Welcome to our raised bed garden in zone 6B, Central Kansas! We started small, but our plans quickly grew with our needs.
The tomato that started it all
On a cold winter day a few years ago, my husband said "I would give anything for a home grown tomato right now. Let's plant a garden this spring." I took him as seriously as he takes me when I say things like, "I would give anything to repaint the basement right now." It's marriage, right? One person thinking out loud, while the other nods and isn't too concerned about the thought actually going anywhere.
He didn't let the idea go. As spring approached, he began saying things like, "Well, we have a lot of deer, we should probably fence it in," and "We are going to have irrigation and a timer so it doesn't consume our lives."
At this point I probably said something like, "Well, lets incorporate the chickens... it would be so cute!" and "I think raised beds would be pretty. Is that something you could build?"
how we came up with our raised bed garden in zone 6B
Soon we had borrowed a bobcat to begin the dirt work. Some how the whole idea snowballed. At every point where we could have stopped and given ourselves permission slow down, we simply pushed ahead.
I could tell we were in deep when we ran to the local farm store for fencing panels and came home with a stock tank for the boys to swim in.
What happened next was the garden of our dreams. The crazy thing is that I never thought I wanted, or needed, a garden. Now it is the hobby I love most of all.
Welcome to our garden! It is literally our favorite place in the world. We like to spend our summer evenings pulling weeds and watching the boys swim while we look at each other in disbelief... even after two years, it's hard to believe we built it. It's our dream raised bed garden in zone 6B.
read more!
Our raised bed garden in zone 6B includes plenty of vegetables, flowers, herbs, chickens and is completely kid friendly! To learn more about seed starting in garden zone 6B, check out Seed Starting. I also have a handy Guide for Growing Potatoes.
MORE POSTS ABOUT CHICKENS
I love our backyard flock, and I am intentionally adding more and more chicken content to the blog! If you want to see whether or not chickens can be a good tool for natural pest management, check out my post A Guide To Organic Pest Management in the Garden.
We also have raised more than 100 Cornish Cross chickens for meat in the past year and I share our experience in the post Meat Chickens: What We Learned. During the months when egg production is high, consider water glassing your eggs to make them shelf stable for up to eight months (or more!) by reading How to Preserve Eggs.
To stretch your grocery budget further, check out the posts DIY Flock Block and How to Sprout Chicken Grain.
Rebekah
Your garden is absolutely gorgeous. And I love the stock tank swimming pool idea. So creative!
Meg
Thank you! The kids have had many hours of fun swimming in it!