Garden Arbor Rockstar!

So we have been working on our back garden a little at a time. We have been severely hampered by my need to work on my thesis and, well, hanging out. It always seems like there is something “more” fun to do that day. I mean go on a hike outside? Check! Learn to make homemade potato salad? Check! Watch the new season of HGTV Design Star? Check! I mean the list goes on and on. We seemed to have kind of lost our mo-jo for working on it. However, this weekend, we have a nice little breakthrough. We finished hanging the arbor over the garden entrance. We had the wood for it, and were finally working on cleaning out the garage, so we got around to actually hanging it up. And you know what? I am really glad that we did because it really makes the area look great!

So when we last looked at the garden, the fence was all done and the gate was finished. We’ve added another garden bed to our little vegetable area. The plan calls for a total of 4 square beds and 2 rectangle beds. We have finished one of the rectangle beds, and three of the square beds. We plan to spread out doing those as they cost about $40 each for the wood, and require about $20 of dirt. By spreading it over the summer we can manage costs a little better and they will be ready this fall when we transplant all the strawberry bushes and grow some winter veggies. Right now, the three beds that we have are full of produce, probably more than we can eat. It’s been exciting to eat strawberries and lettuce from the yard. We even have had some green beans and some broccoli. Soon we will have a million pounds of cherries!

 To make the actual arbor, Erik had originally sunk 10 feet posts into the ground two feet. We anchored them with concrete to make sure that they would stay stable. To make the top piece, we bought one 12 ft length 2” by 4” cedar and cut it in half. Erik cut the corners to have nice clean angles. He then screwed them into the posts using deck screws. To get them level, he first put in an “anchor screw” that the wood would sit on, leveled it, and then screwed them in. Afterwards he removed the anchor screw. We added small cedar strips to the top of the arbor to help the Wisteria grow over the top and have a place to grow onto.

All in all, the whole garden area is shaping up nicely! We love all of the different fruits and veggies we are getting. The back corner looks nice and classy, plus it keeps our lovely inquisitive puppy out!