Can you even believe it is June?  Where did May go?  I know where it went.  We had our planned trip to Alaska in the middle of the month.  Before that, we randomly got chickens and had to get our chicken coop put together.  That took up a lot of time.  So between preparing for our trip and working on the coop the first two weeks of the month, the Alaska trip on the third week, and then getting sick the fourth week, it flew.  We like to have our vegetable garden planted WAY before now, but as you can see, we didn’t have the time or energy.  But we have been making the plans for our vegetable garden, and we are ready to get this party started.

By the way, before we left, we had to make sure the top of the chicken run was covered to keep the ladies safe.  The wind tore our temporary tarp cover so here we are.  Ha! We are trying to do the projects around here as to what is most important.  Right now, the tarp is working.  So the vegetable garden gets first priority.  Once that is done, we are focusing on this chicken run project again.

Plans for our Vegetable Garden

While planning out the layout of our land and what structures would go where, we knew we wanted the garden outside of the woods.. for obvious reasons. Number one, it is full sun almost all day.  Number two, we wanted to keep it really close to the chicken coop.  It’s nice to be able to grab dirt from their run and also to throw any overdue veggies in for them to enjoy.

Question:  Why did you put your chicken coop so far away from the house?

This is a question that I get asked regularly over on social media and I thought I would address it here.  Just as I said above, we wanted the garden close to the coop.  We didn’t want the coop inside of the wooded area because that is where our home is.  And, we also didn’t want it in the beginning of the driveway for people to see when they first pull in.  The back of the property made more sense.  And, maybe it doesn’t make sense to you because you don’t know what else we have planned for our ground.

We have the pond up close to the road so and then there is a huge space between that and the coop at the back of the property.  The garden, which will be 50′ x 25′, will go in front of the coop.  That leaves a large space still available between the pond and the garden.  Some day, we would love a green house type of structure along with a small building to store our skid loader and trailer, etc.  We are thinking of combining the two structures and maybe have a lean-to type of greenhouse on a building.  But this won’t happen this year.  So, that should make a little more sense.

Vego Raised Garden Beds

All along, we have said that we want everything here on our property to be low to no maintenance.  And, we want everything to be easier for us as we get older.  So raised garden beds are a MUST.  Deb talked about making them from cedar but again, we want low maintenance.  By the way, she made a few wood garden boxes with trellises last year that we will be incorporating into this area, too.  We have some ideas.

We researched different types of raised garden beds.  The Vego raised garden beds are the ones that kept popping up, so we decided to go with those.  They are metal so we know they won’t rot in the future and will basically be here forever.  There are so many different shapes and configurations to really fit any need.  They have several different colors to choose from, as well. We chose the pearl white, of course.  Ha!

Check them all out here!

This is a really rough rendering of the design of our garden.  Of course, we will add all of the extras to make it Deb and Danelle’s style.  But you can get the picture of what we have in our heads.  The very front will be a huge arbor at the entrance which will be made from large round porch columns that our son-in-law gave to us.  Some of the back garden boxes will have some trellises for climbing vegetables.  The chicken coop is to the left of this garden.  So there will be a gate on that side for convenience.  And of course, we have our huge urn to incorporate somewhere in this area.  We thought we would get all of the garden boxes put together and then see if we need anymore or want to arrange them differently.

Next Steps

We have landscaping fabric that we will be putting down next on top of the dirt to keep out the weeks from the paths, etc.  Next comes a layer of packing stone.  We will then set all of our garden boxes in place and fill them with lots of wood from our wood pile to fill the space on the bottom.  And then the top 12″ or so will get a layer of really good dirt for our veggies.  After all of that is in place, we plan on adding a layer of pea gravel on the top of the packing stones for a better look.

Drop any of your garden tips and tricks in the comments below because I am always open for suggestions.

Also, check out my in-feed inspiration garden post, if you missed it.