Thursday, February 16, 2012

Garden upgrades

I've talked for a bit about raising the beds within the older part of my garden.  My gardening had started with the Square Foot method, and it seems to be the easiest for me to work with.  After years of fighting the weeds in the informal pathways, that wanted to grow into my beds, I decided to bite the bullet.  Last fall, with the help of a friend (the same one who built my new coop), I became the proud owner of 7 new raised beds. 

The new beds are 4x12.  As I was installing them, I realized that all these years, I was shortchanging my garden.  It seemed that what I thought were 4x 12 beds, were in reality quite a bit shorter.  My wonderfully helpful neighbor helped me with some of the digging and lifting.  They were then topped with cow manure. 


Over the past several months, I've also topped with some crushed egg shells.  The bed in the far right got the clean out of my chicken coop last fall.  

The fence is being removed, as it is in the way of moving around some of the beds.  All in all, I have just under 700 sq ft of raised beds to plant in.  Considering 100 of that is planted in strawberries, I have 600 or so to plant.  It doesn't sound like much to me, but in reality is quite a bit of space.  I'd still like to add some additional beds, especially one for asparagus, but am just about out of space.  

All of these beds will now have pipe fittings added to make them all capable of being turned into hoops.  The brassicas in the basement are slated for planting in the hoops toward the middle to end of March, if things work out as I'd like.   The tatsoi is already up in the basement nursery, so the season has officially started as far as I'm concerned. 

6 comments:

Daphne Gould said...

I have 570 sqft of raised bed and I think it is a lot. I do also have the rock wall garden through. Which gives me space for strawberries and asparagus. Oh and some herb beds. I sort of consider my raised beds to be everything except the perennials.

Leigh said...

They look great. Mine aren't exactly raised, but terraced (half raised?) Some things like wire grass can still make their way into those.

The Mom said...

Daphne, your garden always seems so huge. You get such a great yield.

Leigh, mine used to be kind of sloped. The weeds growing in from the walkways just got to be too much.

Anonymous said...

Nice blog. Try my wives blog. It's pretty close to yours as we use raised beds alot. Google dairydaze and it will get you right there. Gary

kitsapFG said...

The new beds look fabulous! Can you rework the fence so it gives you room to move around? I have found that a garden must have a fence to keep it secure from hens, dogs, people, etc....

The Mom said...

Anonymous, thanks for visiting. I'll have to check out your wife's blog.

Laura, unfortunately the fence is out. The original had been put up when I thought I was done expanding my garden. It's now significantly bigger and would be difficult to impossible to fence. It comes as close to my driveway as I dare and the fence would be in the driveway. Plus, the sides may need to be expanded more....