The Raised Flower Bed

My next project was creating a new bed around the big oak tree in the backyard. This area was really overgrown with fern. When I bought the house, I thought the fern looked nice. . . I didn't notice there was so much of it. Come to think of it, there probably wasn't as much because I didn't do anything to the yard the first four years I lived here. Here is a before picture:

I started pulling the fern around the big oak tree by hand and quickly developed carpel tunnel. The fern has very shallow roots, but there was so much of it, my wrists couldn't take it. My carpel tunnel was so bad, I couldn't type or even grip a pen to write! I was afraid I had done permanent damage. It took seven days for my wrists to recover!

I decided to hire the Stone brothers in my neighborhood to finish the job. The boys were great. They even came with a bee sting kit and told me, after they were finished, they got stung several times. They were only about 7 and 9 years old then. Now they're teenagers!

Here are before and afters of the raised bed around the big oak tree:

After the fern was gone, I again took John away from his master bath renovation to build me a raised bed around the tree. There were too many tree roots to try and dig around them. It took 60 bags of compost and top soil from Home Depot to fill it.

Raising the bed made a nice area for cascading sweet potato vine and Torenia (wishbone flower). The Torenia flowers year round in Central Florida and does not need fertilizer to flower. It is one of my favorite plants. The sweet potato vine actually produces sweet potatoes. I've never eaten one of them, but some friends who took cuttings said the sweet potatoes were not very good. I guess you have to plant them with the right kind of fertilizer to get the right taste. I don't know since I've never done any vegetable gardening. Try the link above to learn more.