The home garden project

About 2 months ago I got the urge to start some raised bed gardens. I got the idea from a friend of mine who lives up in the mountains of northern Arizona and got the nudge to move forward from listening to Jack over at thesurvivalpodcast.com.

I started by deciding that the purpose of these raised beds was to:

1. Compost clippings from my yard - tree branches, tiff lawn clippings, etc.
2. Compost household waste: all kinds of organic mass (bananna peals, rotten fruit, etc.)
3. Provide a staging area to develop a rich soil to be then moved to the area where my kid's currently have a giant sand box and swignset from Costco.
4. Provide a modest amount of fruit and vegetables in the process of developing the larger garden.

Once I developed in my mind what the purpose of the beds was, I then decided that I needed to utilize a better class of materials to build the beds as I don't want to build them again, and I need them to last several years at least. With that, I decided to use redwood 2x6 and 3x2 board for the construction. I purchased (7) 8' 3x2's, (3) 6' 2x6's, and (6) 8' 2x6's. Using these boards I built 3' x 8' boxes that have 4' vertical posts at each corner and the middle of the 8' sides. I also built a frame at the top to allow me to install shad cloths, or to put a cloth other the beds when we get our once or twice a year hard freeze to protect the plants. With our climate I will be able to grow food year around with these boxes. I also put a 1" hole every 1' around the entire bottom of the box and used some wire mesh on the inside to ensure my soils would not come out through them, but allow for drainage during our monsoon.

I started filling these boxes with (in order from the bottom up):

Tree limbs in the bottom
A nice layer of straw,
Grass clippings from the yard
Forest mulch
Organic material from the house for composting
Peat moss
More forest mulch
Top soil

I filled the boxes to the top - 18" deep, making sure the whole thing was damp, not wet as I filled the boxes. Once I had done this, I began to plant. In my boxes I have a wide variety of peppers, some tomatoes, various herbs, cucumbers, and pumpkin.

I then added a humdred red wrigglers to each of my 4 boxes and allowed them to get into the soil. I have also added a drip irrigation system with a battery powered timer attached to the spigot out by the garden. This was added because I needed to make sure watering was consistent and also would be done when I took the family out on the camping trips this summer.

So far I have been able to harvest some herbs and have some beautiful peppers just about ready to go into my very first home grown salsa. I have some cantaloups starting to grow, but I have not seen any watermelons as of yet. There are some pumpkins starting, and the cucmbers are in full bloom so I expect to get some of those. The tomatoes are not doing so hot, but I didn't get those planted until late, so that was to be expected.

I should have waited a couple weeks after filling the boxes to allow some settling before planting, but I will just add some more mulch and soil to each box when I get to the fall planting. It would have also been nice to have the worms earlier on, but they are in there now. I am experiencing a little trouble with the pests, but I am getting that under control by using a soap solution and diatomaceoius (sp) earth spread in the beds.

One unexpected benefit for me with these is they give me a nice place to go have my first cup of coffee in the morning and do a little reading. It seems the temperature amongst these is about 5 degrees cooler. I will post more in about this subject when I start to harvest from these gardens.


John
http://www.redbarnworkshop.com/