The Kitchen Garden

The grassy, sloping hill next to our house is the perfect spot for a small kitchen garden, so we are now working on preparing it for tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, and root veggies for cooking. We are currently building a 4' retaining wall at the bottom of the slope using found rocks from our property, and once the wall is in place we will fill in the hillside with dirt and manure to create a flat garden area. We'll enclose the space with split rail fencing and rabbit wire to keep animals out. We will also attach lattice boards similar to these to the support beams under the house to block the ugly view of our foundation. Once those are in place we can grow pole beans or some other climbing vine at the base of the lattice. So far we have measured and marked the rock wall space, dug a ditch for the foundation, began pilfering rocks from the woods behind our house, and laid a few stones in place. If we end up with a garden even half as nice as this one with a retaining wall like this, I'll be very happy.

↓ Measuring and staking the retaining wall area

↓ Running string to mark the face of the wall

↓ Digging the ditch for the rock wall foundation

↓ Rocks we've gathered so far. We'll need about 20x this amount to complete the wall.

↓ Beginning to lay rocks in the foundation ditch