Setting up the Minibed Garden

On Saturday I built the remaining 6 wood sections for my Minibed garden. The weather improved throughout the week, and by Saturday afternoon I decided it was dry enough to set up the Minibeds. Here is a set of pictures the (hopefully) illustrate the process.

I first raked out the beds, breaking up any large clumps, and removing any stones that I found. I then rolled out the 5-mil plastic.

Using a string to try to keep the rows halfways straight, I began setting up the wood sections. I decided to use a spacing of 40 cm between each box.

Mr. Kimball used steel rebar in three of the corners to secure the wood sections. Rebar is expensive, and I had a large number of approximately 50 cm long wooden pieces left over from another project, so decided to use these. After adding the wood sections, I used a long board and a hammer to dry to level them out best I could. I then used a hammer to drive the wooden stakes in three corners into the ground. This proved to be more difficult then I imagined, I kept hitting stones and other objects, which ended up moving the wood sections around a bit.  My neighbor mentioned to me once that after the war(s) people used to bury the debris in their gardens to get it out of way, a fact that I confirmed when I tried to double-dig this garden last year. The rows ended up being not quite as straight as when I began, but close enough for me. As a last step I place a piece of wood along each side of the inside of the wood sections as a straight edge and cut away the plastic.

I added a little compost to each bed, they are now ready for planting.