Creating a garden

At the beginning of this year, I decided to try and start eating healthier, for myself and my family.  Not only increasing consumption of fruits and veggies, but increasing organic products.  I started buying organic milk, carrots, frozen berries, and a few other misc items.  I'd like to buy more organic stuff, but I can't find it at my local Meijer.  Every few months I can find organic strawberries, but I love strawberries so much, that I end up eating the 'regular' ones.  Jillian Michaels had said that if we started eating organic berries, we could reduce the pesticides that we eat by 80% (this was in one of her podcasts - Jillian Michaels' podcasts).  So, we decided to start a garden!

My husband has a Lowe's How To book and we found a picture of a simple garden set up.

My husband bought the boards (at Lowe's of course!), stained them, and joined them together.  We pulled up the grass underneath and poured in a TON of soil (Miracle Grow).  It's 8' x 4'.
I had some cucumbers growing inside, so I planted them the day we got the garden set up.  The deer ate them that night.  The next day we bought 10' PVC pipe and bird netting.  The 10' PVC pipe is connected to a larger PVC pipe connected to the board.

The netting is secured at all 4 corners with large screw hooks.  At first we though this was enough.  The deer still walked right through it!  So we added smaller screw hooks to the sides (2 on each side).

This held down the side of the netting.  I also added pinwheels to each of the corners hoping that helps scare the deer away.  The only thing we would have done differently is add grating (wire) at the bottom (underneath the soil) so the moles won't dine on the roots.

I've got cucumbers, carrots and green beans growing this year.   If the animals don't dine and we get to eat them, I may expand next year!

It's not a very technical post, so if you have any questions about sizing of any of the products, let me know (and I'll ask my husband :).