No more calamity but not betting

 That pepper in the bucket is not doing well and my experiment of trying to grow beans in an egg carton is worse than in the ground. It dries out with this heat in a matter of hours. I think I'll go throw them in a baggie with a damp paper towel and be done with it.

I was taking pictures, then watered and then made an assessment of the area for a theoretical rebuild of the gardens. There is 1 lemon on that bush near the upper curve in the hose. That's all this year. She can't blame on too much water and in fact I think not enough because I haven't seen any evidence of it being watered at all other than when the lawns are watered. That riser at the corner of the building is the only way it's getting water.

My measurements on google maps was very close if not spot on to my measurement which was old school low tech. 

Cinder block bricks come in two standard sizes, 16 and 12 inches. I counted the runs of bricks that ended at the corner and closest to the end of the bed (lemon bush) which ended about the end of my bed. 10x25 feet. I am not as much of a 3D artist as I thought (since it works in meters and I couldn't find out to change the settings) so that will have to wait.

10 wide minus 3 feet on either side leaves a 4 foot walkway in the  middle. The reason why I'm doing this is to calculate how much it would cost in supplies  to build better beds.

24'x3'x2'= approximately 96 cubic feet of soil for just the long bed, will round up to 100 which in bulk being in cubic yards we will round and say is 4 cubic yards. That gives some overage and we add in about a third of that so let's say 4 cubic yards of soil needed to fill the beds. Looking it up, 5 cu yds of 'garden soil' from HD is roughly $500, that's just for the soil if delivery cost is involved tack on another $100.

Now lets get to the actual framing supplies. Chicken wire to line the bottom needs 40 linear feet at 4' wide. $50 average and the closest it comes is 50 feet which is okay, beds are 3' wide and need the overlap beyond the walls of the bed.

Now for the frames. Wood planks and proper bracing or the brick corners and rebar into them. I ran the math a few times with customers before. Since we're looking at a 2' high bed,we might go cheap and get prefab framed beds. Most of the ones I'm looking at are either 2 or 4 feet deep. We need 3 so looks like no prefab.

Enough numbers, just for the soil and netting we're up to about $550-600 for framing supplies I would take that plus a little so roughly $1000. That does not include the back breaking labor to flatten and grade the area. So yeah, about $3k is right.

This is the kind of thing that most people do not consider when they want to build a garden bed. They don't do the math and measuring ahead of time, go to a HD type store and say 'how much?'. They're measurements are 'oh from where I am to there and maybe this wide'. Pffft.

I tend to overthink a project and never get it done unless I have more than enough money and energy to do it.

Meanwhile back at reality gardening....