I’ve shown you my gardens many times before. Not to any great extent because this if Florida. In Florida, even when you dig down 10-16 inches in your garden and remove all of the sand and replace it with nice, rich organic soil and compost, you will still wind up with sand. We did okay in our garden the first season and pretty good the second season…but not great. I’ve learned that I’m just going to need to raise it up since we want it to be organic and need this added expanse of dirt to make it work.
Sticking with the same space that we cleared before, we are just modifying it to work with the new beds. But this can be a pricey endeavor, which makes Scott want to run far away, while covering his ears and screaming NO! very loudly. To make a raised bed last for a while, you must use cedar (cha-ching!) or cinder block, which is ugly and I’d like to stick with something that will add to the appearance of the house, not junk it up. Fortunately, I stumbled across a blog explaining how to build a raised bed using cedar and pallets (got ’em!) for cheap! Like, the entire project will be less than $100 cheap! Nice! And since our anniversary is coming up…and Mother’s Day…perhaps I can make this happen!
The ultimate goal is to grow our own veggies organically and save money and live off of our land as much as possible, all the while teaching our kids how to do the same. It does take a small financial and time investment to make this happen. I started with a little plan that I outlined during one of my mornings when I managed to wake up before everyone else and have a little me time. This outlined my vision and the materials we would need to get it done, as well as a rough estimate of how much it would cost. And, I casually left it on my husband’s desk along with the web site I was looking at on his computer while doing my planning…fingers crossed! Then later, I briefly mentioned my thoughts on the subject, but left him with my fantastic drawing and some time to think about it…
Marriage is a funny thing. You go into it together completely twitterpated into the field of butterflies and flowers and when you hit some rocks as you walk, you have to figure out how to get around them gracefully. After falling a few {dozen} times, you realize the best ways to get through the field of flowers without falling {as much}. Basically, you just have to learn when to talk and when to shut up and when to let your spouse think and do and be.
Yaaaay! I now have a beautiful cedar raised garden bed, complete with a path around it. We went with all cedar because pallets usually come chemically treated, which would undo the organic aspect of the garden. Scott was able to find all this dirt from a great place where, if you haul it, it costs $15. The materials cost about $135 in all, which is not bad at all!
Laelia and Willow got the composter ready for the next round of compost. 
Sweaty little baby. They all did such a good job helping. This really turned out to be a fun family endeavor, which I was really hoping for.
So, we got it all planted. We are very very late in the game with planting our spring garden. February to March is ideal planting season. April is a crazy time to plant in Florida. There is a chance it won’t work out, but hopefully we will have some success this time. We have a small herb garden.
And we planted cucumbers, tomatoes, asparagus, green beans, and bell peppers in our new garden. Fingers crossed! Everyone is so excited about it, which fills my heart with joy! 
