Raised Garden Beds — Part 1

 The dirt in my yard resembles concrete.  If we get enough rain over the winter, it almost softens enough to dig, but other than that, if I want to dig a hole, I have to get out my electric jack hammer.  I'm not kidding.  

But I like to grow stuff, and during the last year have channeled much of my home remodeling/renovation efforts to my front and back yards.  In the interest of growing stuff, I have created three raised garden beds and had trucked in a lot of nursery-grade amended topsoil—that is, dirt mixed with compost.  And by "a lot," I mean closing in on a hundred cubic yards of the stuff.  Some of it has been "premium gardening mix" (finely ground redwood bark, peat moss, perlite and compost).

You say that sounds like an awful lot of soil for three raised garden beds?  Well, okay, I'm also in the process of having a retaining wall built at the back of my steeply sloping back yard, and using the topsoil to backfill it level, creating in effect a giant new garden (trees, etc.).  A separate post will be forthcoming on that project after the contractor actually decides to start the work—maybe in a month.

This post is on the first of the official three raised garden beds, to wit, the official "garden."

The garden is located right outside of the back of my house, butting up against a small concrete patio, seven feet by about twenty feet, with rounded ends.  The garden wall is made from retaining wall block, but with the back lip knocked off, because I didn't want a setback.  A setback is good for a retaining wall because it helps support the load, and the lip keeps the block from sliding.  If there is a setback in a circular wall, however, each course is a slightly smaller diameter, and the blocks go out of alignment.  So I used mortar to secure each course to the blocks below it.  

But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here's the start:

And this is it with the walls done, before any garden soil was added.  I dug out a good bit of the bad dirt to allow room for more good dirt.

Here it is with about half the soil shoveled in:

After a bit of time passed, things started to grow.  I also built a trellis for my grape vines (that had been in big pots), which did double duty as a frame to support a sun screen.  By the height of summer, the sun is so intense here that it literally scorches the leaves on tomato plants, etc.  Desert plants can take the heat, but not so much normal vegetables.

Here's a view from the end:

I mentioned that I was going to make my sloped back yard level, which means anything growing down slope will be buried in topsoil—not good for tree health.  I have a really nice flowering jacaranda tree I do not want to lose, so I built a retaining wall much like the raised garden, except in reverse.  Meaning the topsoil goes on the outside.  You'll see . . .

And then:

And as I continue to haul topsoil from my driveway to the backyard:

 Until the dirt reaches the top.

So this shows something about just how much new topsoil I'm bringing in—for the time being leaving room for the crew to build the retaining wall (6-7 feet at its tallest).