I have had gardens in the past. In fact, every year since we moved to Indiana until I had Kayla I had a garden. Isaac loved gardening with me. Here is a post kicking way back showing Isaac with some of our garden treasures.

That year I had Kayla I was too tired to do a garden. But now she is at the age where I knew she would love gardening with me. So I decided to do raised cedar beds. I started out small with only 4 cedar boxes. I figured if I set myself up right even if I had to take a break for a year the beds could sit empty and still look halfway decent in our yard. Or I could always do a fresh cut flower garden the next year. We will see. The key is I wanted flexibility. Doesn’t it look pretty?

I got all of my cedar fence posts at Lowes. They were $1.95 each at mine. So each box cost about $11 in wood.
If you decide to make these I highly suggest using a nail gun to tack a few nails in to temporarily hold them in place while you drill the screws in. It was my saving grace.
How to Make a Raised Bed Garden
Step 1: Rent a rototiller to loosen up the soil and get the ground level. Our Ace Hardware rents them for about $26 for 4 hours. My honey helped put my garden in for Mother’s Day. He even had a good attitude – bonus!
Step 2: Lay down some black landscape cloth to keep any weeds from growing through. Make sure to overlap the cloth.
Step 3. Edge your garden in cedar posts.
Step 4: Measure your boxes to make sure they are evenly spaced. Then add pea gravel or bark dust around the boxes and then add some garden compost mix to the boxes. (Note: I recommend using a little larger of a shovel for this…giggle!)
Step 5: Grab a little garden beauty girl (see above picture) and plant your fruits and vegetables. We added a little Whitney Farms Organic Plant Food to each bed as well.
I got all of my plants and seeds from Lowes. And here is my garden plan:
So I am still a newbie gardener do you have any advice?
What did you plant this year?
Disclosure: As part of the Lowes Creative Blogger Team, Lowes provided me a with a gift card for purchasing my garden supplies.
This is a repost from May 2012.