Its the end of April and my beds are about ready...

Here are my 9 raised beds amended and waiting for testing before planting.

There's no lumber sides, but this is a raised strawberry bed on the south side of the planked nine.

I also made a raised potato bed and to the rear of it my raised corn field. Both are about 5 feet wide to allow for the slant of the soil hill. Those buckets mark the area where I'll add an annual and glad bed since I have so much garden loam left over.

The mounds in an arc to the right are where the five blueberry bushes are going in. I have 3 Cheppewa right now ready to plant and I have two Patriot coming thru the mail next week.

Amazingly its 82 today (too hot this early in the season since our last frost date is around Mem'l Day). I did what I could in the morning and now I await tomorrow to put a few things in and get my garden going.
I'm thrilled to be starting a Square Foot Garden this year.

Its a busy weekend.

This is the garden area. Son used the sod cutter to get up all the lawn for the area. He'll be putting together my raised beds tomorrow.

While he had the sod cutter, he cut circles out for the dwarf fruit trees I have ordered, 3 apple (Granny Smith, HoneyCrisp and Red Fuji) and 1 cherry.

I have some good starter tree soil for the holes plus the tree guards to protect the trunks from our golden retriever, Daisy. She thinks trees are dessert.

Here's my proposed garden/orchard spots.....

My proposed orchard area...... This is our driveway. I'll be planting 3 dwarf apple and 1 dwarf cherry tree in a row along the driveway after that Korean crab apple. The one barely seen in the front, far rt, was 'eaten' by my son's golden. I plan to put wire cages around my dwarf tree trunks to prevent that happening to the new trees. Taken today 4-5-09 in southwestern Maine.

My future Square Foot Garden area. This is facing north with the sun at my back at one pm 4-5-09. The snow is just about gone here. There's still some just out of camera range on the left. I have plenty of dry leaves to put in the composter, that big black monster. The ground is still too wet to remove sod. I hope to get to that next week then the nine 4' by 4' by 12" high raised beds will be knocked together.

This is facing east. The fire pit is next to the fifth wheel parked back here. That pole is the tether ball pole. I may put that to good use for growing something tall and sturdy. Not in my plans yet.

The contuing saga of getting my garden ready....

I just wanted to touch base with you all regarding the vertical supports for my Square Foot Beds.I checked out water pipe at the hardware store and Home Depot. Too darn costly. I think I'll go for metal fence posts. I found 7 footers in Home Depot for $6.90 each. One foot of them go into the ground. They are sturdy and made for all weather so they should work well for SQ FT Gardens. My only problem then would be the support across the top. I'm still trying to come up with something to hold cantaloupe and Sugar Baby watermelon without caving. I'll keep working on it.Home Dept and Lowe's had all kinds of treated lumber and decking but I won't use that. I want untreated lumber. Fir is readily available but won't last but a couple of years thru the cold winters. Pine is unavailable except for treated. No cedar for my pocket book this year.I think I'll go with spruce which should last 4-5 years. I'll cover my beds with plastic against the raging winters and hope that makes them last longer. If not, I'll just have to put in new ones some years from now. By then, I might not be in any shape to garden any longer. LOL

My first flowers of the season...

The first flowers of the season, Snowdrops.