Is it Lent again already?

[barbarienne]

Now that I have a yard, I need to start thinking about a garden. I've found a raised garden bed made of recycled plastic online. It's not as cheap as getting lumber and going to, but I really wanted the plastic. It's also 16" high, which is a bit higher than most I've seen available. I want the height because it might help foil the bunnies. (There'

Comments

[kefiraahava]

Herbs like basil and rosemary and thyme? Or are those falling under the "I can get them at the store for less effort and cost than my time/labor in growing them and trying to keep the bunnies and squirrels from eating them" category?

(Note that I do not suggest mint for the obvious reason that you would like to grow something OTHER than mint in that bed....)

Cauliflower? Potatoes?

It's not in the raised bed category, but I don't remember how blackberries do in that climate if you like those fresh-picked. And IIRC they get planted in the fall too?

[quarkwiz]

This is just my personal preference--I'd put rosemary and thyme in planters, 'cos they're pretty hardy and they'll still be around when first frost hits. Nice to have them indoors for a bit longer after that. (I'm sadly very good at killing rosemary. Others have had better luck.)

[barbarienne]

Herbs are definitely in the plan, but I will grow those in pots rather than the main bed. Mint, as you say, needs to not only be in a pot, but in an isolated pot, preferably of stone and raised off the ground!

I don't like cauliflower. I might try potatoes someday in the future to guarantee a supply of fingerlings, which are rarer to find at the grocery. However, I think potatoes need their own dedicated space (because mounding the dirt in particular ways is essential if one doesn't want cyanide poisoning).

Rosemary is in my thoughts as a decorative shrub--apparently it can be toparied fairly well--and as a deer repellent.

[dulcimeoww]

Where is this raised plastic bed that you mention? We're going to be removing a tree from our backyard later this year, I think, it's a gum tree and so there are evil little caltrops everywhere. Once it's gone, there should be sun and space enough for a raised bed, and I have some ambitions in that direction.

[barbarienne]

eartheasy.com has many different kinds of beds available. This is the taller, plastic one:

http://tinyurl.com/apwznlq

Not cheap, but it is precisely what I'm looking for, so it's worth it to me.

There are other companies as well. I only bookmarked this one, but my google was on raised garden beds. There are a lot of DIY links, and also other commercial sites (Lowes has quite a collection).

I chose this one from Eartheasy because it is the highest bed I've found that still rests on the ground.

My hope for the future is to build a keyhole garden (google African keyhole garden), but that requires more labor than I can invest at this time.

[quarkwiz]

If you're definitely planting tomatoes, keep any eggshells you have and crush them up and save them. They're great for preventing blossom-end rot when you mix 'em into the soil. If you plant beans, make sure you know ahead of time if you want bush beans or pole beans. Different planting strategies for each.

FYI, broccoli takes up a lot of room per plant. Also, brussels sprouts won't mature till really late in the season. Not good for impatient people like me. :P If you plant lettuce, keep after it. If you don't, it'll bolt, and suddenly you'll have a garden full of triffids. (All this from experience.)

I'm going to plant edamame for the first time ever. Wondering how that'll go.

If you don't already have a source for seeds, I recommend John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds.

Editing to add: Check out the gardening community. Pretty high traffic with some helpful people.

[barbarienne]

I'm good with brussels sprouts being late. I want to have a variety of things to pick for many months.

Good tip about the lettuce. If I plant some, I'll be sure to corral it.

[kristine_smith]

If you like pesto, basil and arugula.

I have a 4x8' raised bed, and four tomato plants fill half of it to the point that I can barely fit basil around the edges. If you want tomatoes to freeze, the extra plants are a good idea. But if you just want fresh for salads etc, you may be able to get by with 1-2 plants.

I'm thinking of cutting back to 1-2 plants in the coming year. I have grown mesclun and arugula in the past, and I do like them. Imo, they do taste better than store-bought.

If you travel and don't have a friend/neighbor who can water, seeper hoses w/ a timer work great.

Have fun!

[barbarienne]

Ooh, arugula! And you also made me think of frisé, which I adore.

I think I'll make do with two tomato plants. I can always do more in pots or those upside-down thingies.

Seeper hoses are a good idea. I've seen a few planting bed kits where the seeper hose is incorporated. Not something I'm going to do this year, but a thought for the future.

[kristine_smith]

FWIW, scuttlebutt on other blogs--some by folks who work at garden stores--seems to be that the upside-down bags don't work well. Water running down the plant can kill it, apparently.

I did try an upside-down planter a few years ago. The tomato plants put forth plenty of foliage, but only one or two tomatoes. They didn't like being upside-down. These were heirloom plants. Maybe some hybrids are made of sterner stuff.

The bags that keep the plant right side up--those could work. I have no experience with those.

I had no success with pots. The plants started out well, growing faster than the raised bed plants for the first month or so. Then the heat of summer hit, and they lost foliage, stopped growing, and lost almost all their blossoms. It was the heat--the container gets it from all sides, the roots get too hot, and the plants got too stressed. If you're in a cooler area, you may have more success.

[barbarienne]

Ah, good to know about the hanging bags.

I have a three-season back porch with louvers on all sides. Perhaps I can keep some potted plants in there so they get the air and warmth and indirect sunlight. It will all be a big experiment!

[horace_hamster]

We've found most veg taste better when home grown, for three reasons: they grow more slowly (instead of being smothered in fertilisers) so they have a lower water content and more time to pack in flavour; they're fresher when they go from garden to plate without stores and trucks in between; and the seed variants for home gardens are usually chosen for flavour rather than uniform size/shape and shelf life

[barbarienne]

Excellent to know that cukes can be trellised. I was hoping they might. Those and the peas and string beans are going vertical.

Carrots! Of course! I may have to do a separate box for the root veg.

I was wondering if cherry trees could be espaliered--I was thinking I might someday experiment with that, so I'm glad to see you have already done the experiment. :-) Do they stunt well, and produce good fruit?

I'm also thinking grapes someday, and a raspberry patch eventually. But first I'm going to get through Year One and see if I can produce anything at all. :-)

[horace_hamster]

Cherries were, for me, the least amenable to espaliering, though I don't know if that's true for all cherries or just the overly-large trees I ended up getting. If you can get one year old whips, you'll probably do better. Mine were 3 - 4 inches in diameter at the bottom of the trunk, which in reality is Too Damned Big for espaliering. I've got them two-dimensional, but not really horizontal. Apples did awesomely, and pears were pretty cooperative too. My next plan is plum, hazelnut, and pomegranate.

As for the quality of fruit on the cherries, you'll have to ask the birds about that :(

What kind of soil do you have?

[barbarienne]

Soil is the next question. I need to do samples and testing, because I am, technically, downhill from an old Superfund site. The site has supposedly been fully cleaned up (declared so by the EPA more than a decade ago), and really, anything bad would have washed down in the creek that is downhill from me. But before I start eating fruit from trees planted there, I'm going to check the soil.

The regular veggie garden is not of concern, since a raised bed means adding clean soil. I'm planning a gravel layer in the bottom to separate the soils.