Gardening - In the Beginning

Today I started my first gardening chore. Building the raised beds and filling them with soil. 

I tried to get this all done before Mike got home from work. I wanted to surprise him, plus I knew he hadn't been looking forward to this part.  But I didn't succeed :(

Admittedly, I messed up by not reading the instructions, but to be fair I wasn't able to find the instructions when I first looked for them.  So this could have been much easier than it was. I initially used the tall posts in the center and the short posts on the outside beds, but when I had so many left over pieces I knew something was wrong. Looking again, in a much emptier box, I found the instructions and also found the problem.  2 levels of short posts in the center(tall) bed and the tall posts for the outside (lower) beds. Fixing this was no fun. But thankfully Mike was home to help at this point. :)

And once all fixed we noticed that we didn't have enough soil.  We'll get some more tomorrow. Also, standing back to admire my work made it obvious that the front right corner of the garden was a little too high.  We will fix this tomorrow as well.  I have a plan and if it works I will share it.

We can't plant yet.  Too early in the season in Caribou, ME.  We had a good hard frost last night and are likely to have a few more before the end of the month.  So we will wait and plant on the last weekend in May.  In the meantime I will try and come up for a support system for the tomatoes.  I am guessing some steel wire conduit will work well. I hope.  And some type of mesh support.  Hopefully the garden department at Lowe's can help.

More progress posts soon, I hope.