Veggies 2.0

Our first year growing vegetables in our garden was only marginally successful.  Our unusually wet summer made it easy for the weeds to get out of control, and it was impossible to keep the soil from turning into hard-pack when we tried to pull them.  Our garden is fairly large for an urban yard - 15 feet wide by 25 feet long - which means there's a lot of area to keep up.  And in general, we found it difficult to control our soil conditions.

I decided I wanted raised beds to work with, to allow me better control over the soil and weeds, and to practice gardening in more confined spaces.  I've been taking pages from Square-foot gardening - notice the square-foot sections demarcated with stakes and strings below - and much of the concept  involves planting in groups, rather than in rows, as well as interplanting with flowers and other kinds of vegetables. 

After our watermelon died off, there wasn't much left in the middle of our garden but some spindly corn  stalks, so we figured we'd pull those up and build a bed in their place.  The closer side is planted (in the square-foot sections) with broccoli, lettuce, onions, spinach, and carrots.  The farther side has peanuts that are almost ready for harvest.  When we've done what we can with those sections of the garden, we'll replace them with raised beds, as well, with walking paths in between.



We started out with three pieces of 2"x10"x8' untreated pine.  The plan called for cedar, which is more weather-hardy, but we had limited time with my mom's larger vehicle (needed to transport the lumber), and our local big-box hardware stores didn't carry cedar any larger than 2"x6".  Next time, we'll do a better job of planning ahead.

We cut the third piece in half, giving us two 4-foot side panels and two 8-foot side panels.  We screwed them together using hinges, trying to get them as square as a pair of ADHD-style gardeners could manage without a T-square or a level.



We bought half a cubic yard of rose soil from the Natural Gardener.  That's ten big bags of soil, which we dug and loaded ourselves, into our Prius.   Our 8' x 4' bed actually holds about 1 cubic yard, but there's no way we could fit all that.  The dirt loading and unloading was probably my least-favorite part of the process - it was a lot of work.

The guy who helped us at the Natural Gardener suggested rose soil because it's a bit more acid than their regular garden soil.  Since the alkaline soil below will leach into the soil, using something more acid to start with gives us a bit more time.  We measured the pH of the soil yesterday, and it's already as alkaline as our garden soil, though, so your mileage may vary.



Once we got all the lumber cut and screwed together, we arranged it in the garden and smoothed out the soil in and around it, removing larger rocks and trying to fill any gaps underneath the bed. 



Then we layered the bottom of the bed with about five overlapping layers of newspaper, to block any weed seedlings that might try to emerge, as well as to try to block some of the alkaline leaching.



And then we unloaded the rose soil into the bed and smoothed it out a bit.  We've still got room at the top, since we don't have a full cubic yard in there, but we'll fill that with mulch and compost eventually, I figure.



And here are our first little plants, in our raised bed, planted right before the cold front hit Austin.  We've got spinach, buttercrunch lettuce, and strawberries, all beneficial companion plants.  Also throughout the bed, I've planted nasturtiums and garlic, which are said to help repel pests from the other plants.

So far, I'm very much a fan of the raised-bed concept.  I like being able to plant seedlings using just my fingers to dig in the dirt.  Once the seedlings start to emerge, I'm planning to add some flowers to the mix, as well.

Future improvements include attaching a trellis to one side for climbers like peas, beans, soybeans, and cucumbers.