Be Prepared Channel: Episode 16: Politicians, Lawyers, Used Car Salesmen, and people who sell raised garden bed kits!

Welcome to the Be Prepared Channel. Today a quick update on the permaculture swale construction, and the construction of the raised garden bed kit that I purchased a couple of years ago with the anticipation of setting up raised beds. I finished the layering of the "ingredients" into the second garden swale this weekend. We started with a layer of sheet mulch, then I layered branches, limbs, and some logs in the bottom of the bed, then put a couple feet of composted horse manure, leaf litter, peat moss, and organic compost over the top. So below is the video of the completed bed after all the layering.

The raised garden bed kits were bought a couple of years ago I believe it was as I was anticipating getting the garden going. However bouncing all over the country following jobs delayed my deployment of these kits into our yard space and I just attempted to setup those bed kits this weekend... This is the part where you want to pull your hair out and scream! So I pull the boxes out of storage and start to play with my "raised bed" lego kit and I discover some issues... Namely that not all the parts that I need were included in the kit in order to stack them to the 12" deep setup that I need. Unfortunately it was too long ago that I bought the kits for me to go back and scream at the person who sold them to me. I should have known there was a requirement for a stake called a stacking stake for this kit. So it is as much my fault as it was the sales person who sold this thing, but I am officially throwing raised bed salesmen under the bus with lawyers, politicians, and used car salesmen! So my objective this weekend to get some of my raised beds up and my first seeds in the ground was derailed by this missing parts problem. So I found that I had to order these missing stakes and they are not cheap when your buying for 4 garden beds that are 4'x8' you need 6 stakes per bed, and they are sold in sets of 2 at $12 bucks a pop. So needless to say I was more than a little upset by my oversight, the cost of this messup, and maybe even more importantly the delays to getting things planted. I guess it all works out as I was thinking about this stake issue I discovered my location of the garden bed is too close to the fence next to my neighbor. This will mean an access problem to that side of the bed so that I cannot get a garden cart in there, or have enough room to get down on the ground to work in the beds. So I realized that my plan was suspect as far as bed location. So now I need to move those beds over away from the fence which changes the game plan a bit. So think through the space you need, and give yourself space to work in those beds. You will need to get at them from all sides. So here is the latest podcast and video from this weekends circus!