I see now my errors

 I knew I should have written down or brought the instructions with me when we laid out the bed. Turns out the smaller size that I had circled was not using end pieces and one on each side. I have a good sized bed now though and if they had given a list of pieces to use for the different configurations things would have been much easier.

So therefore I ended up with a 47x40x15 not 29 tall. The instructions didn't match what I got for sure so I went to the website and sure enough, it's modular alright and says it is 'no tools' assembly...right. Included tool was useless.

 I am thankful for what I got and am thrilled with being able to actually have a garden but this is actually worse than trying to follow Ikea instructions. For all the complaining I just did, I'm still excited for what I have. Going to dig out a lot of the logs and now have to reconfigure soil needs.

47x40= 2,256 sq inches. To make things simple will factor 12 inches deep for cubic feet. Using handy dandy online calculator it is 13 cu ft of soil needed. Great, bags come in 2 cu ft so six would be 12, call it seven to use the extra in the other beds. At $10 each... I do not have $70 to spend on soil. Depending on how much of the logs I actually take out it can be as low as 10 cu ft which is only 5 bags.

No local HD or Lowes carries the 3cf bags any more but the 2 cf bags are cheaper at Lowe's by a little bit so it's worth saving an extra five dollars roughly. We don't have a truck so can't get it bulk somewhere which would only be about 3/4 cu yd.

Most of those logs will come out and still have to find the screen/shadecloth to put over them. I don't have the 'grass and unfinished compost' that some people use to fill in on the logs. There isn't enough mulch even if I scrape the soil in the other beds. I scooped the stuff I had raked into the corner previously and it just looks... horrid. I showed it to my sweetie and he didn't understand the process asking, 'and you're going to grow food in that?' I had to tell him that was just filler so I don't have to use as much soil. He nodded but was still dubious about what was going on.

So at least the process is started but still a long way from planting. I can't wait until January for the next raise in the money  I'm getting. That needs to not sit idle for three months, winter here is the best time to plant oh and speaking of growing, the peppers are still doing good.

That last picture is a poor attempt at showing that the mulch is, in fact, breaking down. There's white mold starting to grow which is great. It's staying moist enough on the soil that it's doing what it's supposed to do. Only one pepper had some black marks on them (first picture), looking like sunburn damage or maybe cold damage, who knows. But the peppers are showing good signs of developing properly, even the smaller ones. 

So again the waiting game but at least there's progress more than before. Yay!