New Raised Planter Bed:

Here are some pictures of my new raised planter bed.  As you can see, I'm still using the Square Foot Gardening Method.  This is a 2' by 4' by 8" raised planter bed.  There is about 6" of amended soil in the bed, according to the directions in Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening" book.  I've even put the  grid up on it, using nails and string.

Below, you can see the two planter beds together.  The one on the right was planted early October, and this new one I just put together last night (haven't sowed any seeds in it yet).  Mel says you can put these planter boxes straight down on the grass.  We removed the grass underneath the right-hand bed, but we left the grass underneath the right-hand bed.  So I'll do a little experiment and see how things do between the two boxes.

 I didn't sow any seeds last night, I just prepared the bed.  Instead, I planned what I'm going to plant using Mel's planting grids as shown below.

Mel's grids are all 4 x 4 boxes, so since my beds are 2 x 4, I just planned both beds in one grid -- since it fit nicely.  The top two rows are the old bed, planted a month ago, and the bottom two rows are the new bed.  In the old bed I have broccoli, swiss chard, lettuce, radish, spinach, more lettuce, carrots, and kale.  In this new bed I'm going to plant (this weekend) brocolli, two squares of lettuce, beets, cabbage, turnips, parsnips, and spinach.  The dots that you see show how many of each plant I put in each grid box.