Do you care about being organic? If not, you could apply roundup to the weeds, cover it with cardboard, put in your new soil, and mulch the top of the bed well (ex. a layer of cardboard covered with chopped leaves) to keep weeds out until next season.

For your top mulch, if the soil needs enriched you could add any sort of lasagne bed fixin's in thin layers - coffee grinds, compost, chopped leaves, grass clippings, etc. and let it sheet compost over winter.

If you are trying to be organic, you could skip the roundup and it would probably work pretty well.

I'd rather build it up than dig it out, but that's just me.

:-) I have a bed that I made sort of like that. The fill dirt I used was scrapings of clay + manure from the horse corrals, and then I sheet composted on top of it because the horse corral is full of weeds. The soil in it is really great, and weeds did not take over thanks to newspaper layers on top. Veggies loved growing in that bed, and now that it has cooled down some, I used it for all of my new daylillies.

Cheers,
Michelle

J, you could dig the bed out, removing all the top soil. Get down into the subsoil a ways but haul it away or fill some holes in the driveway or something - "unkind subsoil" is not what your plants want to grow in.

As you remove it, you'll need to go thru your soil with a fine-toothed comb (metaphorically speaking ;o). Bindweed has "dirt colored" roots and they are easy to miss.

Removing some of the subsoil allows you to add an equal amount of amendments. Let's say you had 12 inches of topsoil in that bed and you remove that then toss out 4 inches of subsoil and replace it with 4(plus) inches of composted steer manure mixed into your topsoil. Now you've got 16 inches of good garden soil to grow your veggies in!

And, if you have been very, very conscientious about removing those bindweed roots - - no more bindweed!!

Those little picket fence edgings seem to work well at keeping things like bush beans from flopping out into your paths. And, with the existing rocks, they may be high enuf to keep the wee mutts out of the veggies.

digitS'

I almost checked that lasagne book out from the library!! I'm afraid of round-up...but could consider it...

I see, digit, just set the top soil aside, get rid of the subsoil (I have a fill-spot that likes unused dirt) then amend and put back the top soil after sifting?

I think I can, I think I can!

I have lots of wood, so I can easily make a sifter screen. I wonder if I will be making a happy home for any bindweed that escapes my eyes? Ah, well, so be it!

Thanks you two, I like good ideas!!

Oh, and thanks to my boyfriend, I have tons of coffee grinds!

Wow, and if you can screen it . . .! Lotta work there. I make potting mix with a 1/8 inch screen (hardware cloth). Have no desire to be carrying around a ton of rocks in every container. Also breaks up compost, helps with mixing, and the result is wonderously soft.

But J, it's a lotta work to do very many wheelbarrow loads.

You can also do a - "shovel . . . scratch with cultivator . . . pick out roots . . . shovel . . . scratch with cultivator . . . pick . . . shovel . . . scratch . . . pick . . ."

Steve's digits

Hi J,

If you go with the "sifting" option, youÂre bound to miss some of the bindweed roots, so if you just watch the "new soil" really closely, and carefully pull/dig out any new bindweed you see starting to come up, itÂll be gone pretty quickly.

When I bought this house, whatÂs now my veggie garden was just a great big pile of dirt with weeds growing all over it. The first year I didnÂt have time to do the veggie area, so I just kept the weeds pulled out as much as I could so they couldnÂt produce anymore seeds. That got rid of some of them almost all the way, but obviously not the bindweed or a couple thistles that were there. The second year when I finally had time to spread the soil out to start my veggie garden, I dug in carefully wherever there was bindweed and tried to follow the roots as far down as I could. Then I hand-picked any remaining roots out after shoveling every few shovels of soil. I got most of them! That first year, every time I saw a small bindweed or thistle starting to come up, I dug it out with a little digger (hand trowel!), and found each time that the plant was attached to a fairly small piece of root that had been missed, and that they were shallow enough to get out quite easily. By getting those little pieces of root out as soon as I found them, they never had a chance to grow deeply again, and they were GONE. I'm now on the third year garden, and NO bindweed or thistles. Still have cottonwood trees coming up, but they get roundupÂed whenever I see one. Have I mentioned more than a hundred times how much I hate conttonwoods!

The other thing I did as soon as the soil was spread out for planting the first year was to hand pull all the tiny weed seedlings I found as soon as they were big enough to get ahold of. And no matter how much I didnÂt feel like doing it, I have never let a weed in that area go to seed, so now in the third year, I have virtually no weeds of any sort in the veggie garden. Just the few from seeds that blow in or that the birds drop. It was a real pain the first two yearsÂbut IÂm lovin it now!

Good luck with your new beds,
Skybird

P.S. If youÂre gonna stay in that house for a while, you need a bigger fridge, girl!

P.P.S. Just saw DigitÂs latest post, and I think youÂd get most of the roots out with a ½" screen. Sure would go faster and be a LOT easier. If thereÂs a lot of small rocks you wanna get out, maybe a 1/4" screen. Eighth inch, Digit! Wow, youÂre a glutton for punishment! I didnÂt screen mine at all. Just hand picked them. And once you learn what it is youÂre looking for, itÂs not too bad.

Keep in mind that if you screen to remove roots, you will not remove existing weed seeds. Screening would make for truly fabulous soil, though.

I am prepping a couple of new beds that will be full of weed seeds, and was thinking about trying cover cropping this Fall to see how live mulch works out. Will still probably sheet compost it over winter so the weeds can't get going full tilt in Spring.

:-) Cheers,
Michelle

Michelle,

What are you going to use for your live mulch? I was thinking about doing something similar. I have a strawberry patch that is slowly migrating out of it's area. I was thinking it was due to the soil, plus I've read that those beds need to be "started over" every couple of years. I was thinking of just tossing in some beans, since they are supposed to bring nitrogen into the soil from the air, and they have amazing germination rates. I spilled some hard white winter wheat that we were transferring into buckets for food storage. I joked with my wife that we could plant it as a cover crop in late fall, but also harvest it to build up our food storage. From what I've read, you generally till under the live mulch before it goes to seed though. What are you going to use?

Hi,

I have not decided. CSU has a bulletin that recommends winter rye. Mother Earth News has a recent article that suggests Fall planted oats, peas, or clover that will grow through Fall and die off over winter. I am tempted to get it all tilled up this season & plant oats - then not till it again next year. Seems like that would help with not having millions of weed seeds sprouting next year. :-)

There is also an old asparagus bed to renovate. I tilled out the grass this year and covered it with deep straw. The asparagus came back up. I am not sure whether to plant it with oats or to go with rye and till it under very early in Spring.

????

Cheers,
Michelle

I'm far from an expert on cover crops, but I did try one year with fava beans. I also grow them to eat, and the price per lb of seed for cover cropping is much less than the price per lb if you want to buy them to grow, but you have to look at a couple different shops to find the right combo. I've linked to the kind from Seeds of Change, 5 lbs is a whole lotta fava beans, and they die off when its 10ºF

They have the broad, Windsor style beans at Groworganic.com, although they don't call them that, for $2.50 a lb. - they call them horse beans or something.

Both kinds are fun to grow, early in the spring. In the fall, they stay green for a long time, and died off, after growing pretty well, sometime in Jan. They were brittle in the spring, I just left the roots intact.

Here is a link that might be useful: fava bean link

Last fall, I planted spinach. Would you believe it survived the winter? I need to keep better records, but it sprouted and developed maybe 4-6 leaves, small, close to the ground, and stayed that way all winter, kept green on all five plants with no protection. In the early spring, it woke up and started growing like crazy, of course, we didn't eat any, but they had leaves almost a foot long! A month or two ago it was going to seed, and it's all completely dead now, but it was really interesting to see it over-winter in zone 5.

It would be fun to watch the fava beans grow. I wonder if they would survive with a little protection when the days hit 10 degrees... Did you harvest all fall until January, or is that just when it finally died? Can you store the beans long-term? How did you use them? How tall did the plants get?

cyclewest, one of the best ways to grow spinach in the climate is to plant it in mid- august and let it get established. they over-winter easily, and are very frost tolerant. They will start growing in March, and if there is plenty of nitrogen in the soil, you can be eating some of the best imaginable spinach in April - May. There are some wonderful varieties out there, so different than the standard ones, Giant de Veuve...something-something is some European heirloom, has enormous leaves, and melts in the mouth. Unfortunately, deer like them as well.

I generally grow the broad Windsor type of fava for food, and plant them early in the spring, along with peas. The plants get 3 feet high. There are two ways to eat them, pick the really small pods and eat those, or let them grow and the seeds get reasonably large, but not before they develop a tough skin, and shell them and eat them then.

I had a 5 lb sack of the Seeds of Change ones, and I planted those one year as a cover crop in late Aug. They grew maybe until mid-Nov, but stayed green until it got very cold in Jan and died.

I love the idea of spinach! Fava, eh...not so much...
I want, specifically, to continue with the tomatoes, and I also want lima beans, beets, those tiny, sweet, white turnips, and red carrots. I'd grow the spinach, too, because I eat an awful lot of that already.
Does all that stuff grow up here at 8240 some odd feet? I assume, now that I've learned from the tomatoes, that I'll have to search for quick seeds...I can't think of the term...fast growing? short life-cycle?
Days to maturity!! I had to look it up.
Is that only a tomato concern or ...?
I am guessing here with the veggie thing, but I don't think it can be any harder than tomatoes, and they have been easy so far...knock on wood.
We are going to raise that bed and do all sorts of good things to that soil. Then, we are going to put old fashioned fencing up because that is the kind I like...you know, the kind with the krinkled wire that has arches along the top. I think it will be enough to keep the dogs out and still be something I can step over.
I might try that newspaper thing, too...lasagne for garden, lasane for me :)

You would likely do very well with the spinach, beets, carrots, turnips, and other cool season crops. Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and melons are difficult at best, and marginal the higher in altitude you go, due to cooler night temps and shorter seasons.

Peas and lettuce should do well for you too! :-)

Hey Cycler, I was just reading your post above. I don't really think you're in zone 5, unless you're up the ridge above Highland (like at Suncrest). I'm just a few miles away from you, and I'm definitely zone 6. I was even thinking it maybe a zone 7 until we hit -7° last January, which I think is the worst we've had in six years. But that's not cold enough to be a zone 5 low temp.

I don't know if you've seen the Arbor Day Foundation's revisions to the zone map. I hear USDA doesn't like it and will come out with their own soon, but the Arbor Day map shows quite an expansion of the zone 7 area south of the Great Salt Lake. See the link below and play around with the other links on that page to see a map of all the changes from the 1990 USDA map to the 2006 Arbor Day map. This all plays into discussions about global warming, too. They show a lot of warming all across the US when you compare their new map with the USDA map.

Here is a link that might be useful: Arbor Day Foundation zone changes

hmph, according to their new system, I am in anywhere from 4 to 6. That helps because I wasn't sure if I was 4 or 5...everyone says it is one or the other. Now I can add a whole new number! I should not be sarcastic, I obviously live in an area with a wide range of elevation levels and some live closer to the reservoir, some live farther.
Still, I prefer the Sunset zone system, mainly because I have always lived in some strange micro climate or another.
Back to topic, I think I am going to add peas and maybe lettuce!!

Boy! I have a HARD time putting Nederland in z6!

I have a problem with the USDA zones in general.

They really only tell how cold it gets in the winter, but people try to use them for so much more. If you visit the lawn forum, you'll see that it's not unusual for somebody in the Seattle area to be zone 8, but that doesn't mean they should plant a warm season grass.

I think I'm officially in zone 6 (maybe even 7), but if I plant before mothers day, I can count on planting again.

I guess I'm going off of catalog orders and zip code lookups. I supposed I should get an outdoor thermometer to track it myself. Any recommendations? Our zip code always shows American Fork, which has a larger north/south range, but it's not that different in elevation. I'm not on top of the world at Suncrest, but between the road that goes up there (Highland Blvd) and 6000 West.

Would it be wise to used raised beds in a lowered portion of the yard, or would that make them more at risk in frost/cold situations?

A max/min thermometer would be most useful. Lower areas of your yard are definitely at more risk for frost. When I get patchy frost it's always in the lower regions. I've lost plants in those regions while plants higher up were untouched.

Cheryl,
"lower areas of your yard are definitely at more risk for frost" I had no idea, really!! Not a clue! Good, raised bed it is, good and high.
I have an outside thermometer and we are thinking of putting another one out there. The one we have is in shade half the day, so maybe one in more of a sunny area would give a different temp...well, I guess that is obvious! What I meant was that I could make a good guess based on the median temps.

I have a friend who lives in a valley of about 4 or 5 miles width. There is just this one hill of a couple hundred feet in the middle of the valley - no trees, just a grass covered hill. My friend lives on the north side of this hill but it doesn't shade his yard during the Summer, it just isn't tall enuf.

However . . . his backyard is in this little "dimple." You can stand and look east and west at the other neighbors' yards and realize that you are standing 5 or 6 feet lower than all the other surrounding ground - even tho' it is a spacious lot. Of course, there's that hill directly on the other side of the fence stretching up into the blue sky.

That location is kind of like an ice cave! Well no, I exaggerate but I can't think of a better and simpler example of a micro-climate. His garden has frost when his neighbors', right across the chainlink fences, do not.

J, if you were living in this location, your raised beds would need to be 5 or 6 feet high to be above the frost!!

digitS'

Hi J,

Even us lowland, urban gardeners often have multiple micro-climates in our yards. Raising a bed may help some, but there are other factors too. How much sun a certain area gets at any particular time of the year, locations of fences and buildings that can block wind, or channel it, trees or shrubs that provide shelter can all make surprisingly large differences in temperature and moisture in any one area. Large rocks or brick walls that soak up heat during the day can help protect things nearby that might not survive without the added heat. (My glads that make it over winter are right on the south side of my shed, and between a privacy fence and a red flagstone walk.) Just keep an eye on your yard to see where the wind and rain are likely to go, and when youÂre working outside be aware of the different temperatures you feel in different locations. Your plants are feeling it too. It doesnÂt take long to get a "feel" for what might do well where.

I have two remote thermometers in my back yard. One is right on the north side of my house where it doesnÂt get any sun at all, and the other is in the branches of an upright juniper on the sunny side of the yard. ItÂs in a white one-gallon pot to be sure the sun never directly hits it (IÂm sure at the swap everybody is going to be wondering why I have a gallon pot stuck in my tree!) I find it quite amazing how much difference there can be between the two sides of the yard. Sometimes when itÂs insufferably HOT on the sunny side, it can be quite comfortable and nice on the shady side. The receivers areÂconvenientlyÂinside the house so I donÂt need to go out in the rain or blizzard to know what the temp is. I got the first one at Radio Shack, and have bought others at Ace and BigLots (for $10Âone time deal) since then. I have receivers up in my bedroom too, so I can see what the temp is in the morning when I get up if I want toÂor in the middle of the nite if IÂm worried about something freezing in the fall. Only problem is that in winter you need to be sure the transmitters donÂt get buried in the snow or they transmit the temp of the snowÂexactly 32 degreesÂand not the air temp! That happened to me once andÂduhÂit took me three days to figure out why the temperature never changed at all! So I dug my transmitter out of a snow drift and it worked fine again! I hope to get a wireless weather station some time, but thatÂs probably a year or two away. TheyÂre expensive!

YouÂre very observant and love to learn, and IÂm guessing that by next summer youÂre going to know every micro-climate in your yard,
Skybird