How I built the Alabama garden

Hey friends! Here’s an in-depth tour of how I built the Alabama raised bed garden.

Boards are 2×10 with support brackets from @gardenerssupply along wit tomato trellis, which is actually a pea trellis but multi purpose and the t-pee trellis I’m using for cucumbers and zucchini.

Garden edging and pine bark mini nuggets in the pathways are from @lowes

Drip lines and sprinkler system from @RainBirdCorporation

Cattle panel trellis and tposts from @tractorsupply

Nothing is sponsored just sharing where I got everything. Please let me know what questions you have!

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I truly appreciate 💚 your support

Welcome back, friends. This is my favorite time in South Alabama. End of April, 1st of May. It is just gorgeous weather-wise. It’s not too hot yet, and everything is lush and thriving. I also want to give you guys a little bit more of a tour of my garden setup, some of the materials that I use, and just show you everything overall. So, let’s go. I’m not sure of the actual dimensions of my garden. That’s probably something I should know, but you know what? I don’t. and it’s okay. So, I mostly have raised beds as you can see. Um, I’m a huge fan of I’m able to grow any everything in them that I want to and it’s just easier for me to work in them. I’m not having to like till, you know, or work the hard ground. We have really um weird soil here. So, this has been the best um solution for me. So, on the outside of the beds here, excuse me, the garden, we just have this metal edging just came from Lowe’s. It just sort of helps contain the garden. And then I’m able to have um my pine bark nuggets, which I use for mulch. Again, they’re pretty inexpensive. They’re also easy for me to manage. I buy them by the bag so I can just throw them on when I have empty spots for me to refill. Unfortunately, springtime also means tons of weeds, specifically torpedo grass. You’re going to see this more so on this end of the garden. It’s just taking over and I’m going to have to do some big dig big big time digging out. Um, it goes by ryomes. It’s a whole deal. It’s It’s terrible. It’s gotten this bed and this part here, which is going to have to be redone. So, but that’s a story for another day. But keeping it real that things will always be real in my garden. I uh I’m just me and what you see is what you get. So, originally my garden went from here to just past um here. And then we had added on these two beds here. This was originally strawberries and then the blueberry bed cuz I wanted to have dedicated berry beds. And then we also added on a couple metal beds and another wooden bed and then another wooden bed behind that another raised bed. Um, but I’m pretty much at the max of where I can go space-wise. I could come farther out this way. Um, but I can’t do a whole lot more just based on irrigation lines. So, I do have irrigation in my garden. We’ve been here about seven years. We built this property and I knew I was going to have a garden and everything. So, we were able to add irrigation um right when we did the building. And I have some different setups. So, it’s all through the Rainbird system, which is irrigation. And like here, I have a drip tube on this bed. And they’re all set up so that I can change them out. Um, so like I could easily make this an overhead sprayer. Like this one is an overhead sprayer. Um, but most of them, well, I guess it’s about halves. Halves are drip. Um, which I do like better. But you know what? Sometimes you also want like overhead sprinkling to keep things evenly moist. So, I don’t know if there’s one way that’s better than the other, but um this is what I have and this is what I work with, right? We just uh do what we can. So, this has been pretty great. And just to see how this works, I don’t know if I can turn this over here. There’s a little Yeah, I can’t spin it, but there’s emitters on the back side of this, the bottom side, about every 12 in. And then, of course, that just sprinkles out like a traditional drip system, but it’s not a soaker hose. It’s just has holes every so often for the water to come out. And then, of course, the overheads. This just pops up and it overhead sprinkles the whole bed. Now, what is good about the overhead sprinklers is that I’m able to then water my um grow bags at the same time in any containers where if I had um everything on the drip that would be a lot trickier um to do. So, that’s why I like having the combination because then, like I said, I’m able to have so many grow bags, which I really do use a ton of because I always seem to need more growing space. and I would start too many plants. So, I’m thankful that I’m able to have that option. And talking more specifically about the beds, so these are raised bed corners that I got from Gardener Supply. Not sponsored. I just purchased these all on my own. They come in all kinds of different sizes as far as heightwise, so you could do taller beds. They also have some like middle pieces or things that um bend. It’s not just necessarily the 9090 corner piece. So, they do have other options if that’s something that you’re interested in. Now, I do use pressure treated wood in mine. I’m in South Alabama. I have termites. I have tons of water. I have humidity, mold, fungal issues, all that kind of stuff. So, that’s what I choose to use, but you do what works for you. Um, I’ve had these for years. Well, like I said, seven years. So far, so good, minus the torpedo grass, but that’s not their fault. And, uh, yeah, really happy with the raised beds. So, like I said, I think these are 8 or 10 in. Um, and I’ve been able to grow everything I wanted to in them. And you can see I have dwarf blueberries in this bed. Thank you so much for watching, and be sure to like and subscribe so you can watch the garden as it progresses through the summer season. Happy growing, friends.