Building a retaining wall/garden bed

We began construction today on the retaining wall/planting bed on the West (downhill) side of the greenhouse.  It will eventually be a 92 foot long planting bed (equivalent to 4.5 of our beds in the old garden) with a stone staircase in the middle and an access path next to the greenhouse.

We began by driving wooden stakes 7' from the edge of the greenhouse (3' of aisle plus 4' of planting bed) so that we could visualize where the wall would go.  Next, we started laying out the boards.  We are re-using boards we salvaged when we disassembled the greenhouses.  Eventually, (and hopefully) the wooden wall will be replaced by a stone wall.  For now, we're using what we have!

Driving in the metal pipe pieces - bottom boards are set and leveled.

Each board had to be leveled.  We started at the North end of the greenhouse and leveled the front wall to be even with the ground at the edge of the greenhouse.  As we worked toward the middle of the hoop house, we had to dig down and add boards to follow the slope of the hill.  Each board was leveled.  In the middle of the wall, we are setting aside 4' to put in a staircase using stone we have yet to bring up from Peggy's house (check out previous post on foundations falling from the sky).  For today, we worked on the north wall up to the staircase.

Once we had all the boards measured, cut and leveled, we cut several pieces of pipe to use as braces.  They ranged from 30" to 6 feet depending on the slope.  Each pole was driven in at least half its length in order to hold back the weight of the soil that will be behind this wall.  Then we started setting the bottom boards and pushing dirt in behind to hold them in place.

Once the bottom boards were in, we started laying up the rest of the cut boards.  To hold them, we have to back fill as we go.  We didn't quite get all that done, so there is still a lot of dirt to move from the pile into this bed. 

Aaron is working on the corner.  Boards have all been cut and are laid next to where they will be.

We did get the corner filled in and we decided to plant some of our volunteer sweet potato slips.   Yeah more food growing on the farm!  Eventually, this bed will house our asparagus and perhaps some more perennial plants.  We would prefer to have things growing here that will always have roots to help hold the soil.

Sweet potatoes!

A view of where we are - lots of backfilling yet to do and the south side hasn't been started.