|
|
Post by kwilds on Jul 25, 2011 11:43:04 GMT -5
I have several raised beds that I built about 7 years ago. Our soil is completely useless for growing anything so I had to fill them all with something else. I used mostly compost to fill them with and I top them with compost every year but this year I took most of the soil from one bed to top up the other three as the soil level was a few inches lower than the top of the beds and I did not have enough compost to fill them all. With the empty bed I put down a layer of the branches I pruned from my fruit trees and topped that with a couple wheel barrows of leaves that I raked from the lawn. I covered that layer with a bit of the soil I reserved from the original bed and a small amount of compost. I planted it and then used a lawn clippings/rabbit manure/lawn clipping mulch.
The plants I have in there are HUGE and look very healthy so I can only conclude that the woody debris I used worked!! I will definitely use that method again.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Jul 25, 2011 12:37:02 GMT -5
Success is a wonderful thing!
|
|
bev
gopher
Posts: 34
|
Post by bev on Sept 13, 2011 8:19:47 GMT -5
I haven't been on this board much this summer. Our first frost is due tomorrow so I will be picking my tomatoes today. Anyway, just wanted to report in about my experience with my raised beds. They were a great success and I will be building more for next year.
I made 2 beds 2'x6', 10" tall, and 2 beds 4'x8' x20" tall, and had one galvanized water trough (old, with some holes in bottom). The beds I made with lumber had landscape fabric on the bottom, then some sand (for filler), then my own version of the Mel's Mix from Square Foot Gardening. I used composted manure (sheep & cattle from our barnyard), peat, and some vermiculite (not nearly as much as recommended cause it is darned expensive). The mix seemed to work well for most things.
I grew great beets, tomatos, beans, lettuce, multiplier onions, cucumbers, peas, and a few flowers. Carrots did not do so great - these were in the galvanized trough - which we used old wood as a filler in the bottom - the wood seemed to absorb every drop of water from rain or hose and the soil was almost always dry each morning.
I was very impressed with how well most things grew in limited soil and space. There are just my DH & I here to eat the stuff and we had more than enough of everything we grew for fresh use and I managed to freeze small amounts of several things. Next year we are going to add 3 more beds 4'x12'x20".
I am sure many of you who are gardening for market will find this concept silly (I know I did when I had good knees and large gardens) but I mainly wanted to grow a little fresh food for the pleasure of growing and eating it. It was very easy, minimal weeding even though I used the barnyard compost - mainly the only "unplanted" growth was a small clover that I left in places as I believe it to be beneficial to the soil.
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 13, 2011 18:55:02 GMT -5
Bev, believe me, I work with market gardeners and these concepts are not silly, just very simply undoable at a large scale from an economic standpoint. That said, there is NO WAY professional growers can achieve large scale results as good as a good gardener like you tending the garden with care. That is the reason why self sufficiency, either total or partial, is much more attainable than people think it is, if we change our diet a bit of course. Kwilds, you used young branches, so you had nitrogen in the mix, thus you did not depleate your soil. And partially decomposed leaves, as long as there is enough nitrogen in the soil to digest them, are simply an amazing fertilizer. Next season, if you can, try adding some alfalfa meal with your leaves and twigs  believe me, it works...tomatoes, cucurbits and greens are just crazy about it, as are roses by the way... And ( it is not the first time I say this here  ) to all those growing either in marginal areas or in marginal seasons where cold is around, the triacontanol contained in alfalfa, a growth hormone that is also a fatty alcool, protects them against cold. Alcool does not freeze well, and once in the leaves and stems, it shows. Just for the fun of it, take some of that alfalfa meal and make a drawing on your lawn. Get ready for a surprize. I did it a few years ago on my young neighbour's lawn : I made a smiling face, y'a know, the yellow smiling face, on his lawn . In November he was bitching because his lawn was brown and dead except that smiling face, dark green and still going strong Saying that, Grungy is in my mind, God do I miss her, I would have had a mischievious comment in a matter of minutes Dan, we are all with you. Hope you are going well my friend...Big hugs to both of you, I know you are still together. |
|
bev
gopher
Posts: 34
|
Post by bev on Sept 14, 2011 9:38:31 GMT -5
Mike, thanks for the alfalfa tip - I am going to try that next year (in my raised beds, no "pictures" on the lawn - my dog does enough of that!).
We had frost here last night (expected) so I picked my tomatoes yesterday. I meant to cover the single Blacktail Mountain watermelon plant but forgot. So this morning I went out and picked the larger melon (all of 3.5" in diameter). I cut it open and it appeared ripe! I tasted it and it was very sweet. Some of the seeds look like they are mature. I know I didn't give this plant as much in growing conditions as I could have. Next year I am going to try them in a tub (2.5' diameter, 1.5' deep) and keep it in my small greenhouse for the summer and see if I can get larger melons.
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 14, 2011 20:08:07 GMT -5
If you did ok with Blacktail Mountain, you should maybe try EARLY CANADA, sold by McKenzie, or is it OSC?
I find it a better watermelon, and more productive too.
|
|
bev
gopher
Posts: 34
|
Post by bev on Sept 18, 2011 19:01:15 GMT -5
Thanks Mike. I will surely try to track down some Early Canada seeds for next year. This year I tried to grow Gnadenfeld muskmelons too but neither they or the watermelon set fruit until quite late. They just ran out of growing season. We had extremely wet and cool conditions this spring so I didn't get my bedding plants out in good time. Maybe next year.....
|
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Sept 21, 2011 0:05:49 GMT -5
Bev, I have a few raised beds, I use them for things I need early or late. They are small and easy to cover. For example, it was 94 today and I have endive ready to go in the garden. I have a 4x4 raised bed filled with compost and some feather meal. I put in irrigation and hoops and planted the endive (not ondeeve), and then covered it with shade cloth.
If I suspect frost, I can throw a cover over it...but I think I'm at least a month from frost. Raised beds are great, except for in the desert.
A few years ago, I hilled potatoes with alfalfa and although the taters were a flop, the corn that followed was magnificent.
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Oct 6, 2011 21:42:57 GMT -5
Gnadenfeld is a very reliable cropper. If it did not make it, not much would have....
|
|
bev
gopher
Posts: 34
|
Post by bev on Oct 8, 2011 17:39:03 GMT -5
I got the Gnadenfeld seed from a lady in Manitoba - her family has been growing them for generations. She said they always get some melons so I think it may have just been the conditions here this year - most things were just later than usual setting fruit. I will definitely try them again and I haven't given up on watermelon yet.
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaindweller on Dec 8, 2011 21:25:09 GMT -5
I find raised beds too expensive even for a home gardener. I don't know what timber costs over there but I have calculated for us it would have been around $1000. And then you must buy the soil.
Now I am telling what we did and it was quite ridiculous. Our soil is fill on a swamp and that includes concrete pavers big and small stones asphalt and what you like and the ph is something between 7.5 and 8 and we have acid soil around here. The rest of the "soil" is beige clay/sand.
We got and excavator and dug the whole site. Now I got tons and tons of woody stuff, branches and everything people usually drive on the tip. And our sheep eats a lot of privet leaves in winter too which is an environmental weed here, but she leaves me the twigs. I cut this up with the secateur and dumped a 30 cm or more layer were the beds are not on the pathways. I've got a lawn mowing company dumping their clippings too and I layered that on top of it. And my husband mowed our neighbours lawn too. If available I dumped leaves too. Or the straw from the chicken house. Then we (mostly my husband I admit) filled back in the soil sieved and stones and rubbish out. And we mix this with mushroom compost and manure. And we are still not ready.
But It gives nice soil. Every time when I redo a bed I have to fill even more stuff up because it goes down so much.
On the top of it the whole things needs to be enclosed because of possums, cockatoos, children and other animals.
I adapted this from Sepp Holzers huegelculture, but I never stick religiously to methods.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Dec 8, 2011 23:57:50 GMT -5
Certainly sounds to me like you're on the right track. If the stones and rubble are of usable size, you could stack-wall around your beds instead of using wood to box them up. I should think if you're working with pH7.75 and acid soil, it would tend to be a wash when mixed, plus lots of the right organic matter will tend to draw it to neutral. Eventually you'll get ahead of the shrinkage, if you persist, and your garden will be fantastic and productive.
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaindweller on Dec 9, 2011 2:37:30 GMT -5
There are three classes of stone the big ones we use to build terraces not exacltla, but something the like. The second big ones we put in a drainage area. And the really small ones they are mixed with clay, they are a bit of of a problem. I sometimes mulch with stones, they hold the heat, but they don't surpress weeds.
|
|
|
|
Post by circumspice on May 13, 2012 22:58:44 GMT -5
Has anyone got any insights into Keyhole raised beds? I've been reading up on them for the last month & it seems this might be a viable alternative for gardening in a hot, dry climate like Central Texas. Keyhole beds were developed for subsistance gardening in Africa. There seems to be two schools of thought on them... One is that the maximum size should be no more than 6.5 ft/2 meters in diameter so that the central compost cage will work properly. The other seems to believe that larger diameters will work, as long as you keep to certain proportions. They all advocate the use of any materials you have on hand to build the walls of the beds, the lasagna garden approach to filling the beds, & the use of gray water/kitchen water for supplemental watering.
|
|
believe me, it works...tomatoes, cucurbits and greens are just crazy about it, as are roses by the way...
) to all those growing either in marginal areas or in marginal seasons where cold is around, the triacontanol contained in alfalfa, a growth hormone that is also a fatty alcool, protects them against cold. Alcool does not freeze well, and once in the leaves and stems, it shows.
