I’ve mentioned and recommended one of my favorite blogs, North Coast Gardening, more than once. There is loads of great information, but probably my favorite feature on the site is the product reviews. I have yet to buy one thing recommended by Gen that I don’t love and a couple of things she hooked me onto are my favorite gardening tools (my hori hori and my Bahco pruners).
Recently I was l fortunate enough to win a giveaway for an Eartheasy Farmstead raised bed kit through North Coast Gardening and I can’t tell you how excited I was. I’ve been looking at doing a small addition to the raised veggie garden to move out some of the more space-intensive plants that the critters won’t touch (I’m looking at you, zucchini), and this sounded like the perfect solution.
After what can only be described as the most convaluted method of delivery ever (Fedex didn’t just get on the failboat for this one, they were the captain, navigator and first mate of the failboat), the raised bed arrived, sort of. It was actually found on the side of a neighbor’s garage. And I use the term neighbor loosely, since it was actually on an entirely different road. But I guess these things happen and I will say that the people at Eartheasy were amazing about the whole thing, which was not even close to being their fault.
But I digress. Stay on task, Erin, my fourth grade substitute teacher Mrs. Hummerding would say.
Anyway, amazing raised bed gets here. And I set about putting it together. But you see, Gen and her rather well-known cohort Amy Stewart (author of “Wicked Plants,” “Wicked Bugs” and official Garden Rant ranter) made a big ol’ fuss about how quickly they could put together their raised bed (Eartheasy says you can put it together in less than five minutes and Gen and Amy were aiming to do it in significantly less). So I watched their video (the unedited version so I could time them myself) and it took them exactly 30 seconds.
Never one to turn down an imaginary challenge not issued by anyone, I decided I would do it quicker than that. And I did.
28 seconds, baby! And oh yeah, I was by myself, so boo-yah.
(We regret to inform you that video footage of said major accomplishment/engineering feat is not available because I didn’t shoot one. But trust me, I blew them away.)
So the last two pictures are phone pictures and boy are they horrible. Unfortunately the camera I use for the blog is actually the work camera and someone needed it for a work-related purpose so I’ve been without it for a week. How dare they!
Seriously, though, this is the easiest thing I’ve ever put together in my life. Slide in the ends and stick in the dowel pegs that hold it all together. That’s it. Oh and since it’s made of white cedar it smells amazing.
Fill that baby up with dirt (all I did was cut the lawn short underneath it and use my garden fork to sort of perforate the ground under it), and plant away. I’m thrilled to have the garden-eating zucchini moved out and I put a few herbs in it too. I hope to plant some garlic in fall and next year it will be the perfect spot for onions, too.
And yes, I realize I’m going on a bit much about how much I love this raised bed, but all I did was win a great contest. Nobody even asked me to write anything about it, but I had to share it because it is truly the quickest way to get gardening that I’ve ever seen.
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