I am ambitious, What are your opinions??

18 years ago

I have spent the winter studying lasagna gardening, intensive gardening, companion planting,winter sowing, indoor seed starting and organic methods of pest control.

Here's my plan.

The area we gardened in last year had not been worked as a garden before, and was horrible. We didn't get a chance to do any work on it last fall, so we'll go about things a little different.

1-I'll let dh till the existing soil just to let him use a big tool, and then lay down cardboard in the square foot areas. I may put down some organic material, peat moss and half-composted chopped leaves first. Then we'll get some good compost from the neighbor for free, and pile it up to 12' on each area. No boards to hold it all in place, but we'll see if that changes...

2-The Beds

-one 4x8 raised bed for corn only. May possibly incorporate the three sisters - squash and beans, or maybe just beans for their ability to lock in nitrogen. May use sunflowers at the corners for the fun of it.

-one 4x4 bed for melons and squash, two 4x8 feet tall trellises and let the pumpkins sprawl

-one 4x4 bed for trellised gourds, sunflowers, cucumbers, kohlrabi

-to all of these beds I may add some nasturtiums, marigolds, any beneficial flowers to add interest and help crowd out the weeds.

-I have one 8x8 bed near the house for the peas on chicken wire,then beans, staked tomatoes, carrots, herbs, radishes, and many companion flowers that I've winter-sown. This is the garden I want the kids to pick and eat from and help plant the flowers and enjoy as thiers.

3-I'll be winter sowing or starting indoors all that I can to help them along and black plastic as mulch in all gardens to help heat up and extend the short growing season.

My only quam is with my dh. He's not too crazy about building things since it is just a borrowed piece of land from the neighbor's farm. I say I should do what I want, but once he sees how difficult it is to keep raised beds neat without boards, we'll be off to Home Depot!! He tries to be helpful, but he is stuck in the stone-aged way of gardening in long straight rows and wasting the space in between them. I'm looking forward to getting the most out of it with the least amount of work. Hopefully, when I can get my hands on that book, he'll do some learning and give in to my way, and we'll have a successful family project.

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Comments (5)

bluejean
18 years ago
I tend to agree with your hubby a bit. Raised beds are expensive to build and establish initially. I would have never considered building them had we not owned our property. Yes, they are very nice to have and very convenient, but I would hate to go to all that work and trouble on someone else's land. no guarantee that you can keep it there. I wish you the best though. Remember to post and tell us what you decide to do.
clonezero
18 years ago
Wow! That is ambitious, have you gardened before? Even if you have perfected the raised bed gardening technique it could take 10 plus hours a week of maintenance to keep this garden up.

The 8X8 garden will require you to walk on the soil this is not a good thing. Can you break it up into 4 beds of 4X4 or 2 beds of 4X8? How big are your kids? Four foot wide beds can be a bit much for children so 3X8 might be even better for them to learn.

As for DH, if he is also a gardener and needs convincing, let him have a patch there he does his "traditional" gardening. Then compare notes as as you go. You know improving the soil even if it ain't yours is not a bad thing,, especially if you are getting all the produce. At least your doing something good for the enviroment. Do you have a compost bins set up too? Your going to be producing a lot of material that can be composted.

This is a very ambitious plan, and if it is new to you, you may want to scale back, so you can get experience with the new method. I'm all for switching over, but you might get overwhelmed with all the problems that might come up. Unless you have the time.

If you do the 3 Sisters (C/B/S) don't skip the any of the 3 sisters, they each have their roles. You can grow them in a organized fashion or use the Native American traditional method of mounds. A caveat to this method is that the beans don't fix that much nitrogen the 1st year, it is a cumulative thing over a couple years. Although you can compensate the 1st year with compost and nitrogen rich fertilizer. I did the SFG adaptation of it and it worked great last year.

What kind of pests do you have in the garden? Do you have a cat &/or dog to chase off the varmits?

Good luck with this garden, I wish I had the space to build such a beautiful garden by my house. Post some before & after pictures.

CloneZero
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kristal
Original Author
18 years ago
Well.. the 8x8 is already built. I did it last year lasagna style. I think I will put a stepping stone walk through the center to get to things in the back better. I had great tomatoes, sugar baby watermelons, herbs and peas last year.

I have a compost pile, but we are just going to till it into the soil and build a bin to start over. I priced lumber and fencing today, and it's not too bad for what I need. I am just using chopped leaves and compost that I already have and mixing in some peat moss, so the soil will be inexpensive.

For the center of the beds I plan to put flowers or something that doesn't need much care.
reign
18 years ago
In the 8X8 bed, I'd dig a path from one corner to the next and make it two beds.

I don't find it difficult to keep raised beds looking nice without boards. I do it that way until I'm 100% sure that the bed is where I want it, the right size and all that jazz. I wouldn't go through the expense if it was borrowed land. You're pricing at Home Depot...what type of wood are you planning to use?

If poor DH has to build these beds and isn't all into the idea, it could take a long time to get them done. :) You have a pretty short season in zone 3. Having the garden under construction for half the season could get frustrating for you and that frustration will get transferred to him. Compromise? Have him build one or two beds this year. If it turns out to be great, he can build more next spring.
kristal
Original Author
18 years ago
A little too ambitous, now that I think about it. My library's two copies of the Square Foot Gardening book are "lost", so I instead borrowed a home video and realized that the class I went to was making it sound harder than it is.

I have decided to forgo the building of beds, in fact I'm not going to have raised beds at all, I'll just lay down plank walkways and go from there. That way I can change the size and shape of them if they don't work out and my dh still gets to till. Sounds a lot easier to me.

I am ambitious, What are your opinions??

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bluejean

clonezero

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I am ambitious, What are your opinions??

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bluejean

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