Raised-Bed, Year 2

This Spring has come with some  events that have slowed me down a bit, as far as my blogging goes.  And I won't be posting much new for a little while, but....
I wanted to show you how my raised-bed square foot garden is doing this year.

As you can see, it isn't looking quite as spiffy as it did last spring, and could probably do with a little "grooming".  

However, I am happy to report that the soil underneath is great.  The 6 inch tomatoes that I planted late in March are thriving and in spite of planting last year's seeds, the squash, okra, and cucumbers have leaped up.  My weed prevention (weed cloth, straw and cooler pad fibers) has worked beautifully, and even tho it's covered with %$#* chinese elm seeds, only a couple have sprouted.
I have moved things around, this year the tomatoes are on the north edge, okra on the south.  Don't know whether this is really important with these vegetables, but I do know that it's important to rotate crops.
Different also this year will be my pest control.  I don't want to see any of those creepy squash bugs or their spawn this year, so early and often applications of Sevin will be used.  Hats off to those who search with a bucket, but not me.

Black-eyed peas will be planted in a few days, they need a little more heat to grow, so this year the garden consists of:
Tomatoes
Okra
Zucchini
Yellow squash

Eggplant
Cucumbers
Black-eyed peas

Here we go, again!

Magic Tomato Box

Not really magic.   But it does work.
As usual, I had a bumper crop of late tomatoes.  Summer was too, too hot and dry, but this fall the tomato plants were very happy.
So, when word was that it was going to frost, I went out and picked a big bunch of green tomatoes.
The ones that were starting to turn went to the window sill and we're still eating them now.
The ones that were solid dark green I did two things with.
1.  I made a batch of green tomato/jalapeño relish.

2.  I put the rest in a box of sawdust with a couple of apples on the bottom and left it in the garage.

I really didn't know if the sawdust/apple combo would work or not, but have not had much luck with any other method in the past.

This worked like a charm, and continues to do so.  Some weren't quite there yet but I'm sure another week will turn them red.  Not as tasty and juicy as off-the-vine ripe, but tomatoes nonetheless.
*Follow-up.  Every single dark green tomato turned dark red.  The flavor was comparable to store-bought, so $ saved.  Heh-heh.

Raised-bed Garden Update

Well, my vegetable garden has been a mixed success.  Some things never came up, some plants (melons, cucumbers, and most of the squash) got eaten by bugs (nasty, ugly, stinky, fuchi squash bugs, eeeuu).

The Evil Squash Bug

But a few things came up and thrived.
Okra.  I have a great okra crop.  And there are so many pods coming on right now,  I'm having to freeze it.  More on that later.

The only thing I don't like about okra is how sneaky it is.  It's very hard, somehow, to find all the okra that is ready to be picked.  It really tries to hide.

Okra pretending to be a stem.

And succeeds!  I'll look and look and look, and swear they are all picked.  Then two days later I'll find one that is about 8 inches long and that's just too darn big!  However, the chickens will eat it if I cut it open.

I have a couple of lovely eggplant... plants.
Then I have a lot of black-eyed peas coming on.  They have been slow so far but I think I'm going to have an explosion of peas pretty soon.

Mystery Bean

This bean plant is either a rattlesnake bean or a red ripper.  I don't remember what I planted there, I just got so excited about putting seeds in the ground, I went a little nuts.  And this particular one has just grown and grown and never produced bean one, yet when it does, the mystery will be over.

My tomatoes started out fine but then got blight and pfffft.  Luckily I planted reserve tomatoes in other places. The rule is:  One can NEVER PLANT TOO MANY TOMATOES!

This zucchini is clearly trying to make up for the rest of his team getting offed by the DSB's. (the last two words are squash bugs).  By the time I got control of that situation, this plant was the only survivor left.
I learned my lesson;  get after the squash bugs earlier.  Next spring I will be on the look-out for those little red eggs on the underside of the leaves and get busy eradicating those destructive animalitos, con prisa!
Speaking of insects, I happened to see this drama on one of the picket stakes today.  The spider is definitely winning.  Go, Spidey!

Hello, Cutie.

Hey!  So glad you could make it!  Come on in....I mean up! Wow, little Rattlesnake Bean, you are not shy, are you?

 Awww... Have you ever seen anything so sweet?

Baby Zuchinni is one of those really, really agressive kids.

Little okra, you steal my heart!

Update on the Raised-Bed Square-foot Garden

This, right here, this goofy little plot, is  my 10x10 "Square-Foot Garden".   I'll tell  you  about some of the steps we went through to make if you're interested.  If not, pass on by to Fried Chicken.
Below is some of the stuff, er.. .amendments, we put in the soil; peat moss, and vermiculite, and I don't show the kitchen and yard compost I made last year but we put that in as well.

Below is how the garden turned out with all the amendments dug in and  covered with weed blocker.  You can never have too much protection.  Against weeds.
I also consumed some medicinal tequila later to loosen up my back.
The roof tiles were there to make the soaker hose behave.  I removed them later.

Then I covered it all with a bale of "hot" hay that my neighbor kindly gave me, also some insides from some evaporative cooler pads, (left over from another idea) and got started putting my old collection of picket fence around it, mainly for vine support but also just to be funky.  I am planning to make a bigger support trellis for the beans later on.

And...then I had this idea about the "squares" in the square foot garden.  In order to be able to have two (admittedly) narrow walking paths through the garden, (the burlap) I bought lath and made it into long T's with cross pieces.  Each one of those rows is 20 square feet.

This was actually fun to do, mostly because  I got out Left Brain's skill saw out to cut the 2 foot pieces.  Wow!  I love power tools.  Left Brain just hates it when I use his tools.

At this point,  I needed some help to make the "gates" into the "walkways' and Left Brain got out his own power tools and made me two lovely little gates that just stick into the soil.  Waaaay cool.

Now that I have all the soil ready and the plan laid out, I sketched out my spaces and had fun figuring what to plant where.  I have 60 square feet to work with!  These are the plants I will plant, either as seeds or seedlings:
Red Ripper Cowpeas (isn't that the coolest name?  My dad told me about them.)
Black eyed Peas
Rattlesnake Beans (who could resist this?)
Okra
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Eggplant
Bell Pepper
Jalapeno
Poblano chile
Cucumber
Cantaloupe
Beets (Beets?, really?)
Pumpkin
Radishes
Greek Oregano
Fennel
Watermelon
Tomatoes

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you reading this are laughing out loud at the idea of all those plants in this little space, and you are probably right!  But this is experimental, and however it turns out, I'll show you the results.  I just could not resist all those lovely little seeds.  I'm missing my Mom, and this helps.

However,  I do have to admit that my funny little mother never made such a to-do out of a vegetable garden.  She just put seeds in the ground and out they came.  She would probably have laughed at this. But I have never had her luck or skill.  This garden is actually my most all-out effort at a vegetable garden.  So wish me luck, por favor.

Raised-Bed Vegetable Garden, the Easier Way

There are a million schemes for raised-bed gardens, and if you are going to put yours on an unleveled spot, it can be tricky.  Pioneer Woman's is a good plan, but takes a lot of leveling of dirt.  That's hard!  And Hard Work!  My garden bed plan was based on one I helped build for St. Clement's School, and the 4th graders grow some beautiful flowers and vegetables, and have learned so much about gardening.  What you do is make a real....bed.  With legs.  you can level it easily by digging under the legs, not necessary to level the entire ground under it.

This plan  is easy and only took myself and Cerebro Izquierdo 2 hours to put together, but that was using some power tools, a saw and a drill, to be specific.  Here are some of the hand tools you will need.
I decided to use 2x12x10ft. boards.  They were about $8 apiece.  I also bought a 4x4 inch post which was also around $8.00.  The Square Foot Gardener says that you only need to use 6 inches of soil, so you could use 1x6's.  Also, using 10x10 is going to cost me about $100 to have filled with a soil compost mix from a local materials outfit.  You figure 27 square feet in a square yard of soil, and since I don't want to fill it to the top, and I'm going to amend the soil some, I need 2 yards.  All together this garden is going to cost me around $200.00.  However, it will be moveable if I need to, and it's very large. That's a ton of vegetables, and over the years....what's that word?  Amortize?

You will need 16 bolts, like this, 3/8x6,
and washers and nuts to tighten them up.
I realized that if I set the boards up on the posts with some space underneath like a real bed, we could easily dig holes under the posts to get the top level, which is what we did.  We cut the 4x4in. posts to 18 inch lengths, giving ourselves a 6 inch leg to use when leveling. If your space is not as sloped as mine was, you could leave less space on the "legs".
I made two templates with drill marks spaced so the bolts wouldn't hit each other.

We marked the posts with the templates like this, and then used the drill to make a 3/8 (the same size as the bolt) hole through the post.

We then set up the boards and posts on the ground and held the boards to the posts and used the drill to mark where to drill on the board.  Then we drilled holes in the boards and used the bolts to connect the pieces.  Voila!!  Then we used the level to check which sides were uneven and dug underneath the high posts until the level was happy.

I decided I didn't need the bottom of the boards to touch the ground, and I'm using some left over vinyl flooring that I used for the chicken coop to close the larger openings, but I'm not sure I even needed it.
Now for the dirt, the peat moss, and the vermiculite. Hmmmm.  Seeds or plants?