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: