This garden is built on a piece of land that once had a big apple tree on it. You can see the remains of the stump in the top left. I raised it up and added landscape cloth to create a veggie garden environment separate from the tangle of roots that will rot away in the coming years. I’ve planted onions and shallots and spinach and radishes and swiss chard and carrots and some herbs and things are starting to come up. To give you an idea of scale, the garden is 8 feet long and at it’s widest point, 5 feet wide, so it’s modest, but I think we’ll still enjoy plenty from it this year. I’m going to try to grow some tomatoes in containers too, in another spot in the yard. I think the sunlight I get is marginal for tomatoes but I have some plants from my most excellent neighbour across the street and I’m going to give them a try and see what happens. I didn’t think I had enough sun for sunflowers out front last year, but Tuffy P planted them anyway and they turned out to be spectacular.
27th Street 
I’m hoping you might share the instructions on how to make such a great raised garden….I might get brave enough to try building one myself!
Being a graduate of the School of Shaky Carpentry, I kind of made it up as I went along. Don’t think for a minute I knew what I was doing.
What a great looking raised bed. Sadly, the rainforest that is our backyard yields mostly moss and a few shady perennials. I may try some lettuces in the sunnier spots (1-2 hours of sun?) and in containers.
I hope you post more pictures once it is full and lush.
I’ll post more as the season progresses. The big challenge for this garden is that it sits on top of the root system of an old apple tree. Even though I built this solidly, I expect it will move around some each year as the roots decompose.
Nice job! It looks very professional. When you see the photos of the little “raised” garden area I cobbled together today you’re going to laugh yourself silly (i.e. mine looks like something you’d find in a back alley–yours is spiffy enough for Fine Gardening!)
Thanks Spicecat. This is about as good as my carpentry gets.
The real secret to maximizing yield in a small garden is to be religious about never leaving even a small patch of dirt vacant. Keep a couple of packages of fast growing seeds handy like radishes, leaf lettuce and romaine and when you pull a few radishes plant something in the empty place right away. You will have a very long growing season where you live and if you are a bit aggressive about replanting right away you should be able to get 3 crops of lettuce/year, and extra crops of other stuff you like. You might consider bunching onions as well if you like them. That is an item I never remember to buy and it is nice to be able to grab some from the garden. These grow best from a pack of seedlings from the garden center.
A neat enhancement you might consider would be to add frost protection so you could keep on harvesting until end of November. You would need a 2×4 upright screwed to each end and a cross piece of say a 1×3 to connect the two uprights. That would let you drape a big sheet of thin plastic sheeting over the whole thing when the forecast called for frost and it would make a serious difference to the duration of your harvest. All in all it is a pretty spiffy looking garden.
excellent tips…thanks!
That is one sweet little garden! Watch out for Fraggles.
I used raised beds for my market garden. In fact, I actually kept chickens in moveable pens on the beds at different times of the year.
You might try using stone mulch with your tomatoes to see if manipulating the temperature would help.
thanks Zeus
Awesome! I’m off to the community garden this morning to reacquaint myself with my little bed and erect a protective hoop house over it.