[This space reserved for a picture of the raised bed with plants in it!]
At a time when commercial produce continues to
spike in price without seeming letup, many a person might get it in their heads to do a little gardening on their own. After all, raising your own food has got
to be cheaper than going to a local grocery just for the privilege of
buying a solitary bell pepper for a buck! But, hold on! Isn't a garden a lot
of work? Don't you have to buy expensive soil and what about the cost
of obtaining vegetable starts from the greenhouse? And oh my, all that work what with the
tilling and the weeding and – well just forget about it!
Fortunately, I've got some good news! Almost
anyone can install a small raised bed in no time at all! Scrounge together four wooden boards, some nails and dirt and you're in business! The
boards pictured at right
were were laying around my garage and measured
about 36 inches each – after removing the nails that held two of
the board together, I had my 'pre-cut' pieces that when formed into a
square enclosed an area of about 2.8 feet by 3 feet or 8.5 (or lets
just say) 9 square feet overall! That's 9 one square foot areas into
which we can plant all sorts of good eats! So far I'd spent about ten
minutes scrounging and preparing... not too shabby!
Next, I needed to assemble the boards
by nailing them together – happily, I had eight nice looking nails that
came from those little cross pieces, so I was all set in that
department. But, I still needed to pre-drill some holes to help make
the process of nailing then together a little easier. I'm all about
easier....
So, out came the drill with which I
quickly made eight pilot holes for the nails to get started in. But,
before I did that I needed to clear out the grass in the space where
my little garden was to go! After all, I wouldn't want grass growing
up through my garden soil – would I? Gosh no! The answer, however
was easy – I merely dug a shallow trench where the boards would rest
(I used a level to make sure they were level with the ground) and then I merely
covered the area with weed block material that was available form my
local hardware store for a few bucks! Total time to dig the trenches
and install the weed block was about 20 minutes. None of this work
was very hard either!
But, what about that soil – how much
would I need to fill in this empty space. OK, let me see now. The
depth of the boards were about 5 ¼ inches – so I estimated I need
the thickness of the soil to be about 4 inches – therefore, I
needed 2.8 x 3 x .33 feet which equals 2.8 cubic feet. Another way to
figure this is to know that since the area was about 9 square feet,
then a height of 12 inches of soil
would equal 9 cubic feet. However,
I needed only a third of that height (4 inches) and so one third of 9
is 3)! Voila! You can get 40 pound bags of soil at garden centers for
about $2-$3 a bag – and since each bag will cover about 3 square
feet to a depth of four inches – I'd need about 4 bags! In they
went, and you can see the nice result – a raised bed! That's $8
spent thus far with labor running at about 1 hour. Now it was time
for selecting the plant starts that would go in each square! The soil was then going to get a few days to rest.... and then... comes the planting!
I'd already purchased 2 cucumbers ($2)
and also had 8 peppers that cost $4. The basil was sown as seed as
was the carrots. The sole open spot was left over for anything that
might strike my fancy later on! The peppers that come later this summer, will pay the
estimated total cost for this setup of $15 pretty quickly. But, I'm not ready to plant anything in this space yet! I need to test the soil to make sure that especially the pH is within acceptable limits!
Next post: Testing the soil!While you're waiting - run out and buy a copy of Mel
Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening!
The tomato crop continues to look
promising – they do love the heat don't ya know. And, with the
plentiful rain we been getting, I haven't had to worry very much
about them getting enough water.Interestingly, the problems I normally have with insects and worms are pretty much a non issue thus far. Nor have the deer been a problem! I;ll just keep crossing my fingers as the season moves on forward.
OK, it's June the 8th and
asteroid 2014 HQ124
termed by some astronomers, 'The
Beast', has apparently missed smacking in the earth! (At least on
this go around). Somewhat disturbing to contemplate, On average, an
object about the size of 2014 HQ124 will pass this close
to Earth every few years! Should we be worried? Why no! Obama says he's on
top of it! I'm totally serial on that...
There's also no sign of those dreaded
Japanese beetles that normally emerge from the ground every
year about this time! I'm sure I won't miss them if they were, in
fact, killed by the last hard winter. In point of fact and in spite
of the rather wet weather, there hasn't been much in the way of pest
damage so far. I'm looking forward now to decent harvests of onions,
tomatoes and peppers!
As we get ever so close to the first of
June, the traditional start of the bug season, I have some good news
to report!
Egyptian onions – the top
setting onions are one of the earliest plants you'll see growing in
the 
This year, I plan to
experiment with a couple of vegetables that I haven't grown before;
namely Seed Savers Hot Portugal peppers and a few MarGlobe tomatoes which I'm told are heirlooms.
Both of these have gotten pretty good reviews and look promising.
While the peppers took right after being sown as seeds, the
MarGlobe's were purchased at a local greenhouse and look ready to go
out into the garden as soon as the weather settles a bit more. I'm
hoping to get them out into the ground within the next week, or around
the first of May. The peppers may not get transplanted until late
May, however as they are still fairly small.
After prepared the soil (no
amendment needed), I enclosed the 15 inch square space with wood
framing material that had been left over form another project. This
will hopefully keep the aggressive fescue grass from invading the
space as as the tomato plants grow and do their thing! As, always,
I'll try and update this article as the season progresses, especially
if I can get some cherry tomatoes in July or August – a time when a
small one pound basket is selling for as much as $4!
kitchen scraps! Anyone who
collects scraps can then add them to garden areas to help enrich even
a poor soil. Before you know it, earthworms will make an appearance
and then will stay – a sure sign of good soil fertility.
