Don't grow melons in a bed that narrow unless you're growing them up a trellis. (I grow cukes and small gourds on a trellis; some people do so with cantaloupe -- I think they support the fruit in slings.)

too small for pumpkins unless they are a VERY compact vine and the fruits are small enough to not topple a trellis. Does such a thing exist? Tomatoes will require some very strict pruning and staking.

Hi emmers,
Maybe I am missing the obvious, so I will open up a box of Trishcuit's and grab me a little ham and cheese to go with them....YUMM ;-)

This bed is 32" wide and I am growing everything in it, it is only a few month's old, but has produced a whole lot so far (season is still young ;-)

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Here is my 12" beds with Watermelons. cantaloupe,Honeydews and Potatoes (a couple of Volunteer tomatoes too ;-)

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I have a bunch more beds like these, the optimum for me is 4' wide beds, but if you don't have the space...you got to do, what you got to do ;-)

jonhughes, those gardens are AWESOME!

Fantastic photos! Are you growing in the cardboard boxes (red lettuce) or is that just harvest??

I was going in the same direction as Jon: If the beds are open to the ground below and aren't terribly deep, I'm not sure it matters how wide they are. The roots will spread out below your bed as needed. I let my cucumbers and squash trail over the surrounding rock (no trellis, no rotting veggies because they aren't sitting on wet earth). As long as the plants aren't crowding each other, I think maybe only something like potatoes (which I confess I've never grown) might take issue.

jonhughes....I bow to your 12" bed with the melons. No doubt the cantaloupe will do fine, but the strength of the vines of the others would shy me away from those.

emmers m - I was going to say to avoid watermelon, even with a trellis, as the vines are more frail (I think) than a cantaloupe and would be concerned that if you had to sling the melons you might be in trouble. But now that I've seen jonhughes' garden, it's a definite maybe.

I look forward to seeing how that 12" bed is doing in 2 weeks.

My garden consists entirely of beds that are 28 to 40 inches wide, with grass between, and I can grow anything in it. The pumpkins sent their vines down the beds and sometimes out onto the grass, which was not a problem. In fact, it's probably better for a pumpkin to be sitting on grass or straw than dirt.

You might want to space your pumpkins a little farther apart than normal since their roots will be a little cramped by the bed widths. You might also think of making your beds 36" rather than 28" wide. That will give you more flexibility and won't cramp the roots of squashes, tomatoes, etc. You only have to be able to reach a little more than halfway across to plant, weed, and harvest, and you probably have at least a 20" reach despite your "very short" height.

Yes I guess if the pumpkin vines themselves don't need to stay within the confines of the bed...

Johnhughes, Triscuit has come out with some fantastic new flavors. Roasted tomato and olive oil being particularly delish. As for cheese, it goes with everything. :)

You can always erect a trellis on the north side and run up cukes, winter squash, melons, etc. I have cuke, tomatoes, 2 types of melons, butternut on trellises this year.

Dan

Thanks for all the responses! Wow, I'm surprised that the concern is for squash and melons - I thought that corn or sweet potatoes or something would be the dealbreaker.

I'm definitely planning to trellis my squash - I've confined myself mostly to moschatas to avoid the borer damage (although this year I found out definitively that SVB will also attack melons) and I have 5 varieties currently gleefully climbing my trellis...and the fence, for 20 feet in both directions.

I have a volunteer cantaloupe also climbing the deer fencing and doing well (and keeping the melons out of the reach of the voles, too) so they'll probably do fine trellised as well. I do have another volunteer running tidily under my tomatoes in an 18" wide space, so I wasn't too concerned about melons. Not sure about watermelons, though.

I have the 24" texas tomato cages, so the tomatoes should fit well in the bed above ground. I don't know how concerned to be that I'll be restricting their root growth, but I will be giving them more space than they have now.

I'm attempting to construct my garden out of 8 x 16 paver blocks, both for the walkways and hopefully to edge the beds. Going for that industrial/prison yard feeling :)

The 28" is two pavers for the width of the bed, set outside the long side pavers, so I'm subtracting 4 inches for the width of the pavers themselves.

The next (easy) dimension would be three blocks, resulting in a 48" bed with 44" of growing space, and I'm concerned that would be too wide for my reach at 5 foot nothing. Hoping to avoid cutting pavers, which I'd probably need to do to arrive at a more ideal 32-36" width.

I guess I'm just worried that I'll be restricting my options (and my plants) with the 28" width, but haven't come up with an alternate plan, or any concrete (!) examples of plants that won't do well.

I haven't branched out into corn or sweet potatoes yet - will those work? I've seen that corn is better planted in blocks, but I suppose I could do two parallel lengths of bed...

Thanks for the input, and I'd welcome any further suggestions!

~emmers

I must be missing a piece of this puzzle, but at the risk of sounding stupid...

Can't you just put the side pavers on the outside of your 8 x 16 blocks, thus making your bed width the full 32" of the 8 x 16 blocks?

The theory is that because I'm using the pavers both for the walkways and the bed edging, that the two pavers for the bed edging need to match up with the adjacent walkway pavers - otherwise I'd have a 4" gap in the walkway.

It seems easier to absorb the extra few inches along the length of the bed and its adjacent path, which may be as much as 45 feet.

Maybe I/we (bf is excited about the idea of a perfectly aligned and symmetrical layout - sigh) are being a bit too finicky there. But I'll be wheelbarrowing along these paths, so a 4" gap, or even 2 2" gaps seem like they might be tricky.

~emmers

Sweet Potatoes in 20" bed ;-)

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Hi AZMAB, azmab wrote:
"jonhughes....I bow to your 12" bed with the melons. No doubt the cantaloupe will do fine, but the strength of the vines of the others would shy me away from those."

But now that I've seen jonhughes' garden, it's a definite maybe.

I look forward to seeing how that 12" bed is doing in 2 weeks.

Well, it's been 10 days and it just keeps on growing, and the Potatoes...Amazing... I have never seen so many flowers...WOW ;-)

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@jonhughes: those gardens are an inspiration, simply amazing, but how do you manage to get to the melons without walking all over the vines (talking about the 12" growing between fence and house).

@emmers_m: I don't think you'll have any problems with any crops... the width is fine.

That is one of the drawbacks, but I only planted stuff that matures at about the same time, so if they get stepped on ,(not really if but when),that is the way it goes, it ain't perfect,but it is all the room I have, and you have to do what you have to do ;-)

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emmers m.........not to ignore your post....i wish you the best with your garden plans.......
jon.....your garden just amazes me!.....in another post , you said that you didnt add any fertilizer to the watering....
can you tell us what all goes into your compost.....
hubby puts in garden waste, fall leaves, grass clippings,
kitchen veggie and fruit waste,and cow manure....

carol

Hi Carol,
People keep saying that I could reap a much better harvest if I would fertilize, so I am going to attempt that next year, that would be fantastic, I can't imagine getting more bang for the buck, how exciting...I can hardly wait..WOO HOOOO

But for now, all I have is my engineered soil, I used my excavator and dug down four feet into my clayish soil,added 25%,Pumice,25%Decomposed Granite and 25% of my Homemade Compost (pretty much the same as yours), and mixed it all up and then made my beds and filled them with this concoction, after that I just keep adding compost whenever it shrinks down.

Jon.......there is a saying.....dont mess with success.
i dont see why you would need to add any fertilizer.
your crops love it the way it is...
i didnt mean to tell you to add it.....was just wondering if you did.....
thanx...

carol

John is that Dill in the second and third to last pictures or is it fennel?

Asparagus, planted square foot style, bustin' a move ;-)

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I didn't see that asparagus before in the picture, haha... but all the thick fern looking plants, are asparagus?

Yeah, it is all Asparagus in that bed ;-)

hi, Carol,

yes, my post has been thoroughly jonhughes'd!

And my poor little leisure computer is suffering memory/video driver issues so it finds all the pictures quite difficult to scroll through - I have to make sure I have a fresh cup of tea to sip while I wait...and wait...

Jon, I am of course thoroughly impressed and flabbergasted - but I'm not sure my garden could achieve the same results without the same access to supernatural benevolence and heavy machinery :)

still equivocating on the 28 inches; thinking I could get 12" pavers for the bed edging to create a 36" interior planting width.

Any opinions on whether you'd prefer to have 6 36" beds or 7 28" beds?

thanks, all!

~emmers

Any opinions on whether you'd prefer to have 6 36" beds or 7 28" beds?

36"... IMO much better ;-) FWIW ;-)

azmab wrote:
"jonhughes...

I look forward to seeing how that 12" bed is doing in 2 weeks.

Well, it just keeps pumping out the melons ;-)

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Jon,
You wrote: "25%,Pumice,25%Decomposed Granite and 25% of my Homemade Compost". What is the other 25%?
And, I'm wondering if those rocky additives are meant to lighten your Oregon clay (been there, done that), and/or serves to add trace minerals, much the way glacial rock dust does?
Thanks so much for sharing your wonderful garden!!!
Lynn in Cuyamaca

Hi Lynn,
I went to Camp Cuyamaca in 6th Grade, I still remember the Camp Song (YEA,YEA,YEA,YEA CUYAMACA ;-)
Yes, Oregon Clay
and yes, it loosens it real well, check out my video link below.

BTW.. Also ..Yes , I use Decomposed granite for breaking up the Clay as well as for providing Micro-nutrients to the Beneficial herd.

Decomposed granite is a rock powder and is an excellent amendment for clay soils. All rock powders are great sources of minerals and micronutrients. All growing soils need them. As the microbes and macrobes like earthworms, digest the insoluble minerals, they break down into the various soluble micronutrients that all forms of plants need.

For example, limestone rocks are rich in calcium. Granite rocks are rich in potassium, etc. Seaweeds of course are the king of micronutrient fertilizers and soil amendments. There can be up to 70+ trace elements in seaweed. In locations where seaweed is not readily available; rock powders is one answer to the problem.

Research continues to reveal that insoluble tiny particles like rock powder minerals, can be easily digested or absorbed via microbial activity, over time, into the anatomy of growing plants, thriving in the presence of rich organic compost, and other forms of powerful biostimulants like aerobic compost teas.

Obviously a heavy clay soil is very difficult to initially dig, whereas a sandy loam is much easier. Heavy clay soils can be improved considerably by adding a lot of sawdust and mason's sand. DO NOT use beach or river sand! Mason's sand, being crushed granite, has sharp edges and actually loosens the soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: Jon's Wonderful Soil 2010

Hi Jon,

Went to Camp Marston way back when for 6th grade camp, myself...we're just down the road from Camp Cuyamaca, near the Lake. The Cedar fire really did a job on the whole area in 2003, but it is recovering with the hardy oaks first; hard to replace the many gorgeous 325 year old pines and cedars though. Feels a lot like the Eugene area in climate overall (lived there for 10 years).
Glad to know your dedication to include mineralizing soil, that was a great explanation you gave; so often this gets overlooked by folks, myself included, until recently. I learned about rock dust from John Kohler (of growingyourgreens fame), so am giving them a try. Got started late, so results aren't in yet.
Fun to see the tilth of your soil in the video--thanks!

Now, what about that other 25%?
Cheers, Lynn

Oregon Clay ;-)

Oregon Clay ;-)
Native Soil ! !

Oregon Clay ;-)
Native Soil ! !

Oh, right...thank you. The native soil here is 11/10ths rock ;), so I'm using a variation of Mel's Mix to create a growing medium in raised beds, and experimenting with adding rock dust and mychorriza innoculant.
I (along with everyone else, I'm sure) so appreciate your sharing your abundant gardens with us!
Cheers, Lynn

Along the lines of narrow beds (they line some of my driveway that we don't use except for parking mulch etc) - we use broken concrete to raise beds and plant strawberries. Has worked out really well except for me it is a bit hot. Need to plant some figs to shade the berries in summer! But narrow beds work surprisingly well for them and I've thrown in a few mini-blueberry bushes as well, mainly for structure as this is at the front of the house.