Category: Garden

Planting My Garden, May 2020

It’s finally time for me to plant. I spent hours researching plants, finding out what can and cannot work together, researching gardening techniques and styles. I’ve watched days worth of YouTube videos by different gardeners, and I was waiting for now. Memorial day weekend is plating time where I’m from. Before then, there is a constant risk of frost or even snow. I planted my onions, some Parris island lettuce, and my radishes about 2 weeks ago, and they got snow and frost. But, after Wednesday night, we are out of the frost zone! I planted another 1/3 of my lettuce row with seeds, I planted 4 Swiss chard seeds, I planted 5 indeterminate tomato vines, and Josh and I made stakes that are 1 in x 1 in x 6 1/2 foot for my tomatoes. We plated 5 clusters of cucumbers, and added cages around them, because we hope to grow them vertically, and finally, Josh made a trellis for me using chicken wire, and I plated green bean pole beans along the front of that. Our beds are 8 ft by 4 ft.

I did a lot of research leading up to this. Different staking methods, high density spacing, harvest conditions and seeding conditions. I grew some plants from seeds, however, I also purchased many plants. I’ve never really gardened before. Josh grew up with a garden, but I’ve only grown the occasional cherry tomato. I have house plants, but even they are hard for me to manage all winter. I’m hopeful. I put lots of time into this project and I’ve learned so much about these plants. I know I will be disappointed when something doesn’t work, but I’m hopeful, and I hope to share lots of canning posts this summer on here and Instagram.

Things I did differently

According to my plans, it says beets, but it was always radishes. I just say beets sometimes, I don’t know why. The other thing I’ve done differently was how I planted the beans. I wasn’t sure if I was getting a trellis, so I planned for a teepee. Instead I planted the beans 4 inches from the edge of the bed with about 6 inch spacing between them. I still fit 12 plants along the 6 foot of trellis Josh put up. Finally, I haven’t planted my carrots yet. I am currently using their pots to hold a few other plants I still have. I plant to plant my decorative plants soon. I also am thinking of keeping my early crop of Romaine in the pot. The white hanging pot has changed from onions to cat grass, and the 2 other pots in that photo are large cucumbers. Of which, the reason I didn’t plant the carrots is we need for dirt for out fabric pots, and I plan to fill 2 more for my 2 large cucumber plants. This will mean 4 fabric bags of plants.

If I could do things different

I guess I would make the raised beds slightly narrower. Because, I get quite the ab workout leaning into the center of the bed from the side. I would also plant all my onions together, and plant them at the outer edge of the beds. On my cucumber bed, I planted a row of radishes against the edge of the bed. They are doing fine, but I won’t be able to plant anything in it’s spot when I harvest in less than a month. I would also actually follow spacing for the radishes, instead of planning to plant high density like the lettuce.

0

Raised Beds

We finished building and filling these raised beds a few weeks ago. Planting season will be starting here at the end of the month, so I thought I would share before the time comes for me to get all my big plants in the beds. This weekend, I got some onions, radishes, and lettuce started in my beds, but I have a lot more planned for this space! I plan to add tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, dill, carrots, and potatoes, all once the weather is right!

These raised beds are 4 ft by 8 ft in size. We bought six 1 in x 12 in x 8 ft pressure treated boards. People don’t usually recommend using pressure treated, but they handle weather and they are no longer treated with poisons chemicals. We assembled them in place because 1 x 12s are very heavy. The only thing we did before assembling we the 2 cuts for the end boards.
Once we had all the boards together, we paired up the end pieces so the the ones of most similar size were together. Then we began butting the ends up, making sure the were flush, and pre-drilling before screwing in deck screws. Once one end was assembled, we would attach the other end in the same manner. We then did this to the other bed, so both beds were assembled where we were going to have them at the end.
Then we leveled the beds, and made them square. The first bed was on a large slope. We decided that if we could get at least 2 boards flat, the we can prop up the other 2 with some extra rock we had. It took us several hours to get it level, once it was level, we squared it, then propped up the corner that had no support. We then built a small stone wall to hold up the bed and fill in the gaps. The second beds was easier since it was on mostly flat ground. To fill these beds, we used excess dirt we had around our yard. Around the house there were several mulch beds that were almost a foot deep. We stripped off all the layers of mulch that was now mostly dirt, and added them to the beds. We then topped the beds with 1 inch of mulch to keep away weeds, and to give the beds a finished look.

This weekend when we were planting, we had to move the mulch from where we were working. This mulch got added to 2 fabric pots I have, that will need to be filled in the next few weeks before planting. We also turned up the grass in one bed, but didn’t for the other. The grass in the one we turned up is already a slight problem, whereas the one we didn’t turn up, there is no signs of dirt growing under the ~10 inches of dirt there. I would recommend not turning up the dirt if your dirt will be thicker than 6 inches on top of your grass.

1

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started