work", which is the best kind!!!!!
Happy Gardening! Nancy

Props to you spaghetina that is some project!

What will you be growing in those pretty little beds?

That nice long fence looks like the perfect place to host a string trellis for beans and peas and other small vining crops. And the curving edge of sidewalk is just begging for a ribbon of herbs and edible flowers to rub up against. You already have a white picket fence and is that a rose bush on the driveway side?

Very Potager. Love it!

Very nice! It looks like you've put a lot of thought into these. I can't wait to see them planted!

I love your project. It's altogether groovy. Misterbaby

spaghetina,

perfect time to get those fall crops in. I planted cauliflower, broccoli, turnip, carrot, lettuce, spinach, mustard and peas... just the type of things that you could put in this weekend in SF area before the rain monday :)

Spaghetina, all I can say is WOW! Great job. I have used those timbers from HD and the red comes off on your hands and clothes and is just a stain not treated. So don't worry about that.... I have it all over the back of my surburban.

I totally understand, I want it done and I want it done now. Just how I operate which is why I always ask myself if I can accept it because sometimes I cheat alittle too. LOL

Can't wait to see ho it evolves for you.

Absolutely gorgeous!! And don't worry too much about shrinkage...you are going to need to add some compost or composted manure every year anyways so shrinkage will even be a bit helpful LOL.Boy I wish I had done my gardens like yours....BRAVO!!

Donna

Good work! I don't think I could have done all that in one day. In the
end it is very satisfying. Now is the fun part, watching your veggies grow.

I like this one: "living will kill us all someday"

Spaghetina, setting up all those beds are like bearing childeren. Now you have to raise them , planting, watering, weeding, watching for the bugs, insects, picking/harvesting, cooking them .(Grin).
Just kidding.
By the way, those lumbers are pretty good. I have seen them somewhere that have been in ground for more than 6 years and no rotting. And because the way they are trimmed(on two sides) they will not warp as readily. Again, I have seen some fresh ones around here under rain, shine but no signs of warping n at all. Whereas most 2 by 4s and 4 by 4s will warp at no time. The one I am talking about are sold at HD. So I thing you've made a good choice.

Cyrus

Well Well I have been following along as you planned and researched,and replanned. It looks like it was worth all the time. It realy looks good. BY the way next time maybe a smaller shovel lol.
Curt.

Thanks for all the kind words, everyone! I woke up early (7:30am - hey, that's early for me!), and got all of the mulch in, and then I promptly left the house to run a hundred errands, so I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. Tomorrow, though. Now comes the task of getting everything planted, building a trellis (or maybe trellises? Not sure if I'll want just one or more than one...), and adding little touches to flesh things out. I'm still waiting on my tulle, but I imagine that'll be here some time next week.

Cyrus, I'm so, so, soooo looking forward to all of the "child rearing"! I've got a 4x4 bed full of newly sprouted lettuce, arugula, radishes, turnips, senposai, tiger ear chrysanthemum, yu choy, and a couple other things that I can't recall at the moment, and can't wait until the front beds are full of gailan, kale, beets, collards, favas and peas. I love fall veggies almost as much as summer ones. I keep thinking there must be more I'm missing that can be planted, but since I'm still so new to gardening, there are certain vegetables that I'm either too nervous to try growing, or too impatient to wait for, lol.

Curt, bwahaha! The shovel is kind of big, huh? I had another one here, but it grew legs, and that behemoth was all I had left. What was funnier is that I'm 5'1 on my BEST day, and not very large, so holding that thing in my hands looked crazily disproportionate.

I didn't understand how much material a shovel like that would hold, and I didn't think it'd be a big deal, but it ended up being really hard on my back. Rather than taking dainty, ladylike scoops, I filled that sucker up each time, and hoisted it into the wheelbarrow. If I'd found a way to position the wheelbarrow so that I could bend over and scoop the dirt in by hand, like a cat burying his, um... stuff, I would've done it - pride be damned. My back wouldn't have hated me nearly as much doing it that way, but since it's all over and done with now, I'll just chalk it up to a lesson learned. Smaller shovelfuls = happier back muscles and less Aleve consumed.

You did a fine job, everything looks great. Now all you need are some fall crops and you'll be all set. Good luck and welcome to the mad world of gardening!

Here is a link that might be useful: Giant Pumpkin Seeds

Spaghetina

Kudos to you. They look awesome!! Those beds are going to look so lovely with some cauliflower, broccolli, swiss chard and beets (that's what I planted ;)

So get planting!!

Tammy, I'm too scared to do cauliflower and broccoli! LOL. Anything that requires making a head makes me nervous, for some reason. That's why I stayed away from heading cabbage and lettuce, even though I love, love, love cabbage. I do have a couple types of beets (chioggia is one, I can't remember the name of the other one), though. I can't wait to see pictures of your fall garden. I bet it's going to be lovely as always.

I have loads of furniture to pick up from the store and assemble this afternoon, and then all of my attentions will be turned towards moving the rest of the soil out of my driveway, and getting seeds planted. Eeeee, I'm excited!

Looks awesome! Don't shy away from broccoli - you can harvest the side shoots after the main head, so one plant yields multiple meals.

I feel your pain with the clay. We bought our first house 3 years ago and the front yard was covered with lava rock. It took us months to remove and we were left with seriously hard packed clay underneath. It takes hours with a pick and shovel to dig a decent hole for planting. Back breaking!

Good luck!

I did buy some broccoli raab, but that's as close as I dared to venture when ordering seeds. Maybe one of these days, when I get brave, I'll give it a try, but raising veggies to grow into heads seems daunting.

I ended up doing things in the reverse order today. All of the soil is now out of my driveway. 3/4 of it made it into a 4x8 raised bed in the backyard (without the assistance of a wheelbarrow because the side yard turned out to be too narrow! I had to do it with a small rolling cart, and 1-gallon buckets), then the rest was used to finally fill in a big hole I dug out front to be able to plant some annuals in-ground. THAT was nice. I've had a gaping hole in my front yard for the last couple months, and I kept worrying my nearly 90 year old grandma would trip and fall in on one of her visits. The rest of the soil was scooped into 1 gallon buckets that'll be stored on the side of the house to be used to fill in any bare spots, or places that sink, etc.

After the furniture gets picked up and assembled today, then it's onto marking out my grids, getting some seeds in the ground, and figuring out what sort of trellis and what position I'd like to put it in. Oh, and I need to take some more pictures!

Amazing! I'm tired just reading about all the physical labor you did in such a short time. I've experienced the sore back thing this year, too. No fun at all. I found a Rubbermaid garden cart, that was a bit like a wheelbarrow but lower to the ground, made shoveling and moving wood chips more acceptable to my back. Also, not filling the shovel to the max. I'm laughing just thinking of someone your height using that monster shovel.

Your beds look like they will grow great veggies. I hope you show us more pictures in a few weeks.

Spag, it might be too late for seeds in this area (I'm up in Santa Rosa, waving to my neighbor to the south)
Usually you want to start your seeds while the soil is still warm-Aug-Sept.
You can try them inside, but I would go out and buy some starts for this year anyway.Seeds are usually started about 6 weeks before you plan to plant them outside. Some things , I'm sure can be planted by seed now, just not sure what.
I do most things from starts because my greenhouse blew away (again). I'll probably have a new GH by spring and can't wait to go to the big new seed store they opened up in Petaluma! It's huge!

*wave, neighbor!*

Oh no, really?! I was thinking that since everything I chose was supposed to do well in fall and through winter, that fall was the time to plant. I tried direct seeding outdoors in August, and the heat fried everything, so I thought I'd better wait. Since it's only cooled off in the last two weeks down here, I figured now was the time. The lettuce, radishes, turnips, gailan, yu choy, and whatever other Asian greens I planted 12 days ago are all up (aside from my buttercrunch lettuce, and I think all those seeds are dead - trying to germinate them in a paper towel now to see if they really are), and I'm hoping they'll be big enough to start harvesting in the next month or so. Since I just got the beds in, even though I knew it'd be a couple weeks later, I thought there'd still be time. I actually just finished seeding a bunch of arugula, lettuce, and salad greens about 20 minutes ago.

I guess I'll have to cross my fingers that everything comes up and is big and healthy enough by the time it gets really cold (although "really cold" is kind of relative... I'm freezing when the mercury dips below 70, lol).

Which seed store is it in Petaluma? I thought I remembered hearing about a really well-respected company that also sells online, opening up out that way, but I can't recall which company it was (want to say Seeds of Change, but I don't think that's it).

How nice to have a greenhouse. Or well... to have had a greenhouse (oof). You must have a nice, big space to grow up that way!

Oh, here are some more pictures I took today. I forgot to take some before I strung up my first grid, so it's there in the picture. Everything still looks really bare, since I haven't yet figured out what to do to spruce up the look of the garden, amongst all that wood chip mulch. I'm just happy to no longer be able to see that ugly brown lawn! I need to grab a bottle of vinegar and douse the stuff that's coming up between the path border and the mulch. For anyone who's wondering, I'm just using crappy sisal twine. I know it'll stretch, and break down, and that it may not last through the season, but it's all I had and I happen to have a ton of it, thanks to a Freecycler, so it's what I had to use.

Planted today: arugula, oriental lettuce mix, garland chrysanthemum, tyfon holland greens, fragrant choi, upland cress, and senposai.

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very nice, love the way the wood chips look too. I had an area behind my fenced in yard (still our property) that was covered with kudzu and good old georgia red clay, hard as a rock, I know EXACTLY what you mean by not being able to put a shovel in it. I had the area excavated (for the kudzu) two or three times, and then covered it (not all at once) but section by section, with a foot of organic material starting with thick layers of cardboard, then grass and leaves, and kitchen waste and more grass and topped off with a few inches of straw/hay.

Waited til the spring (2 years ago now) and then went to plant my maters there, that ground (no tilling at all) was like butter, and black and pretty as it could be. Shovel went right in, it was really amazing, would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes (I found the lasagne forum and that's what I did to it).

With what you are doing, if you keep adding good OM, it will eventually work it's way into your "native" soil underneath.

SUPER job with it all and good luck

Thanks, rjinga! I thought about going the lasagna route, but I am the most impatient person one could ever meet (which is why most everything I bought for fall/winter matures in like 30-45 days, lol), and I couldn't imagine not planting out for fall. I'm hoping that eventually, the soil underneath the beds will be as wonderful as yours has turned, and that I'll be able to dig down into it, so that my beds become much deeper than they appear on the surface.

Uh, you will not need to water anytime soon.
It is pouring rain in the Bay Area today.
I would say you had some pretty good timing, finishing your project when you did.
Liked your story and the pictures. Definitely an auspicious beginning.

Yep, we're getting a good dose of rain out here, for sure. I have my fingers crossed that the seeds I planted yesterday haven't been washed away. I stupidly planted them before totally leveling out the bed because I was still stuck on keeping the soil kind of cupcake-y in appearance to account for some of the settling, so some of the edges sloped a bit. I was thinking that if we had a light rain, it'd settle down, rather than washing off, but now that I'm looking at it, that assumption may have been a little, um, duhhh. And the rain isn't as light as I was imagining in my head. Lol. I guess time will tell whether I need to reseed or not.

Totally unrelated to the front yard garden, I've found that planting around the time of the full moon really does seem to make seeds come up faster. I thought it was a bunch of baloney the first time somebody told me that, but my seeds were up in 3 days, compared to the ones I planted several days after the full moon had come and gone, which STILL aren't up yet! Of course, it could have to do with a difference in sunlight and/or planting medium, but both batches of seeds are being grown in allllmost the same stuff, and I kind of like attributing the sprouting to the moon. It's so much more magical.

If some of those puppies are sprouting, go for it! Why not? I'm not much of an expert on winter gardening anyway. It's just something I remember from a class at Bassagnanis Nursery in Sebastopol.
I do not remember the name of the new seed store in Petaluma. What I remember from the article is that they are a well known company and chose Petaluma for their Western Regional set up cause of the aggricultural background in Sonoma Co.. I'm pretty sure they're all organic, too.
Not sure where you are south of me, but I bet you got some gullywashers today! Our rain wasn't as bad as they had predicted, maybe 1 1/2 inches? Haven't heard. We sure need it!
Enjoy your garden, you WILL be hooked in no time! NT

I'm in San Carlos, right next to Redwood City on the peninsula. We had enough rain to fill the wheelbarrow I forgot to bring in, and flood the newly filled in hole in front of the house that I was planning on putting annuals in. I sure am glad I didn't plant any yesterday! One of the downspouts for my gutters ends right there, and it basically soaked everything there to the point of total saturation. I'm going to need to head to the store and pick up one of those green rubber downspout diverter things tomorrow or Thursday, I think. What I'd really like to do is get myself a nice looking wine barrel, and convert it into a rain barrel, and then modify the downspout so that it empties into the top of the barrel. I don't imagine it'd be that hard. Get a spigot, drill an overflow hole, put some holes in the lid, and call it a day...or maybe it's a lot harder than I think it is. I haven't seen anyone selling whole wine barrels anywhere just yet, but I also haven't looked that hard, and here in NorCal should be one of the easier places in the country to get a hold of one, I would think. I also keep looking at the used olive and pickle barrels (or whatever they used to house) on Craigslist, but they're plastic and ugggggly, and this would be right out in front of my house, so anything super ugly isn't really an option unless I can paint it.

I'm thinking that a lot of my seeds probably washed away today, but only time will tell what really happened to them. I do know that all the soil in the beds has settled a good 2 inches, so once the waterworks cease, I'll go out with my leftover gallon buckets and fill them back up. After tomorrow's rain, we're supposed to be back into the low 70's, so it should be a good temp for things to germinate and get growin'! Oh, plus my green tulle arrived today, which means that once I get things planted, I can get my hoops all put up. Yay!

Which seed store is it in Petaluma? I thought I remembered hearing about a really well-respected company that also sells online, opening up out that way

Baker Creek?

And I LOVE your raised beds. Just picture them full of fluffy green salad fixings. :)

Yes, that's it! Baker Creek! I just looked at their website though, and there's no mention of the store out that way, although a quick internet search brought up an article saying they should have been open in June.

And thanks, lazygardens. :) The anticipation and excitement I feel over what will hopefully be growing out of the boxes soon keeps growing and growing. I just received my 50 yards of tulle in the mail yesterday, so today I need to do some more planting, and then pick up some lengths of pvc to get my hoops started. If I can have a salad a day, and have enough to give away to my uncle, who eats several salads every day, it will be a success!

Well, the fall garden has come and gone. I got so busy that I didn't have any time to keep up with the photos, and now everything has bolted. I had various types of oriental lettuce and oriental greens, along with some arugula, daikon and radishes growing. And then things like beets, kale and collards that kind of never took off. Favas grew like gangbusters, and are now taking up the bulk of the 4x8 bed, even though I only devoted half of it to them.

Yesterday, I yanked out all the stuff that bolted and prepped the soil with a new addition of compost for the summer growing season. I'm not really sure what other sorts of things I need to add to the soil to get things to be more productive, since I'm trying to stay away from chemical fertilizers if I can get away with it. I plan on putting in some squash, cukes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes - nothing too fancy, but I kind of want to try some more interesting things too. Unfortunately, since I haven't had time to browse seed catalogs, I have no neat seeds to start, and it may be getting a bit late to go that route for some things anyway. I need to see if I can find a nursery around here with good quality unusual veggies.

Anyway, here are some pics of the overgrown winter yard.

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Wow, that's a saga. I'm sore reading your efforts from 6 months ago. LOL. Nice to see what happens after the fall/winter.

I'm sure your neighbors were happy to see veggies, even bolting crops, over the weedy yard, Spaghetina. Here's a couple of suggestions I have from my time growing organically up in SF and Marin.

1) Most of those flowers of the bolted veggies are edible and tasty. While the leaf flavor has turned bitter through the winter and the taste change that comes with bolting, the blossoms often gain a very interesting taste that is great topping salads or lightly fried in certain dishes.

2) If like germinating your own crops from seed, remember which of your crops are heirloom (their seeds will usually produce true) and which are F1 or other hybrids -- it's seed is typically still viable, but may have very different characteristics than the parent. The GW seed exchange forum is a great way to get those exotic seeds you mentioned w/o having to pay catalog prices or drive all over the Bay area, but you need your own seeds to reciprocate. Some of the best plants & veggies in my yard are from trades I've made with other GW members.

3) To my way of thinking, your soil mix seems too heavily focused on decomposed organic matter and doesn't take advantage of the alkaline SF clay topsoil and it's associated soil flora. The compost/purchased soil is great for nitrogen and drainage and you can artificially pump up the P/K/Fe to grow good veggies & plants in it, but organic amendments like blood & bone meal, fish emulsion, seaweed and others need bacteria & fungi to free the nutrients for your crop's roots. That's generally not true for soluble inorganic amendments, which is why they are popular.

There's definitely a risk of adding weed seeds by using your yard's topsoil in the garden beds, but that soil food web is necessary for growing good organic crops, IMO. For plants that need lots of N and like great drainage, I go 2/3 purchased soil/fully composted organic matter and 1/3 native topsoil. For tomatoes, peppers and others that suffer in N-rich soils, I use 2/3 native, 1/3 organic matter.

Those beds really grew up over the winter. I love seeing how big the fava beans got. I'm planting some of them for the 1st time this year and was wondering exactly how much space they would take up.