My raised bed garden #2

14 years ago

Okay,

I am trying again. If this works and the photos display, I think I deserve a round of applause for my posting skills, not my gardening skills.

A few folks have asked to see my raised bed garden. The reason people are curious is because I have planted the following plants in four 4' X 8' beds. Please notice that all of the water hose to the beds and between the beds is buried. I am hooked up to a single faucet with a battery powered timer set to water in small amounts in the early morning, noon, and early evening. I have a twenty five foot soaker hose in each bed. The fence around my garden is to keep my Labrodor retreiver from harvesting the cucumbers and green tomatoes. I still share with him, but he has a tendency to pull the fruit with the plant still attached. When we used to move a lot with my job, I was a container gardener who believed in crowding my plants. I planted in fifteen gallon containers. I typically would plant four tomato plants inside a cage with four cucumber plants growing up each cage. Most of the containers would also have some peppers, basil, or other plants along with the tomatoes and cucumber plants. At that time I used a drip irrigation system running to each container on a timer. My garden has no insecticide on it, but I am not hesitant to use it if needed. I am planted in common dirt with some organic material mixed in. I use common (cheap) 10-10-10, or this year; 13-13-13 commercial fertilizer. The first photos were taken on planting day, March 19. The photos with the small plants were taken on May 6. The last were taken today. My intent was to provide a progression of the garden from planting to harvest. The 2" X 4"'s on top of the tomato cages in the later photos are to support my bird netting which I will soon place over the tomato cages. By the end of the growing season, the tomatoes will extend out the top of the cages by about two feet and will simply lay over the top while continueing to produce tomatoes.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

24 Better Boy tomato plants

8 Juliet tomato plants ( as well as a few volunteer tomato plants from last years crop)

9 jalapeno pepper plants

9 yellow sweet banana pepper plants

13 bell pepper plants

45 Burpee Pic & Pic yellow crook neck squash plants

12 Burpee Early Pride cucumber plants

12 Burpee Sweet Hybrid cucumber plants

1 pack of stringless green beans ( supposedly enough to produce 30 lbs of beans.)

1 pack of carrot seed/plants

1 pack of lettuce seed /plants

2 Asian long green eggplant plants

120 Texas A&M 1015 sweet onions.

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Ted

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Comments (12)

Grady Stanley
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Very nice! I always liked raised beds used them for my vegetable garden for several years. For some stupid reason I pulled them all out a couple years ago and over the past two years planted in a 12'x 50' open plot. I'm putting my raised beds back in this year. To me they are so just much easier to maintain than an open plot, and frankly my garden did so much better in the raised beds.
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tedln
Original Author
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
sharona1949, I agree. I purposely left room between each bed for my lawn mower. The density of the veggie plants in the beds discourages weed growth. Whether I grow in containers, raised beds, or open beds; I feel the need to grow in dirt. In my garden and other places, I try to use the "kiss" philosophy (keep it simple stupid). I found the fencing and trellis material as well as the tomato cages. They were old and rusty and bent. I straightened everything. Threw away some fencing that couldn't be rescued due to rust. Now someone else has some nice new tomato cages and fencing. I have their old rejects, and we are both happy. I attempted to use only materials and supplies that are available to everyone at a Walmart, Home Depot, or Lowes. I bought the tomato, pepper, and eggplants on sale at a little (the only) grocery store near our home in Sanger, Texas. The landscape timbers and 2" X 4"'s were bought on sale at Home depot. The seed packs I listed were bought off the rack at Home Depot, Lowes, and Walmart. My investment is low, and it is all reusable each year. The total construction time for the garden and fence is a little over two days.

My garden is basically self maintaining. Each evening when I harvest, I check for bugs, check the soil to make sure it is moist, tuck a few tomato branches back into the cages, remove a few squash leafs in order for the peppers to get enough sunlight, and perform other little maintenance items as needed.

Ted
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It is a common question and there seem to be two distinct but extreme schools of thought on it. 1) ditch the whole garden or 2) just call it fertilizer. Often the schools of thought split along "where you live lines" of raised in suburbia or raised in the country. I'm country raised and recognize that all sorts of things go on in my gardens. Bottom line is that you have to do what you are comfortable with. But there actually is a middle ground. :) 1) remove as much of the dog poop as possible, 2) mulch the plants that have direct ground contact (they are the only real concern) with fresh soil, compost, straw, or whatever you have to mulch with, 3) understand that the majority of your plants have their own built in filtering system or you wouldn't be able to eat anything because of all the bacteria in the soil, 4) wash your garden produce well, and 5) rig up a little 1-2' fence to keep the dog out. Those little plastic stick-in-the-ground panels they sell are cheap and work well around raised beds. Enjoy your garden and the few years remaining with your good old dog. Dave
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Well, we took down part of our fence and instead of breaking down the gate, I used that as my base...made measuring a whole lot easier. So in the picture you're seeing the front of the gate. I would have preferred to use that side down to make it more level, but my hubby wanted to use that side up to bolt the 4x4s into it easier. In case it droopes, I was thinking of attaching conduit pipe in a triangle shape to both sides and possibly the middle. Then I could just zip tie the mesh to it.
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Bottom line is that you don’t have sufficient space for all those things. 28” isn’t wide enough for a double row of any of them. The lavender, for example, will not stay 12” wide. As someone else said, strawberries could take the entire bed. Also you’ve mixed annuals and perennials so you’d be disturbing the thyme, strawberries, lavender and lilies next year if you plant more annuals. Not that there will be room to fit them in! If rosemary won’t overwinter outdoors for you it might be better to grow it in pot so you can bring it inside in winter. And no, succulents don’t be happy with the amount of water needed by the basil and tomatoes. And, on the subject of water, forget the schedule. Water when required, not by the calendar. And what is the note about keeping the tomatoes and strawberries apart? They have different cultural requirements it’s true. But if you’ve read something about ‘companion planting’ I wouldn’t give it much credence.
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mauirose
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I think I deserve a round of applause for my posting skills, not my gardening skills

Shoots Ted, i'll applaud you for both! Everything looks healthy and well maintained.
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tedln
Original Author
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Thanks Mauirose! Posting and gardening are always easier when you have someone like mauirose to show you how. I was encouraged when I saw you post a thread on this forum about a bug problem you were having. I always thought folks in Hawaii just had to poke a stick in the ground and then sit back and watch it grow and produce. Some times you might have to set your bowl of poi down and go harvest what you planted. I guess gardeners have similar challenges no matter where they live.

Ted
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dirtydan
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Thats a great looking garden Ted! Thanks for sharing.
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mauirose
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
LOL Ted, i wish it were that easy. Although for me it would probably be a frosty beer i'd be putting down, i'm not a big fan of poi!
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nocluescarlett
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Wow! I am really impressed - and not feeling quite as bad about planting my veggies so close together!
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spaghetina
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Hey Ted,

I had a question about how you built the raised beds, but I posted it over in the thread you started in the veggie forum:

Veggie Forum Post
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spaghetina
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Stupid me, I thought I was in the container forum, but I guess both posts are in the veggie forum. Sorry about that!
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yardenman
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Those look like great beds Ted! They look better than mine!
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User
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
45 squash plants? You have fun with that.

Great looking beds and plants.
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peapod_23
14 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Your beds look great! What do you have planted in the middle of the A frame trellis? My husband built me one this year (we have very limited space) and I wanted to plant something in the middle to utilize that area that would be wasted otherwise, but was worried it would not get enough sun. Yours looks really nice. thanks for sharing.
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My raised bed garden #2

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My raised bed garden #2

Comments (12)

tedlnOriginal Author

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