23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
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Is there something wrong with your native soil that you want to make raised beds instead of using the soil you have? From what you describe, it sounds like a huge expense of sand/compost/loam mix to fill such a big bed (not to mention the wood to build it with). And from what we usually hear on these forums, the stuff they sell for folks to fill raised beds with is often inferior to plain old native soil.
Is there a reason not to just mix some composted material (whatever you can find -- manure, etc.) in with your native soil?
I grow everything in native soil amended with as much organic matter as I can get my hands on, composted and then added either on the surface or dug in when the beds are new. As others have said, unless your soil is pure rock or has problems with toxicity, I wouldn't go to the expense of bringing in topsoil and definitely not sand. In the Maine you will want to add lime or wood ashes when you dig in amendments to raise the pH a bit since we tend to have acidic soil. Brought in topsoil will have the same issue, however, and will not necessarily be any better than what you already have.
Corn, peas, beans, radish, carrots, spinach, and potatoes are all typically direct seeded here. I presprout my pea seeds (soak 12-24 hours, drain, leave covered for 824 hours and then plant outside as soon as the soil is thawed and dry enough to work. Potatoes I chit (let sprout green for 2-3 weeks) and also plant outside under just a couple of inches of soil as soon as the soil is dry enough to work. I put soil around the stems just up to under the leaves as they grow. Radish and spinach also will sprout as soon as the soil is dry enough to work. Beans and corn need warm soil. Johnny's Select Seeds (Albion, ME) has charts of sprouting soil temperatures for different kinds of veggies you can check. I don't grow corn any more as the critters always harvest it just before I would.
Wow wasn't expecting so many replies. All the info is very helpful thank you everyone. I think I'm going to nix the weed block, leave the chicken wire and I'll just cover the bottom of the bed with yard waste leftover from the fall (leaves, sticks, twigs, grass clippings) before it gets filled so the worms can work their way in (and for extra compost).
I have always just used a combination of native soil and composted organic matter such as manure to fill raised beds. Mulching has kept the weeds from sprouting from any seeds that were in the soil. If you aren't going to use your native soil, I'd at least use a spading fork to loosen it and perhaps to turn in a bit of organic matter before putting down your wire mesh and adding the raised beds with amendments. That will create a less abrupt transition and I expect improve water movement and root transitions. I don't think I would use chicken wire for the mesh, however, since the two sizes sold around here have holes large enough to let in voles and it breaks down quite quickly. I'd use hardware cloth instead.
No, can't open the windows yet! It may be officially spring, but it definitely doesn't feel like it! I potted up 5 tomatoes on the same day, and they are doing fine--exposed to the same conditions, same potting mix, etc.
I know there's still plenty of time to restart, so no worries. I just like to learn from my mistakes, and identify what's going on...never seen anything like this.
The main one is already past its prime. Harvest it immediately. You want it to be a tight bud, like the second smaller artichoke in the first picture. Cut the artichoke about an inch or two below the base of the bud if possible, like for the main artichoke. Don't remove any leaves
Keep picking them until they quit in the summer heat. If you shade them and keep them reasonably moist, they may pull through the summer and produce again next year.
This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Thu, Apr 3, 14 at 23:52
I started Asparagus from seedlings rather than crown roots and it took me a good 4 years before they started to thicken a little, then actually 5 years before they were as fat as I was expecting. I didn't do anything but keep adding compost and ground up leaves. I also let mine fern every year.
I've only used home made compost on mine and they are thick as my thumb for the most part.And plentiful! From a 4x8 bed, the 3 of us eat gus about 2x per week.
I do have clay soil, so possibly more nutrients than some.
Nancy
How are they connected on the ends? Unless they aren't well drilled (or nailed) in, and unless the wood is really thin, you won't have to worry about the wood bowing when you add the soil. Longer term, the boards can bow from getting wet, changes in temperature, etc.
If it's not too late, I would really recommend trying to incorporate some of the clay into your beds. Clay has a poor structure and is acidic, but it has lots of nutrients and good qualities that are often overlooked. You just need to mix it with soil amendments like compost, be patient, and watch it become awesome over the years. You have to take a long term view with it. (And I am saying this from experience. You could make pottery with what I have in my yard.)
Go to the big box store and ask them for some sort of bracket to keep the boxes from bowing or separating.
Fill with garden mix from the land fill (or wherever you can get it) the worms will bring the clay up into your boxes! Nancy
I was just reading a bit about this - You want the tubes of straw vertical so that water will run through them.
Here is a link that might be useful: Straw Bale Gardens
In some climates beans are regularly transplanted. If you have cool springs like us it isn't warm enough for beans to germinate until well into early Summer. So I start some beans early in my glazed porch. Then again some more a few weeks later and finally some direct outside. This means that the beans are a range of ages and we don't get a glut coming all at once.
What is great about seeds such as beets, kale, kohlrabi, lettuces, and spinach is that there are typically hundreds of seeds in the packet. What I do is gamble with early plantings. If I lose the early crop, I still have enough seeds for successive crops.
Thank you everyone. Your responses have made me think about the sun and its trajectory here and I will have to give this more thought. The diagonal bed is not an option. Too difficult to mow around it. I am thinkining that my best option may be an L-shape, but I will have to wait to see how the sun shifts to determine where to position the E-W section. Thank you all, will update you later.
Well, my mind is getting a visual this morning, I think it was too late last night. [g] I do follow about the sun rising a little north of east and that a little diagonal orientation to accommodate that would give the beds a full sweep of the sun if it is unobstructed. And that you are right, Dave, it is individual to your property.
I also notice that the sun is lower in the sky right now on my property and the times that the sun is on the garden is different then summer. I used your link to look up the altitude of the sun now, in June, last September and last April, because I wondered how different the height of the sun is now as opposed to as it lowers in the fall and it's actually not that different.
I know that the sun rises a little bit north of east on my property at some point but I didn't realize when I noticed that, that it wasn't like that all the time. And I don't remember what time of year it was when I noticed that.
This morning, it is rising straight in front of the front door of my house, but behind the house across the street. So it always takes a little bit in the morning to get above the roof of that house and my house and hits the western most part of the yard and creeps across and then the house is shading a small edge of the vegetable plot on the East side. I haven't plotted it in awhile, but today I will have opportunity to do that, if the sun stays out most of the day.
If the sun is directly facing my front door as it rises this morning, does that mean that my house is not sitting directly on the EWNS compass points, but a little bit South of East? It would seem that if it's rising directly East of my house, then a true East/West orientation of my beds would give me the most sun possible, could that be right?
Thanks, SOkra and Dave
I doubt that what they were discussing 7 years ago on this thread were peppadews, which appear to be a round cherry pepper shape. I grew some seeds from store bought "mini sweet peppers" sold by Pero Farms. They are 2-4 inches long, shaped like corno de toros, have few seeds and have a very pleasing sweet pepper taste. They have thick walls and keep well. They taste much better than any bell pepper I've tasted. All my plants grew like the red one I took the seeds from. I love them!
Here is a link that might be useful: Mini Sweet Peppers
I have read this advice as well as the opposite and I've tried both with habaneros. I think my results with single planting have been better. I did get bigger peppers by putting two in a pot, but I also got noticeably fewer of them, and the peppers seemed to have a waxy color about them.
On the other hand, I've also had bad luck with peppers far apart. So it seems like a happy medium is best.
A saying I read about peppers was that "peppers like to hold hands" meaning that they do best when planted close enough together that, when grown, their leaves will overlap slightly. This seems to be the happy medium for me. Growing at that distance produced abundant, medium sized, rich orange habaneros.
I also do not thin them at all. I start lots and lots of individual seedlings, and then transplant them into place. Thinning just makes me feel bad about the plants that get pulled up. :( So I only do it with seeds that are too small to handle individually, like argula.
Angie
There seems to me to be a couple of different options here. Close planting - holding hands, love that - might be worth a try, 6" apart. But I think the almanac site was saying to leave seedlings very close, 1/2" or so, and grow them more as a multi-stemmed plant. I haven't been able to find much about this but one link (can't find again right now) was about increased yields in the fields when a couple of tomato plants/seeds were planted in each hole. Interesting and counter-intuitive. Also helps when/if one plant dies, the other carries on and doesn't leave a gap in the planting. I think I'll try some of my peppers and tomatoes like this.
I add hardware cloth to any new bed (NOT chicken wire! It's holes are too big and it rots after a couple of years!) due to our gopher problems!
Anywhere you live, I would ask some neighbors or the extension office what to expect for your area. Gophers, moles, voles, rabbits, groundhogs etc.. I would especially go with the neighbors, cause while I have never seen a rabbit wild in this area, 5 miles away they run rampant! Nancy
I was just reading up on various things electric fence, and I think the answer about your tiny bunnies is that their light weight makes them not make good contact with the ground. At least that's what my Premier catalog seems to say. Good thing there's time to replant!
I had the same problem with the bunnies. The hot fence didn',t do the trick for the bunnies but it kept the racoons out. I used two foot chicken wire about 5-6 inches outside of the hot wire and it worked perfect. Make sure the chicken wire does not come in contact with the hot wire or it will short it out. It was so nice not to have my
new plants eaten. Good Luck