Raised Garden Beds - Update

ricky racer

ricky racer

501 Club
My wife Tracy and I spent a long weekend down at our daughter and son-in-laws in Dayton, Ohio. Our 10 year old step grandson was baptized on Sunday so it was nice to be there for that. The main reason our daughter wanted us to come down is to help them build some raised garden beds for their backyard. She's been chomping at the bit to get them built. So we loaded up tools and I also took my John Deere 425 with a loader mounted to help level the old garden, prep the area and fill the beds with garden soil and to distribute pea gravel around the beds and headed out last Thursday morning. We had planned on coming home yesterday, but we ran a little behind and needed an additional day to git-r-done. Our 22 month old grandson found that he loves tractors and I lost count of how many times I heard "Tractor ride, Poppa?" :love: Overall, I think the beds turned out pretty well but the memories made with Connor were way better!!

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raised beds will produce a lot of veggies BUT require a LOT of work to maintain !!! I had some 20 years ago for 2 seasons and had to retire them because i didnt have enough time to water them 3 times a day in the middle of the growing season. Also had the Earth boxes---again great units BUT 3 times a day water was the problem with them too. --- grew tons of veggies in them!!!
 
SONNY said:
raised beds will produce a lot of veggies BUT require a LOT of work to maintain !!! I had some 20 years ago for 2 seasons and had to retire them because i didnt have enough time to water them 3 times a day in the middle of the growing season. Also had the Earth boxes---again great units BUT 3 times a day water was the problem with them too. --- grew tons of veggies in them!!!
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I have no experience with them but I do know they will require watering often. The bottom half of the boxes are filled with logs and old chunks of firewood, the remains of three small pine trees I removed from their property and leaves they collected from last fall. Having good garden soil delivered is expensive so they limited it to about 12" on top of the organic fill. I told my daughter that the soil will drain quickly since there's nothing under the soil to hold moisture. I suppose she could mount an elevated sprinkler in the center of the garden and turn it on a couple times a day.
 
Use caution with planting before dirt settles down around the bottom stuff!!! also as the bottom stuff rots the top will sink a bunch. I would go with more than a foot of dirt on top IF possible, and yes sprinklers runnin for hours each day will take care of the water problem. they will also help settle the dirt before planting if you run them and really soak the dirt down. --- I had to hand water mine cause they were out of hose reach and that became a problem. still grew a bunch of good veggies in them.
They work great for places where ground gardens are not possible!!
 
We're back at our daughter's home this weekend after dog sitting their golden retriever for about 2 weeks. I posted earlier when we built her raised beds so I thought I'd share a picture of the current state of her raised garden. She's really enjoying taking care of it and picking her own vegetables to prepare for her family.

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ricky racer said:
We're back at our daughter's home this weekend after dog sitting their golden retriever for about 2 weeks. I posted earlier when we built her raised beds so I thought I'd share a picture of the current state of her raised garden. She's really enjoying taking care of it and picking her own vegetables to prepare for her family.

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Something to be proud of. I like the stone and pavers around the boxes to minimize weeds.

I've wondered about planting pumpkins in raised beds because pumpkins will take root in the soil along the vines. Don't see the advantage here for that reason. Looks like some wood ash may be needed for the pumpkins to help with the yellowing.

An ol' farmer gave me a hint to produce whopper pumpkins: Once the vines get going, don't let them produce more flowers, which detracts from any pumpkins already forming. He said to cut off the vines and bury the ends in the dirt. Less pumpkins but bigger ones are the result.
 
I like the arbor. How about a looooong one for all vining crops? Our season is a bit short but how about sweet potatoes? We used to grow them but was one of the first things to go when we started cutting back.

Bareboness, I'm getting a bit off subject here but there are other reasons to bury pumpkin and squash vines. My wife insists she can't buy a decent squash and vine borer is a problem here. By cutting off a leaf and burying the vine at that point the plant will grow roots at that point and can support the plant if borer gets it. Our actual squash is growing in the sweet corn . I will start cutting off any new squash now since it can't ripen them anyway. While squash will grow roots without being burried they are small and only meant to hold the vine in place. The corn will be real fun to pick.

And now back to Mr. Racer and raised beds. Vern
 
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