Category: vegetables

While I didn’t build the raised beds for our vegetable garden with my own hands, I supervised. I was super impatient about making choices and getting the beds built so I could start planting, but there are some important decisions to be made.

You’ll want to consult with other gardeners in your area to determine the species of wood and pest control solutions you may need to make your raised garden a success. Here’s how it went.

What materials are used? After a brief discussion about building the raised garden beds out of patio pavers, we ended up going with Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) for the walls and Douglas Fir 4×4 posts to reinforce the corners. These species were inexpensive and non-treated, which is important for growing food. SYP is available in treated and untreated versions, so make sure you double check the stack you buy from. Cedar, redwood and hemlock are also good choices if they’re cost effective in your area.

How big is it? We built two beds for now, with dimensions of 4 feet x 8 feet and 18 inches deep. We thought 12 inches would be too shallow, but 24 inches too deep, so we split the difference.

In each corner, the planks are attached to the corner posts with lots of 3 1/2″ deck screws. The posts are on top of the grass, not driven into the ground. The weight of the soil is more than enough to hold the beds in place.

How will we keep pests out? I hear from other gardeners in our neighborhood that our biggest problems will be rabbits and moles. The height will hopefully help keep the rabbits out. We also lined the bottoms of the beds with 1/2″ galvanized hardware cloth, to keep out any pests coming in from underneath. The hardware cloth is stapled to the bottom of the garden beds with a staple gun. And we used galvanized wire every 8 to 10 inches to join the two sections of hardware cloth. Hopefully, this prevents any underground visitors to our garden.

What about the soil? Soil is a mix of topsoil, compost and peat. It was delivered in bulk from a local landscape supply company. Each bed required almost 2 yards of soil. That’s a lot

Here’s the equation for figuring out how much you’ll need: number of cubic feet in your beds (in our case, 4 x 8 x 1.5 = 96) divided by the number of feet in a cubic yard (27). The result is about 1.8 yards per bed.

One last touch is a grid dividing the beds for square foot planting. We used mason line, a nylon string, and attached it to the garden bed walls with decking screws. Really indulges my need for order.

I planted up these raised beds on June 4, including plants, direct sow seeds and some sprouted potatoes. Updates to come.

My basement seed starting experiment was going full speed ahead. Tomato, pepper, romaine, spinach and cauliflower plants were plugging along happily when I noticed a few tiny bugs crawling around on the table under the seed trays. I identified them as clover mites, which, as I now know, love to snack on plant material.

I really didn’t want to spray the vegetable plants. A few days later, I was taking care of a handful of these little red bugs. Then more. And even more. So I scouted and picked bugs off plants and the table. Finally, the numbers got too high and I realized I had to do something. But what?

So I sprayed the table with a traditional insecticide and then washed it down with soap and water. I’m not sure if there was permanent damage to the plants, but the bugs are gone and plants seem happy.

Just the thought of all that time and effort of raising those plants going down the drain was breaking my heart. And here are the things I was trying not to think:

• S#!&, I can’t do this because I have a black thumb. Or I don’t have the instinct for plants. I am, of course, ignoring the spathiphyllum that we’ve kept alive for ten years and the five jade plants I’ve propagated from cuttings. Maybe that’s different from growing vegetables from seed?
• I’m just going to go buy plants at a garden center. This whole seed starting adventure has been fun, but there are people who do this for a living. These young plants are so fragile. I’ll just go buy tomato plants.
• I’m just going to buy bell peppers at the grocery store. But what fun is that?
• This is too hard and I’m never doing this again. 

I’m fighting against the urge for instant gratification. Nothing about this process is instant. It’s slow and sometimes steady. It’s teaching me both to fight and to wait and see what happens.

It’s been a few weeks since the clover mite problem, and you can see in the pic, we’re still in business. Just a few more weeks until planting.

Healthier diets! Fresh tomatoes! Less stress! Better life! There are so many benefits of gardening, so we’re building raised garden beds for growing vegetables this summer.

There is a ridiculous amount of research on why gardening is good for you and here’s some of it. A study conducted in the Netherlands showed that gardening can reduce the level of the stress hormone cortisol in your blood. And it can put you in a better mood.

So we’re going to lower our stress levels…right after we raise them with all these decisions about these garden beds. Seems like a simple project, but all the options are stacking up.

We’ve only had small patio containers of tomatoes in the past, which were not so successful, so we are going to let the wealth of knowledge on the internet guide us.

Location, location, location. Where should we put these beds? Our first option was an area that gets really intense full sun on a steep slope, but we’re going to go with a spot with slightly less sun but one that is much flatter. Selecting this spot will cut down on construction time and may even help with irrigation needs.

Building material. This is going to be a wood project. The internet tells me that corrugated steel, bricks and stone can also be used, but we’re going with wood. Pressure-treated wood, railroad ties and old utility poles are not good options, because chemicals from them can leach into your roots and crops. Gross.

We thought we’d be using cedar, which is a popular option, but the guy at the lumber yard suggested spruce. It’s a whole lot cheaper, so that sounds good to me.

I think Growing North’s raised beds are are gorgeous.

Blanket city. It happens. #gardenchat pic.twitter.com/SogtQFVKuc

— Growing North (@growingnorth) March 22, 2016

Size and shape. I don’t want to start with an overwhelming space, but every time I pick up the seed catalog, I circle another crop. Oops. I’m hungry.

Anyway, I’m starting out the design using square foot gardening methods. At first I thought we would have a big c-shaped bed, but now it seems that rectangular-shaped beds are the best idea. Easy access to all areas.

Tell me, internet, when you say that some crops shouldn’t be grown together (tomatoes and cauliflower, for example), how far away do these plants need to be from each other? Opposite sides of an 8 foot bed ok? Or do they need to be in separate beds? Main question: two long beds or three medium-length beds?

Soil. Soil is tricky. In-ground garden beds are a lot of work around here because our soil is heavy clay and a mess. We’ve had topsoil and mulch delivered, but we’re going to need to find some nice compost for this project. Looking for a really amazing supplier for soil.

Crops. I started looking at a mail order catalog for seeds. I made my selections based on space and what kind of vegetables we want, but then I looked at the prices and realized it’s a lot cheaper to buy them at a garden center or home improvement store. They aren’t exactly the varieties I was looking for, but we’ll give them a try.

We have happy tomato, green pepper and romanesco seeds planted and sprouted. I planted lettuce and spinach seeds last night. I’ll be starting cucumber, squash and corn in the next month. And an onion in my pantry has sprouted, so I’ll fit that in somewhere. Another post on seed starting coming soon.

I’m planning to plant towards the end of May, so lots of decisions to be made and work to be done before then. I love trolling around Instagram this time of year to see the baby sprouts people are nurturing. Check out #seedstarting. So great. Less stress for everyone!

My lettuce seedlings are doing extremely well under grow lights. I had been having the same problem I often have with seedlings — sad, spindly growth, even after a few weeks.

I put a new batch of romaine ‘Freckles’ seedlings under lights 20 days ago. Just after my last update, I noticed that the roots of the seedlings had reached the outside of the peat pots I’d planted them in, so I transplanted the seedlings into bigger pots. Here’s what they looked like then and now.

The time to maturity is 55 days, so we’ll see how it goes. In summary: Grow lights are awesome.

It’s time to talk about fall vegetables. What do gardeners think about taking on a second planting? What are their questions? If you missed it, here’s a sampling of activity from this week’s #HowToNature Twitter chat.

https://storify.com/saratambascio/howtonature-fall-vegetable-gardening

I’ve never planted fall vegetables before, but I am doing it this year. Here’s my plan:

Seeds: Acorn squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, romaine lettuce, baby spinach. Based on the fact that these were pretty much the only seed packets for sale at the garden center, they seem to be excellent choices for this time of year.

The seed packets mainly give sowing information relevant to spring gardening, though. For example, they tell me how long after my area’s last frost I should sow. What about how many weeks before the first frost?

The romaine took the early lead with little sprouts shooting up three days after planting. The pumpkins caught up in a big way, though. These plants are enormous, but according to the packet, they’re still not ready to go outside. Half of the baby spinach seeds didn’t germinate. Squash was the last to come up.

And I hate having to thin out seeds. Am I going to thin out the seeds that had a better chance of making it?

I ended up pulling information from about four websites per vegetable in order to get all the information that made me feel secure enough to start. That seems like a lot.

Containers: Earth Boxes. I have three. I hope that’s enough for the veggies I’m sprouting. I’m using plant spacing based on square foot gardening. I hope that translates to Earth Boxes.

Pest control: MiracleGro Nature’s Care insecticidal soap. Never used it before. We’ll see.

Still needed: Trellises, fertilizer. Scheduled watering reminders on my phone.

It was difficult to find supplies for a fall veggie harvest this time of year. Seed starting kits are out of season, one local store told me. Vegetable plants available for sale are crispy and burned, or, at other stores, non-existent. That’s why I’m starting with seeds. I saw that one garden center closed for the season on August 1. So no fall gardening there, I guess.

Nature, I am trying to get back to you! Where are you? Questions:

Can you get these fall vegetable plants where you are? Or are your garden centers already hibernating? Do you grow this time of year from seeds? Do you have to buy your supplies for fall crops in the spring? Thank goodness for Amazon, that’s all I can say.

Why don’t seed packets give more information? If not on the packet, then on their websites? Some websites don’t seem to give much more information than what’s on the actual packet.

Why are there so many seeds in each packet? I’m not going to grow 30 cucumber plants. Are most gardeners? Even accounting for a less-than-100% germination rate, I can’t plant all these seeds. Seems like this may have been a good idea in the past, but now I just feel like I’m wasting.

What’s been your experience with fall vegetables? Please share what’s worked for you.