By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist, Blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Last week I wrote about the difficulty I had planning a raised bed garden. I obtained advise from the local organic gardening store, then bought 40 cinder blocks without doing consumer research on other options.

It was stressful. The project was too much for me. I didn’t know how to go about making the garden level, and the cinderblocks were heavy to lift. In addition, I’d purchased seedlings that couldn’t wait a long time for planting while I was figuring out what to do.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. I asked Deane Rimerman, a fellow blogger who is editor of Forestry Policy Research, to help me. Luckily, he was available two days after I wrote the hand-wringing post.

Deane hadn’t build a cinder block raised bed garden before, but he’s worked as a landscaper. He had many good ideas for constructing it.

Here’s how we did it:

A trench is dug to put the cinder blocks in.

Sand is added to the trench to make it easier to adjust the blocks so they’d be level.

The cinder blocks are laid out so we can get an idea of how to organize them.

The first row of blocks is complete.

The raised bed garden is filled with dirt and special soil.

Deane is happy the job is done.

I plant tomato, yellow crookneck squash, and cucumber seedlings. A row each of beans and Swiss chard seeds is planted.

I’m pleased with how the raised bed garden turned out. I’ll need to look for half or quarter cinder blocks for two of the ends because we ended up having block hangover there.

I’m looking forward to having many wonderful vegetable gardens. As Colleen Vanderlinden, who blogs at About.com: Organic Gardening, said in a comment to my last week’s post, “On the upside, your concrete block raised bed will be completely indestructible once it’s finished.”

I’m going to do consumer research on planting a winter garden. I’ve never had one before, so it will be interesting to see what you can grow here in the Pacific Northwest during the winter.

The surprising thing is that a 4-feet-by-8-feet garden isn’t very big. Planting it was like planting a container garden.

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