Springtime and Gardening

This time of year is busy! Especially if spring comes a month earlier than usual. Laura Engalls Wilder said it best in Farmer Boy: “There was no time to lose, no time to waste in rest or play. The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. All the wild seeds of weed and thistle, the sprouts of vine, bush and tree, are trying to take the fields. Farmers must…plant the good seeds quickly.”

That’s how things have been around here. We’ve had such warm days compared to last year when we got lots of snow in March. So here’s the update on gardening.

At the first of the month, I planted seeds indoors. The only seeds I start inside anymore are tomatoes and peppers because squash and pumpkins seem to do just fine started from seed in the garden. I planted about ten varieties of tomatoes and ten of peppers – from sweet peppers to very hot.

I also tried different methods of starting the seeds. I filled an aluminum roaster with soil medium, made lines with a ruler in the dirt and planted a few seeds of each variety in the rows. So far, I’m not too impressed with that method.

I also tried coir pots instead of peat pots – less damaging for peat bogs. The tomatoes in the coir pots seem to do just fine. Coir, BTW, is from coconut husks – thus renewable.

I planted two different methods in those little “greenhouses” that you get at the store – one in peat pots and one in plastic cubicles. They both seem to be growing about the same, but we’ll see what happens when it’s time to transplant – either into bigger peat pots or the garden. I tried both tomatoes and peppers in all the different methods.

The actual planting medium was two different kinds. First, were those little planting cubes that you add water and they expand. They’ve done very well. The other was our own mixture of peat moss and compost from our compost pile – I used that in the little peat pots and the coir pots. They’ve also done well.

I also labeled everything carefully. It’s so easy to get plants confused when you either transplant them or move them into the garden. You don’t want to mis-label a pepper, cook it up, and have everyone gasping for water if you thought it was a sweet pepper and it wasn’t.

After everything is planted in the little pots, spritz with water, put a lid or plastic wrap over the top. Place them in a warm, dark place (I put them next to the woodstove) and let the seeds work their magic. You’ll know there’s enough moisture in there if water condenses on the lid.

After 7-10 days, there are little sprouts. Take off the lid, move the seedlings to the brightest, sunniest place in the house. We started using a grow light a year ago, and that really helps the plants not get so leggy before it’s time to plant outside. Position the grow light about 2” from the seedlings.

At the same time, things were warming up outside, so I took the straw mulch off the garlic. We put the mulch on the garlic beds last fall, and that insulates them well. When I took off the mulch, little garlic shoots were already poking up through the soil. We planted twice as much garlic last fall, and twice as many varieties, so I’m pretty excited for the garlic to be ready in about 4-5 months.

We also got a big load of sheep manure. We’ve tried all kinds – cow, horse, goat, sheep – and the sheep manure is really the best. So we put some of it in this year’s compost bin

to fill out the compost, then we dumped the rest on the Three Sisters bed (remember the corn, beans and squash bed?).  We’ll get one more load to add to next year’s compost bin so it can compost over the summer and winter.

The next step was to prepare the raised beds for planting. We had to reconfigure the garden this year. With gardening, there is never enough space, so gardeners just keep making more places to plant. I’m sure we’re about maxed out for watering capabilities…

Anyway, we're not maxed out yet! SoWalt built a new raised bed – 12’x3’. We had to move one of the older raised beds to make room. So we took all the soil (it’s not dirt in a raised bed) out of the old bed, moved the bed, put all the soil, along with more peat moss and new compost, back in the old bed. Then we placed the new raised bed.

First, we put down a layer of newspaper. That keeps the existing grass and weeds from growing into the bed.

We have four older beds that needed replenishing, so we took some of the soil from each of those beds to add to the new bed. Then we put some new peat moss and compost in each bed, and tilled it all in. We use one of those wonderful Mantis tillers to work everything in.

There are many advantages to raised beds: you don’t walk on them, so the soil never gets compacted. You can make your own soil mixture – peat moss, compost, whatever you prefer. You still have to kneel on the ground to plant or weed, but you can make your beds as high as you want to cut down on bending over. You can plant things closer together so you get more yield per square foot of garden. You weed less. You use less water, especially if you use drip irrigation. And it’s just a wonderful feeling to have those garden beds all composted, tilled and ready to plant.

Note the straw mulch around all the beds. It really keeps the weeds and grass down.

So, happy gardening! There’s no time to lose!

Random picture of baby rhubarb

Raised Garden Beds

I know it doesn’t seem like the time to think of gardening stuff. After all, we just put the garden to bed for the winter and there’s 6” of snow on everything. But if you want a good garden next year, winter is a good time to plan and build your raised beds.

Why raised beds? Why not just dig up a space in your yard and make it your garden? Well….

 

v  You can plant the vegetable closer together than in a row garden. This way, the leaves overlap which conserves moisture and suppresses weeds.

v  It extends your planting and growing season because you can cover the beds with plastic or sheets in case of a light frost.

v  You can create a better growth medium than your native soil.

v  They reduce the amount of water you will use because of drip irrigation, plant density, and fewer weeds.

v  You don’t walk on the raised beds so the soil doesn’t get compacted and the roots can grow easier. Think really big carrots.

v  You get much higher yields from a smaller space than with row gardening.

v  They’re pretty – many gardeners are using raised beds for edible landscaping including yours truly.

v  You don’t have to bend over or kneel as much as row gardening. You can build the beds as high as you need for ease of access.

v  You can use them to control erosion if you build along contour lines on slopes.

v  You can move them, with some work, depending on the changing needs of your garden.

v  Plants can grow up with a trellis like peas, down with root vegetables like carrots, and on the surface like lettuce, all in the same bed.

What’s a raised bed? It’s just a box, built no more than 4 feet wide, which can be any length or shape. You can make them out of wood (untreated), rock, concrete or decorative border material. They can be built as high as it’s convenient but you want them at least 12” deep. You can even raise them off the ground and have sort of a floating garden waist high so there’s no bending at all. Or you can build some window boxes.

We built ours out of untreated red cedar. Walt stained the outside (not on the inside) of the beds in front since they are decorative too. But the ones in back – the main garden – were left plain. You don’t want them more than 4 ft. wide if you can walk on both sides of the bed. That way, you don’t have to reach more than 2 ft. across. If you can only access one side, only build them no more than 2 ½ feet wide, again so you can reach all the way across.

 

Building them is simple. Walt cut the boards to the length we needed – 12 ft. long x 4 feet wide in our main garden beds. There’s nothing fancy about them – they’re just butt-jointed and wood-screwed together and reinforced with L-shaped brackets – three of them in each corner. Then we just had a big wooden box without a top or bottom. Once the boxes are in place, he sunk four 18” pieces of 1 ½” PVC pipe along the long sides and anchored them to the sides of the box with some half-circle brackets. Those hold the trellises. He built five beds for the main garden and three for the front landscaping beds. The front beds don’t have the trellis brackets because we use pretty wrought iron trellises for those.

 

For the other beds, the trellises are also very simple. They’re simply a frame made from 1” PVC pipe. The size of the trellis is dictated by the size of your beds and the height of what you plant. Ours are 12’ long and 6’ tall, with another 18” added to the legs of the trellis to go into the support pipes. They have construction wire (they kind they use in concrete) attached to them with heavy-duty cable ties.

Notice that there is straw between the beds - it keeps the weeds down

Next, you put your box exactly where you want it. Does it have access to water? Is it protected from the wind? Does it have lots and lots of sunshine? We’ve found that the trellises need to go on the north side of the bed, so that the plants get all the south sun. The lengths of our beds run east to west with the trellises on the north to make the most of sunlight.

This faces south

Now you’ve got to fill this bed. You need compost (we’ll talk about that in another blog), peat moss, and some soil – not much. Some people like to add vermiculite. We don’t; vermiculite is nasty stuff, especially for the people who have to mine it. We put a bit of our yard soil in the bottom – enough to cover any weeds or grass that may be under the raised bed. Then we add equal parts of compost and peat moss. Put in enough to at least be level with the top of the bed. It will settle and you want lots of depth for those little veggie roots. Don’t get dirt in the trellis supports.

Turn this over with a shovel, or till with a tiller. We use a Mantis and it does a fabulous job. Make sure all the peat moss is broken up and well tilled.

Now rake it all smooth. Isn’t that pretty? If you’ve built your trellis, put it in the holes.

If you are using drip irrigation (and I really recommend that you do) you can now put your drip irrigation system in place. This way you’ll know where to plant the seeds so they get watered. Each line needs to be about 12” apart and as long as your garden. At one end, we put a valve so we can turn that line on or off as needed. For example, when we pull all the onions or potatoes, we no longer need to water those beds, so we can turn the valve off and conserve water. You are ready to plant!

Right now you’re saying, “Yikes!” or something like that. “All this will cost a lot of money!” Yes, the first year or two is expensive. But after you get things established, the food you get from your garden will more than compensate. Now that we have things set up, I probably spend about $50 on seeds, maybe another $50 on water for the summer, and maybe another $50 on incidentals – a new hand trowel, whatever. We easily make that up whenever I go to the garden and harvest. Plus, the vegetables are fresh, we know where they came from, and we have so many more varieties than the store. Ya gotta eat, right? So you might as well eat something you grew yourself instead of spending your money at the store.

I guess I’d spend my money on the raised bed, then the planting medium – the compost and peat moss – then the irrigation system. You can always hand water if you have to for one year.

We’ll talk later about how to design your garden, but you are now ready to plant a wonderful garden.