New Stone Garden Beds

Back in July, I posted about how our wooden raised veggie beds were rotting and falling apart. Last night, John poetically referred to them as large sinking battleships, falling into a sea of pea gravel. They've certainly provided us with a lot of food over the last few years, so a silent salute...

Any good Southerner will know the answer to the following question: what happens when you have untreated wood in contact with soil, especially moist soil?

Yep, you guessed it: termites.

The wooden raised beds are home to happy colonies of the farkers. Hopefully, they don't make their way to the casa itself. Yikes.

The first step in making new lower beds was removing the dirt from one of them and replacing it with new limestone (6in Blanco Chop in this case). That one then became the planting ground for the herbs growing in the second bed.

This photo shows the first completed one with its new plants. The second wooden bed has been dismantled in the back.

Here are the first two completed and mulched with pine straw.

The new beds are smaller, further apart and lower. I just don't need that much space to grow veggies. Their lower profiles and stone will also prevent the heavy evaporation and drying that occurred with the wood (oh, and termites too!).

Next step will be to replace the really large wooden bed with two smaller 4' x 4' ones to match the others. It'll be a nice little grid. Very pleasing to my orderly sensibilities. And then I'll have to get the drip irrigation all hooked up again.

Here's a beautiful okra flower and okra fruit from the plants growing now in the larger bed. They love the heat.

Here is my attempt to keep the spearmint in check, planting it in metal buckets buried in the ground.

Hopefully, that will prevent runners from taking over. But if they do, so be it. I love mint.