My first raised vegetable garden bed on the bay

     I live in a small town on the Texas Gulf Coast,  San Leon, Tx  The locals call it a drinking town with a fishing problem.   Every morning you can see the shrimp boats headed out to catch our delicious Gulf Shrimp ( It's my favorite, well that and Maryland Crab Cakes).  

The view from our front deck

I moved here about 9 months after Hurricane Ike and I've always gardened but only in container or my Aerogarden.

My past attempts at growing vegetables 

More container plants

I have lettuce growing in my AeroGarden right now

     As you can tell, my containers really needed to be replaced this year, so I decided to trash the containers and build a raised bed.  The dirt on the gulf coast isn't the best for gardening, plus we have a lot of oyster shells mixed in our dirt.  I decided that instead of buying new containers and dirt, we should build a small raised bed instead.  My husband, who LOVES fresh vegetables, agreed to build it for me.

     We didn't have much of a winter this year, actually in January the temperture hit the mid thirties for a couple of days but that was it for our winter,so I'm a little late getting started.  We decided that a 4x4x16 bed would work this year and we can always add on as we go.  I'm really excited because our growing season is so long and I can't wait to try a fall vegetable garden as well this year.

We started with 6-1x6x8 which we cut in half (we being my hubby),
2-1x2x8  which he cut into quarters  He screwed it all together  using outdoor deck grade screws  2" long and we finished it with landscaping fabric that we attached with #6 1/2" wood screws.

Bella checking to make sure
 we're doing it right

ground view

aerial view from the front deck

We chose our front yard because it has the best light and the most protection from our gulf winds.  We stay very breezy where live!







So now that the bed is done it's time for the dirt and the plants, so off we went to our neighborhood garden center.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the soil that we wanted , so off to another garden center and hoping we have better luck.




We didn't get exactly what we wanted but we were able to make do with what we could find so we loaded up and back home we went!






My husband did all the heavy work  we used a landscaping mix, a organic garden mix and a compost mix.




We had bought 10 cubic feet thinking that would be enough, but as you can see it's not.  So, back to the store tomorrow.