Planting Your Raised Garden Bed Part 2 – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

June 2, 2012 by

Continued from here . . . .

Part of the charm of square foot gardening is being able to better manage the quantity of each food produced in a small space. With three of us on erratic schedules eating from a garden, it’s easy to be overwhelmed with produce that needs to be eaten when it is ready to be harvested or it’s wasted.  “The plan” gave us an amount of food we could raise in a given area.  For example: Wheels likes radishes, I eat a few and I’m done for the year.  According to the plan we could grow 32 radishes in two square feet, and by planting a second time in a week or so, grow another 32.  In the meantime, where the first 32 radishes had been planted and harvested we’d plant another crop.   When things cooled down in the fall we could plant a third time in the first spot and grow another 32.  90 radishes for one person in spread out over a growing season sounded reasonable.

Let the record show – we are not gardening novices.  We both grew up knowing firsthand about vegetable gardens and our way around with the business ends of a hoe and a spade.  We’ve always had sizable flower gardens and dabbled in growing fruits and vegetables as time permitted.  Then there is Wheel’s grass farm.   (Try to sell lawn service at our house and you’ll hear oh! that’s a grass farm.)   A garden center is a very familiar place.

First we found a really cool watering system that just fit in the four foot square beds. On sale.  Marked way down from last season.  It’s made to go around a tree, but isn’t it just perfect here?

 

Then the seeds – you know seed tape would really be helpful.  We could cut it into one  foot pieces .  We didn’t notice until we got home that each package said in big letters “250 seeds”.  Or worse, “360 seeds”.  We did notice that a package of pea seeds had 100 dried peas – we only need a couple dozen.   Seeds don’t come in packages that small, so we purchased what was available, knowing the leftovers  probably would end up thrown away.   (I pretended I didn’t hear Mom Call’s  voice in my memory saying “waste not want not!”  And other such things.)   Next year:  Find someone to share seeds!

Then we went to the nursery area.  Hmmmm,  here are a couple of good looking tomatoes – an Early Girl and a Roma.  Okay, how about these two peppers over here. One square foot has been allotted to each.   And here is some lettuce already seeded and three inches high – red leaf, simpson and head.  They were on the plan – just in different quantities.  Oh and cabbage – we only planned for three and there are six in a pack.  Throw away three – are you kidding?!  That would be wasteful!!  (Mom’s best mom voice.)  And we wanted to try broccoli (or was it Brussels sprouts?) and there are six of those, also. And do you know how many onion sets are in a bunch?  Can you see where this is headed???

Onion sets

So we planted – more but mostly less, according to plan.  And we didn’t label anything – since we do know our way around a vegetable garden, you know.  unuh.   Now we don’t know which is Simpson or head lettuce (or how to harvest them).   And that broccoli (or is it Brussels Sprouts) is doing great!!!  Except that after “it”  was in the ground at three per square foot, we looked at the plan.   Both vegetables require one square foot PER PLANT.   I did an online search for the lettuce and how to harvest it.  We’re going to be surprised with Brussels Sprouts (or broccoli) and then we’ll figure out how to harvest.  Next year:  Refer to the plans as we plant!   Don’t buy plants that are unlabeled!  Save the labels and attach them to the plan!  Follow the plan!

In the meantime, we missed the second planting in the radish section because of rain – and it’s a good thing since some kind of bug likes radishes really well. They look gorgeous on the outside – not so good on the inside.  Wheels has had a half dozen really good radishes out of the two square feet we planted.  The rest went in the compost.  Next year: learn about radish pests.  Discard the whole crop at the first sign of problems.  Doesn’t get better!

But we’ve had THE BEST salads out of this corner for three weeks now and it looks like they are ready to give us a second harvest before it gets really hot.  That was totally worth it!!  Next year: We’ll do that again.

Watch for updates.  In the meantime – don’t sign that Master Gardener certificate just yet!

If you missed the first segments:  How to Build a Raised Garden Bed,  Soil for Your Raised Garden Bed,  Planting Your Raised Garden Bed Part 1

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Planting Your Raised Garden Bed – A Fistful of Seeds

June 1, 2012 by

Planting Your Raised Garden Bed

Wheels and I have been intrigued by the idea of square foot gardening for a long time.  With a very early spring, and a schedule that was a little more flexible than usual, we decided this was the year.  Wheels and Bytes built three raised garden beds here.  Bytes and friend filled them with organic soil, a mix of about 1/3 peat, 1/3 soil and 1/3 compost,  here.  And I got busy planning.

Square foot gardening requires about 80% less space and produces 5 times more than usual gardening. It uses less water, is all organic, and uses far fewer seeds than traditional gardening  The raised bed is divided into one foot square sections that house plants of various sizes.  We saw pictures that used string to mark the grid, but didn’t think that very weather worthy.  We decided to just mark out the squares in the dirt, on the theory that once the plants were in the ground they didn’t care about the grid.

If you want to grow a large plant like broccoli or cabbage, it  takes one entire square foot of that grid.  If you want to grow radishes, section that square foot into sixteen separate spaces, each one housing a single radish!   This was getting a little complicated.  I went online.  I looked at several interactive garden planners, then came back to the first one tried — Gardener’s Supply Company.  It’s fun to use – easy to change.  Drag that radish into a square and it populates it with the correct number.  Pop in a green pepper icon and it enlarges to fit the full square.   Best of all, you can print a copy to take with you!

I knew one of the four foot beds would be for herbs, like chives and basil. For the other two beds, we made a list of the vegetables we like and that should grow well in our zone. Nothing fancy or complicated.   Things like beans, peas, tomatoes, lettuce, kohlrabi and radishes for Wheels, cabbage, beets and green peppers.   We chose the ones we knew would grew in cooler weather to plant first, about six weeks before our frost free date.    Spring days were unusually warm but night temperatures were still on the cool side. After they were harvested and warmer weather arrived we would plant, summer crops.  And then in the fall when it began to cool down, we’d plant cool weather crops again.  Three harvests, one season of organic, fresh vegetables from our own garden.

That was the plan.

We made a trip to the garden center.

Our plan quickly began to fall apart.

To Be Continued . . . . here

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Raised Garden Bed Soil — A Few Bags More

May 18, 2012 by

Raised Garden Bed Soil -- why raised beds work

Here  is how we built our raised garden beds.  The next step is to add soil – a step which  provides major benefits for using raised beds.  The saga continues:

To fill the beds we had the choice of having soil delivered on the driveway and wheel barrowing it to the back lot line.  Or purchasing bagged soil.  For the relatively small quantity we needed, the cost factor was almost a tossup. And we didn’t build the boxes all at once so there would have been dirt in the driveway for a couple of weeks.    So Bytes and his bubbly friend Angle drove to the local general store.

I had figured the cubic yards of dirt necessary to fill each box.   Width times length times depth.   Start out by finding cubic feet.   Oops — the height is in inches – no problem!   Divide that number by 12.  In our case the height was 10 inches.  10 divided by 12 (inches in a foot) is .8 ft.  Each of the sides was four foot.  So 4 ft multiplied by 4 ft multiplied by .8 ft.  gives us 12.8 cubic feet.   To find cubic yards divide by 9 (3 feet x  3 feet x 3 feet).

Only they couldn’t find cubic yards OR feet marked on the bags.  Seems as though mulch comes that way.  Not dirt. In bags.  At the general store.  So they took a guess.  And made a second trip.

The soil they brought back was top quality garden soil, mixed with compost, manure and peat.   We ended up leaving a couple inches at the top to allow for working more compost into the mixture each year.  Most of the vegetables and herbs  we planned to plant were shallow rooted so six to eight inches was an adequate soil base.  (And it saved a third trip!)   Bytes and Angle spread the dirt evenly and were careful not to compact the planting beds by stepping on them.

A benefit in using raised beds is being able to improve your soil conditions and you can even grow plants in areas with extremely inhospitable soil.  If your garden is sandy or you have a lot of very heavy clay as ours does, it can be difficult to grow much in it.  By creating a raised bed, you can create your own soil mix or put  purchased soil mix into the frame.  Happy plants!!!

Because you are starting with fresh soil, weeds are also less  problem in a raised bed. Weed seeds in the existing soil are buried under far too much soil to sprout.  We also put down a layer of cardboard to discourage any weeds or other invasive plants that were in the existing ground.  As I mentioned before, the cardboard will eventually disintegrate and become part of the soil.  If any weeds do pop up, they are easier to spot in the raised bed.  They can be removed easily and quickly before they have a chance to spread or do other damage.

One of the biggest benefits is the ability to harvest more produce from the same space.  Raised bed gardens can actually double or even triple the amount of produce harvested from the space!  This is due to the fact that the square footage needed for pathways is reduced considerably, and more space can be devoted to the plants.  Next:  Adventures in Planting

Thanks, Angle, for your help!

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Build A Raised Garden Bed

April 25, 2012 by

The planets all aligned. Space that was formerly shady is now sunny. An early warm spring day begged for action. Plans were made. Saws found. Hopes ran high that finally we could have a garden that might produce more than a few random tomatoes. A garden in spite of heavy clay. We were going up – up – up! Up to !0 inches of black fertile soil, manure and compost. We built a raised garden bed. Not just one, but two and a third one is in the works.  Here’s how we did it — highlights version!


We measured the site earlier, deciding to leave the shrubs along the fence line. With more sun, they ought to do well and fill in the break in the sight line caused by the loss of four mature white pines on the neighbor’s side of the fence. Research told us that four feet is the optimum width for raised beds. Determining how long they should be took a little more planning. We used the hose and long handled tools to mark out the various sizes. Finally we chose two four foot by four foot boxes on each end with a trapezoid in the middle. This fit our curved site. And by making the one in the middle longer, we will be able to plant area that would be used for paths between smaller boxes.

One gorgeous sunny spring day, — quite out of season and highly unusual — Wheels and Bytes headed off to the home center. They purchased lumber that was 2 inches thick by 10 inches wide. We figured that 10 inches would give us the depth we needed to overcome the poor soil. No treated lumber as treatment chemicals could leach into the soil and contaminate the food. We did stain it to match the deck which will help preserve the wood and create a visual flow. They figured out the corner brackets, by looking at what was available and then deciding to manufacture their own to fit our size and reduce cost. We had the PVC pipe (left over from a puppet stage) and Bytes made the brackets to hold the trellis supports using pipe strap (plumber’s strap).

It took most of the day for purchasing, staining and making the two boxes. Once we had them in place we put cardboard across the bottom of the box. This serves as a weedstop. We’d already put a thick layer of leaves across the whole area last fall, so the one layer of cardboard should stop any weed seed that might have been in the ground.  The cardboard will eventually decompose.

Next – adventures in filling the boxes and beginning to plant. Stay tuned.

 

 

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