Raised Beds, redux

So, this season, we added two more raised beds to our arsenal. I've changed the design a bit from last years model, and I think it works a lot better. These were all built from lumber from the big box home improvement place down the road, and filled with a mixture of cheap garden soil, Black Kow-brand manure and compost.

I do want to note that this is regular lumber, not the pressure treated stuff. I'm willing to forgo some longevity in order to avoid the chemicals found in pressure treated lumber. Design-wise, I skipped the hinges this year and made a track to allow the door to slide in and out. This makes access easier and simplifies the construction quite a bit. I think I can slap one of these together in less than an hour now.

And that's the take in the old bed: Chard, kale, pak choy, carrots, wando peas, beets and radishes, and a few other things. It's an incredible thing to be able to grow your own food, to take the kids out to pull a pea off the vine and eat it, right there in the garden. It reconnects us to what's real, and what's important.

Square foot gardening

Back in the summer, I dug up some old barn wood and decided to make a raised bed for a square foot garden. I picked up some really cheap 1"x1" at the home improvement store to make the rails for the fencing. I don't really expect the fence cage to last for too long out in the elements, but the local rabbit population insisted that I come up with a temporary solution at the very least.



So that's it, basically. It's five feet long and three feet deep, which was just about right since we only have access from one side. I subdivided the box into fifteen squares, and my daughter and I went to planting.



It's pretty incredible how much produce we got from this little box. The vines growing up the back of the cage are peas, and I think we put in about 45 plants, of which maybe 30 grew well. I think we planted a little late in the season for peas, but the tendrils and flowers have been delicious. We also put in spinach, collard greens, turnips, beets, radishes, okra and carrots. Of those, the carrots and okra didn't work out. The carrots have beautiful greens, but no actual carrot at the end. The okra was probably the wrong choice for our climate. All in all, though, fantastic amount of vegetables for such a small area. With careful planting and some succession planting, I think we could do exponentially better next year.