Building a Retaining Wall

Today I worked on my retaining wall.
Basically my garden area for my #cannabis and my giant raised bed on the other side of the fence are different heights, so I need a retaining wall to keep the soil from falling down. Retaining walls are pretty common for gardens: They are a very simple fix against erosion. Retaining wall is basically just a fancy term for a rock wall. And there are a lot of rocks I have uncovered building my gardens!

First of all, I had to get rid of this junky area that was originally going to be a compost pile, but ended up being a weird square where I dumped off extra fencing and some garbage ended up falling through from my garden like plastic pots and small pieces of tarp etc. It was a lot of work to untangle all the fencing, tree netting etc. but it felt really good to finally remove this area.

Once I removed all the junk, I could finish stacking rocks on the outer edge of my #cannabis garden. I already started making the retaining wall slowly but surely and also planted garlic, onions and potatoes in this area. The biggest mistake I made was not using a string to align the wall into a straight line. Once I tied a string from one side of the fence to the other, I could see that my wall was very curved! OOPS I basically had to start over, but that was okay because I wanted to fix it anyways. I'm not a bricklayer, but I think I did a decent job stacking the rocks together like puzzle pieces. This type of construction/landscaping is hard work, but it's fun when you have something at the end of the day that looks professional. Plus, this is something I've been meaning to finish for a long time. It's crucial for keeping my #cannabis garden from eroding. Plus, it's given me another great growing space. The more garden beds I have the better. Plus, I removed a ton of weeds from this area!
The entire retaining wall isn't finished yet, but I decided to start pouring concrete anyways. The rocks keep shifting around constantly, especially because I have to water this area pretty much everyday. [Those Onions are thirsty!] I washed off all the rocks because they had tons of dirt on them, then I mixed a few small bags of concrete and carefully poured them over the top of the rock wall. Nothing says professional garden like some concrete. And it's eco friendly.

Pouring the actual concrete was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. First of all, my wheel barrel is damaged from moving oversized rocks one too many times [so it flipped over]. And secondly, the finished product didn't exactly look perfect. I pictured you being able to see every rock and the concrete perfectly falling through every crevasse, leaving a beautiful view of each rock on top. It ended up looking more like a sloppy joe hotdog on top of a rock pile, but, it should serve it's purpose and its going to be really nice to have a more permanent wall that I can actually pile dirt next to and stop erosion from my garden area.

Of course, I can't help but show some plants from the retaining wall. Like I previously stated, it's mostly onions, potatoes and garlic. Below is an onion flower. Below that, is a very healthy potato plant that is already getting really large! I also planted beets recently in that junk area that I cleaned up. [ more on that HERE - - > @ferngully/planting-seeds-and-clones ]. I hope everyone enjoyed my small project cleaning up and creating a retaining wall for my garden!