Raised Bed Gardening

Bright Ideas

So I had this bright idea this last winter when a friend was throwing out some lumber that he had used in his house, but could not re-use for his purposes. And my idea was to do a little raised bed gardening. I mean, this is a good idea right? The economy is not so hot; maybe I could save a little money by not having to buy produce at the store, and I love gardening.So I pick up the boards as soon as the snow melts and I start slapping together my garden beds. I really mean slapping, too. Carpenter I am not. But they are together and seem to be staying together. So I start throwing any soil, compost, manure, and yard waste into these boxes, that I can find, and in my own creative way (Grandpa, thank you for giving me your green thumbs!) create these lasagna type planting beds. In February I started my seeds indoors and by March began hardening them off. Now folks, I’m in zone 5 and there are “rules” your supposed to follow if you garden here. One such rule is “you don’t plant your garden until Memorial day weekend”. Now there is some common sense to this. For example, we had a reasonably hard frost in the first week of June this year. You don’t want to plant out all your seedlings only to loose them to the first frost. Also, you want the soil to be at a certain temperature when you plant or your veggies just wont grow. But me being me say”what the heck” throw caution to the wind. So I planted in the 1st week of April. Two months before everyone else. Here’s to extending your garden’s season!!

Hard Work Pays Off

So here I am all proud of myself that my garden is in, and I’ve done it all from scratch. And organic to boot.Sure enough, at the end of April the weather report called for not just a frost, but a hard freeze. Panic! No, don’t panic. Collect as many old sheets tablecloths and milk jugs you can find. Cardboard boxes can even work in a pinch. I took great care to cover everything well. Giving support where it was needed. I cut the bottoms off of milk jugs and made cloches when I didn’t have enough sheets to cover everything. And you know what? It worked. I lost only a couple of my squash plants, which, lets face it, were really out too early. But as a result my hard work of watching the weather and covering my garden when I thought there was risk paid off. I am two, 2, months ahead of everyone else. I have already harvested tons of lettuce, spinach, mesculin, peas, broccoli, and strawberries. And it’s only the end of June!

	So the idea was that maybe the plants would overflow and hide my poor craftsmanship of the boxes. The cantaloupe plant below is a rouge. one if its leaves is 15″ across.

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Tagged as: extended-season-gardening, organic-gardening, planting-beds, raised-bed-gardening, zone-5-gardening