CITRUS TREE RAISED BEDS BUILT

So the other goal this weekend (other than mowing as I posted yesterday) was to get the three raised beds built for the citrus trees.  Building them is really the hardest part because they become unwieldy as they take shape.

Home Depot lumber

I started the morning (you may have seen this on our Instagram post) at Home Depot and got the boards I needed to do the project.  Love the smell of the lumber department, ha.  I get 8' long boards that are 12" x 2".  They offer free cuts so I have the boards cut in half.  That way two boards give me four pieces to make one 4x4 bed.

Six boards gave me twelve four foot long sections.  I loaded them in the Jeep and headed to the farm.

Here's a fun part.  The last couple of times I have built them, I used my cordless drills.  They work but half the time they aren't fully charged.  When I finally get them charged and use them, the torque is sometimes too much for them and the batteries run down quickly.  So I was thinking to myself that I wished I had a corded drill.  I got the wood unloaded and then I remembered that once upon a time, my Dad had an old drill that he called his standby.  I couldn't remember if we kept it or if it was given away somewhere along the way (he has been gone 17 years now).  I rifled around in his workbench  that I kept, nothing (except his cordless ones).  Then I remembered the bottom drawer of his large red tool cabinet was filled up with tools I hadn't gone through yet.  I opened it, dug around and found this!  

An old JC Penney drill.  

I plugged it in and it worked perfectly.

Thanks Dad!

The last time I built them, I did them on the porch because it was just easier on there I guess.  But then I had to carry them, fully completed, down the stairs and around to the back of the house.  They are heavy when built.  Very heavy.  Since we built those, the last time we had electrical work done, I had an outlet put on the backside of the house.  I almost forgot about it.  Woohoo, I loaded up my cart with the boards, the screws, the brackets and the drill and headed around to the back yard.

We had some extension cords from when we ran lights outside at the house in town to prevent freezing pipes a few years back and so I grabbed those and brought them with me.

Raised bed corner brackets

After I had everything together, I built the beds in the spots where they were going.  I was able to build them and just lay them over and it was done.  

The brackets make this process SO easy.  I never use the screws they come with, instead I buy a box of outdoor rated 'deck screws' so that they don't rust, etc. while out in the elements.

Here is the link to the type of brackets that I have bought on all the raised beds we have:

Plow & Hearth DIY Raised Garden Bed Corner Brackets

When I bought them, they were in the off season and the price was about $25 for a set of four (sale).  They are $35 now but maybe you can catch a sale on them.  Still not a bad deal if you consider the wood is the only other expense.

   

I put them in between the other beds, centering them between each row in both directions.  Three fit perfectly and I still have room to mow around them.  

By the way, don't judge me on the grass in the existing beds, ha.  It's actually the "straw" that I put down last Fall, somehow it sprouted!  It's not supposed to do that.  I guess I'm growing some sort of ground cover.  Lucky for me, it pulls up easily.  what you see in each bed are clumps that just pull right out of the soil.  I'm leaving them alone until I come up with an alternative to prevent weeds (thinking of weed block cloth with stones on top).

Raised beds for fruit trees

Here they are finished.  This was the hardest part.  The next part is to buy all the bags of soil to fill the beds.  I turn the soil underneath and smother it with cardboard and then fill with soil and plant the trees.  By the time the roots get down to the ground the soil should be starting to change and allow the roots to penetrate the clay.  The other trees have grown considerably over the last two years they've been in their beds so it's working well so far.

This coming weekend (weather permitting) will be the soil turning and cardboard and then the first weekend in April will be the trees going in.  We have a lemon, a lime and an orange on the porch, all three in full bloom.  Can't wait to get them in their new homes.

The upside now is that they will now be easy to water and with a power outlet nearby, we can string up lights if there is a freeze coming.