Raised Bed "Kinda Square Foot" Gardening

My Strawberry Pot

I have another friend to welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere!  Benvenuto, Maristella!  Another new friend hailing from Italy!  She has a very sweet blog that I can't wait to explore further!

Each space is about 6" x 9", not exactly a square foot, but  . . . I can adapt it, right?

Well, I know you can't see it from this little tiny peak at a corner of my garden, so you might not be able to tell, but I worked really, really hard to put this together.  I now have a 5' by 20' raised bed garden.  I used chimney flues to build it, so I have lots of little "compartments" to work with.  It took quite a lot of work to get them in there all straight and all level.  I'm really hoping they don't end up leaching too much lime into the soil, but I am using a bit more peat moss in the soil than usual to try to counteract it and will try to monitor the ph levels to make sure it doesn't get too high!

I spent about a week trying to get the trellises all painted.  I am using them as the dividers in the garden.  There are 8 of them and it took several coats, but I am mostly pleased with how they came out.  I sure hope they last a while, because I am so over painting them I am not looking forward to do any more of them!

Anyway, after I got the planters built, the soil in and the painted dividers on, I stood back and admired my handiwork and got all excited about being able to see it all planted up and producing lots of great veggies on which I could dine.  I couldn't wait to get some seeds started and ready to plant.  I thought it was going to look really nice.

All that excitement lasted exactly one night.  Because the very next day, I went out to admire my handiwork again and found that it had been dug up.  Holes everywhere!  Absolutely everywhere!  I was sad!

It wasn't long before I found the culprit.  Or, perhaps I should say, the culprit found me.  I was filling all the holes and repairing all the damage that was done, when this little creature showed up.  

She's kinda cute, isn't she?  She's also sweet as can be.  She just wanted to love and be loved.  Rubbing up against me and rolling over on her back to rub her chin on my shoes.  I gave her a little attention and played with her a bit and gave her a little talking to about destroying my garden.

As kittens are wont to do, she merely gazed at me, totally unfazed and absolutely puzzled that I could possibly think that I hadn't built this 5' x 20' contraption as her own private kitty box!   *sigh*   We have had several more bouts of filling holes and smoothing soil.  I have never seen a cat who likes to dig as much as a dog before!  She digs just to dig, in addition to wanting to fill them with . . . um . . .  special treats for me to clean up.  Shades of my raccoon wars!

So, until I am ready to plant, I have covered the top with every pot, bucket, piece of plastic, etc I can find to try to keep her from making any further messes while I come up with another way to keep her out when I do finally get things planted so she doesn't undo all the work I am putting into getting my little seedlings ready to plant.  I'm afraid it went from looking neat, clean and orderly to looking like a giant junk pile!  I couldn't bear to take any pics of it as it looks now.

Guess what my next project is while I wait for the seedlings to be ready to plant?  I am making a kind of moveable, sectional type fence to go around it.  Something I can easily lift out a section at a time to work in the garden.  I think I may have already mentioned in a previous post or two that I really am not knowledgeable about how to make some of my crazy ideas come to fruition.  I just don't know I can't do something.  I get an idea of what I want and then do my best to try to make it happen.  I have my fingers crossed, hoping this latest animal deterrent system will work!  Especially considering all the extra work I get to do . . . just to have my little garden!  Cross your fingers for me!  See you next time!