Cold Season Bed

Originally, I was only planning to build two raised beds and leave the cold season veggies alone.  But once I got started, I just had to do a third.  I had already planted some store-bought starts of brussel sprouts, cabbage and broccoli at the end of March, but the brussels were practically gone to the bugs and the cabbage and broccoli weren't doing so hot, either (in part due to my experiment with homemade soap and water insecticide...).  I had some celery and onions from last year that were still going strong, and I had already planted carrot and lettuce seeds.  I had also thrown in some brussel sprout, cabbage and broccoli seeds just to see what would happen.  Nonetheless, I pulled everything out and tilled the soil, made my raised bed, added three inches of compost and other soil amendments and replanted what was still alive after being pulled up and living in "transitional soil" for about two days.  Here's how it looked on April 15:

You can't really see it in the pics below, but there are tons of seedlings all over the place.  I've thinned them out and left one unknown brassica (brussel, cabbage or broccoli) in each square holding a cabbage or broccoli, and I've left a few carrots here and there.  I think it's kind of funny and ironic.  

Besides the overwhelming bug problem this year (mostly slugs), everything's doing quite well.  Here's what I have growing:

In the very back, I have left over red globe and walla walla onions that I never picked last summer (it was a horrible year for gardening and nothing really grew well).  Next, some broccoli starts--two of which I bought and planted on April 7, 2011 (the other two are from the March planting).  The next row has four cabbages and I'm not sure if they'll do anything more than grow more and more leaves.  Next, I placed some garlic, rosemary from a pot and celery overwintered from last year.  After that is more garlic.  In front of that are my carrots, then the next row has white bunching onions and two more broccoli starts.  The last (front) row has some spinach and white bunching onions.  Oh yes, and by the way, I've harvested four broccoli heads already--they didn't get too big, but they were starting to bolt.  I think next year I'll have to roll up the sides of the hoop house earlier because it probably just got too warm in there for them.

I'm really excited to see how the garlic does.  Again, because last year's weather was HORRIBLE, I didn't pick my garlic and let it keep on growing.  It was in two large pots and multiplied fiercely.  So, I carefully dug it up and divided it for planting in my raised bed.  It appears to be doing very well, so we'll see if I get anything!!

Here's how the bed looks now:

Grow lights station, seeds and salad table

In mid-March, I finally made my grow light station!  I bought two basic two-bulb fluorescent light fixtures and put one warm and one cool bulb in each fixture. They came with hanging chains, so all I had to do was screw in some eye screws to the top of the shelf on each side and voila, I had a growing station!  I used one whole shelf in the garage--it's about 2'x4'.  The actual shelves are wood, so it was easy to screw in the eye screws.

On March 16, 2011, I planted my seeds!

In three trays, I used 6-cell packs collected over the past several years.  In the fourth tray, I used 3 inch pots collected from fuscia starts over recent years.  I also used my Jiffy warmer pad in the fourth tray (although two months later I can say it really didn't make a difference--in fact, my zinnias and impatients did better without the heat).  Also, for the first time, I used seed starting mix instead of soil and I actually washed every little pot out with soap and water.  I must admit, it was a pain trying to remember to water the seedlings with fertilizer and after all the fuss, I didn't notice any difference using freshly cleaned pots and seed starting mix.    

Here's what I seeded (all seeds are Humes):

• Early jalapeño
• Delicious 51 cantaloupe
• Sugar Baby watermelon
• Lemon cucumbers
• Green Marketmore 76 slicing cucumbers
• Blue Lake Pole green beans
• Jackpot Bush zucchini
• Summerpac squash
• Jack O'Lantern pumpkins
• New England Pie pumpkins
• Sweet 100 tomatoes
• Beefsteak tomatoes
• Evergreen White Bunching onions

By March 29, most of the seeds had sprouted!

In addition to the indoor seeds, on April 7, 2011, I also seeded (or is "sowed" the proper term here?) some bunching onions, Danvers Half Long carrots and Olympia Spinach in the cold-season bed. Here's how they look now:

On that same day, I seeded my salad table with Perpetual Spinach-Green Leaf Chard, Little Finger baby carrots, Red Globe onions, Walla Walla onions, Salad Bowl lettuce, Great Lakes lettuce and green and red Romaine lettuce.  Here they are now:

The nice thing about this salad table is that I can move it around (with help-it's heavy!) when the weather starts getting too warm.  I can keep it in morning sun and then move it into shade if needed.  Also, I practically have no bugs to contend with.  Or weeds.  Plus, no bending!  I am considering constructing a few more of these for those reasons.  Next time though, I'd use a lighter soil mix--maybe put the true square foot gardening mix (1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss or coconut coir and 1/3 compost) because it would be much lighter and easier to maneuver.   

Square foot gardening

After constructing my beds and hoop houses, I next wrapped twine around roofing nails and made my square foot grid in all three beds.

April 2-5, 2011: Raised beds and hoop houses!

After years of container gardening (due to apartment living) and three years of gardening in rock-hard clay (I couldn't amend that soil enough!), I finally constructed three raised beds out of cedar.  They're 8'x4'x6", about one inch thick, with about two feet between each bed.  I intended to fill them with Mel's Mix according to the square foot gardening book, but it was simply too expensive to do so.  Instead, I tilled the top three inches of my preexisting soil where my garden had been (after 3 years of tilling, composting and growing in that space, the top several inches was actually pretty nice) and threw in lots of compost, soil amendment with peat moss, coconut coir and top soil.  I mixed that all together and have to say I'm pretty happy with the results.

I next constructed two hoop houses for my beds.  It really wasn't difficult at all--just time consuming and a bit hairy when you're doing it all by yourself.  But I did it!  I used 1/4", schedule 40, 10' PVC.  For the smaller house, I used 10' PVC piping.  I used twine to tie the PVC to the sides and the top for support.  I would note that I do plan to put some screws in instead because the twine allows the pipes to wiggle out of place way too much.  I've had to rearrange it several times, especially after a windy day.  For the plastic, I used 3.5mil clear plastic I found in the painting section at Home Depot.  The pipes are held in place on the outside of the boxes by pushing them into the ground and by using galvanized pipe fittings I screwed into the sides of the beds.  I stapled an 8' 2" x 2" board to the bottom of the plastic on each side, but I still need to use a brick to hold the sides down when it's windy.

For the big hoop house, I connected a 10' pipe with an 8' pipe (I simply sawed off two feet of a 10' pipe).  I had to duct tape together two rolls of plastic to make it fit (I don't recommend this--the moisture and rain is causing the duct tape to come apart). With 18' of piping it is almost 6 feet in the center of the arch.  

Here's what my garden looked like before all this: