I have been building a raised bed across the back of the yard this week. The land falls away steeply from the fence and it is hard to mow or trim. That means the fence row is covered in weeds and young Tang-a-Tangs (a tree that looks like a mimosa but that spreads like a weed and is harder to kill) and my solution is this bed.
It will be up to 16 inches deep, 7 feet wide and 83 feet (the width of our lot) long
I am building the retaining wall out of standard sized 8x8x16 cinder block plus a rounded concrete top.I dug out a shallow trench to the limestone bed rock or chipped away at the lime stone to form a level track and then poured a 4 inch thick by 8 inch wide foundation to seat the blocks on. I’ve also left a two inch gap between every other block on the bottom course to serve as a drain so excessive water from typhoons will not cause the wall to be pushed outward.
The biggest issue I have is getting top-soil to fill the bed. It is rather expensive to buy it 1 cubic foot at a time but there is nobody here that will deliver a dump truck load.
I plan to put hibiscus along the edge of the fence as visual barrier between the yard and the apartments on the other side. With such deep soil maybe I’ll plant sweet potatoes in the rest.
This should be a project for a young man
It would be a daunting project for me-that’s for sure. However, it sure sounds like a good solution to your problem, and maybe gives you a little food supply too.
WOW! What an undertaking. It sounds like you have put a lot of thought and planning into this adventure. You have taken a problem and will be making it beautiful and delicious all in one. Very creative I must say.