We've doubled our raised gardening space! 🙌 I wasn't sure if our community garden would open this year because of coronavirus, so I bought two 4x4 raised garden bed kits for our backyard.

My son and I assembled the two Greenes Fence Co. cedar beds in about a half hour — it was like building with Legos 😃 The beds are modular so we can easily make them taller or larger to expand our growing space next year 👍

We lined the bottom of the beds with cardboard then filled them with enriched garden soil (a premix of compost and soil), which I ordered in bulk from Pépinière La Vallée Verte.

They delivered a cubic yard of garden soil in my driveway, which we transported to the garden beds with a borrowed wheelbarrow. Not only did I save about 27 (unrecyclable) plastic bags, but I also saved myself the trouble of having to make multiple trips to a garden center with my car. I also saved LOTS of money! My bulk soil cost $47 plus $25 for delivery for a total of only $72. The same product at Home Depot cost 3X more at $229 with free shipping! 😲 Plus, it felt good to support a small, family business in my community 😊

We chose raised garden beds because we have clay soil and NOTHING grows in our yard—except dandelions 😆 I was also hopeful the height of the beds would deter our resident groundhog from eating our veggies. So far, we've planted vegetables and herbs groundhogs supposedly don't care for, like onions, cilantro, peppers and basil 🤞

What I didn't count on was the neighborhood stray cats using the new garden beds as their favorite litter box 😜 I'll keep you posted on our backyard gardening adventure! 😂

In the meantime, our community garden did reopen with new measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. So even if our backyard garden beds are unsuccessful, we'll still have plenty of garden-fresh, organic, plastic-free produce this summer 💪