By Cassandra Truax
Three Ways Raised Bed Gardening Makes Life Easier
Why garden with a raised bed?
Let me answer that question with another question. Why not? I started my first raised bed garden out of desperation. I live on the Mogollon rim in Northeaster Arizona. Translate: Mogollon rim to rock cliff. When I first moved here, I painstakingly sifted a tiny bit of dirt from rock and planted in containers. The pine forest soil is so poor, that even with ample fertilizer, my plants were stunted. I had heard of square foot gardening, and decided to give it a try. After the first rasied bed season, I asked myself, “Why didn’t I do this before?”.
1) Lessen or Eliminate Bending and Kneeling
Creating a raised bed garden gives you, the gardener, ultimate control. You control the height of the bed. So, if you have trouble bending over or working on your knees, make the bed a comfortable height for yourself. However, it’s my personal belief that a raised bed doesn’t “need” to be any taller than 18 inches.
2) Weeds Be Gone
Your backyard soil has probably decades of weed seeds just waiting for the right conditions to sprout. This is especially true if you live in the arid southwest as I do. Add water, and you’ve got weeds up the whazoo.
By filling a raised bed with everything but your native soil (or maybe just a little), weeds are a thing of the past. This was an unexpected but very pleasant surprise with my first raised bed garden. No weeds.
Any weeds that do happen to sprout are easily plucked from the soft, airy soil. The soil mix I use is basically coir (peat substitute), compost, and vermiculite. Then I add other stuff I have around that’s handy, maybe some sifted soil, pine bark mulch, horse manure, or charcoal.
3) High Density Planting Uses Less Space
Thanks to the wonderful soil mix used in raised beds, you can get more yield from a smaller space. This benefit is two fold. One, the plants can be closer in physical proximity because of the readily available moisture and nutrients. Two, the plants will produce more because of readily available soil and nutrients.
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There’s so much more to be said about the benefits of raised bed gardens, but I’ll save it for future posts. For more information on creating a soil mix, see my article: “Soil Mix for Raised Bed Gardens”
What’s your favorite part of raised bed gardening?
Cassandra Truax is a naturalist who lives in the White Mountains of Arizona. She writes about organic raised bed gardening at http://www.organic-raised-bed-gardening.com .
Written by Compost Guy on February 3rd, 2010 with no comments.
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When I came across the giant bugs pictured above, I was really excited. Not only did I think I’d found beneficial assassin bugs in my garden – but they were MATING! Well, my excitement waned considerably after doing some Google searches (relating to the cucumber beetles pictured below), and I happened upon the image of something referred to as a ’squash bug’.
Did I mention I’m still a little wet behind the ears with this organic gardening stuff?
When I came across this hemipteran pair doing the deed, I also happened to notice a set of large insect eggs nearby. A quick search for “squash bug eggs” today basically eliminated any doubt in my mind re: the identity of these pests (assassin bug eggs look nothing like this). Oh well! Live and learn.
I am actually still very happy to have found the squash bugs and their eggs, since I’m trying to compile a decent photo collection of beneficial and pest insects. It has been the only squash bug sighting so far this year, so I’m not all that worried about them.
Cucumber beetles on the other hand, seem to be quite abundant in the garden this year. I’ve found them on all my cucurbits – although only my actual cucumber plants seem to be suffering at all (and relatively little, at that). As you can see in the images below, my zucchinis and pumpkins seem to be doing just fine.
There is actually some academic evidence to indicate that vermicompost can help plants to fend off insect pests – so that might help to explain why I’m not really seeing any serious issues (the zucchinis and pumpkins are both bordered by my main vermicomposting trench). There is little doubt that the overall boost in plant growth provided by worm poop would also help to keep the plants healthy in general.
Written by Compost Guy on August 6th, 2009 with 1 comment.
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One of the things that has always bothered me about my property – ever since moving here four years ago – has been the lack of privacy. I live on a corner lot, and while there technically is a fence in the backyard, most of it is 4 feet high.
I’ve toyed with the idea of upgrading the current fence to something more substantial, but have continued to resist the temptation, largely due to the costs and potential hassles involved.
Rather than simply tolerating the extreme exposure again this summer, I decided to try something a little different – I set out to grow my own privacy fence!
My back fence-line (or lack thereof) in particular has bothered me the most since this is actually the only stretch of the 4 foot fence that directly borders one of my neighbor’s yards. This particular neighbor spends a fair amount of time in their yard, and sets up a swimming pool for the summer months, so I didn’t imagine that they’d mind having a little more privacy as well. Aside from that, they seem to have a somewhat different opinion on how a backyard should look (manicured, fertilized lawn), so I don’t imagine they would mind NOT having to look at my unruly (“all natural”) mess of vegetation for part of the year either.
The main task when planning a natural fence is of course deciding what type of plant(s) to grow. Some of the main considerations include: 1) maximum height, 2) growth speed, and 3) aesthetic appeal. While it was obviously very important to select a plant that would attain a height greater than that of the current fence, I also felt that it was fairly important for the plants to be reasonably attractive (no point creating yet another eyesore for my neighbor to look at!).
The first plant that came to mind was Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus). I can clearly remember how enormous these plants grew in my dad’s garden back when I was a kid. I also seemed to recall something about the roots being edible. Add to that the fact that Jerusalem Artichoke is also a perennial, and it’s no wonder I thought I had hit upon the ‘ultimate’ natural fence plant. What ended up changing my mind however, was the fact that this plant is apparently very invasive and tough to manage once it becomes established (something I learned from someone with more experience growing them). The last thing I wanted to do was create a future headache for myself (and potentially even my neighbor).
I thought about various types of shrubs (preferably ones with some sort of edible fruit/nut) as an option. I liked the idea of creating something permanent, but alas my impatience got the better of me and I decided I didn’t want to wait multiple growing seasons for my ‘fence’ to mature.
As such, I settled on sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) – more specifically, ‘pollen-free’ sunflowers – as my plant of choice for the natural fence-line. Rather than simply choosing a particular type – as tempted as I was to grow the monstrous ‘Kong’ variety – I opted for a seed mix known as ‘Monet’s Pallete’. I hoped this would provide me with enough height to make it worthwhile, and enough aesthetic appeal to catch peoples’ attention.
Overall, I have been a wee bit disappointed with the results thus far – but really happy I decided to try it out nevertheless. I suspect that the combination of planting the sunflower seedlings a little late, along with the cool, somewhat dreary weather we’ve been having this year, has resulted in the plants being a little shorter (and generally less impressive) than expected by now – here at the beginning of August. A number of the plants have grown above the 4 foot mark, but I certainly don’t have a nice 6 foot ‘hedge’ of beautiful sunflowers, the way I had envisioned.
Regardless, the combination of my tall sandbox corn patch and this stand of sunflowers makes for much more soothing atmosphere when I am puttering around at the back of the yard. I’m keeping in mind that ‘you gotta start SOMEWHERE‘, and feel really optimistic that next year’s ‘fence’ will be a lot more impressive!
Written by Compost Guy on August 1st, 2009 with no comments.
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Humble beginnings for this year’s sandbox garden
Last year I wrote about a new raised bed garden I created from a sandbox that wasn’t getting much use in our yard. Of course, I wasn’t about to settle for making a run-of the-mill raised bed – mine needed to be a little different! At the time, I was starting to experiment with vermicomposting trenches (which you can learn all about on my Red Worm Composting site – check out the “Hot Topics” page), so I thought it might be fun to try running one of these trenches through the middle of the garden.
The crop plants I settled on for the original sandbox garden were giant pumpkins and potatoes. I figured the pumpkins would really benefit from the the water- and nutrient-rich food waste that was being added to the trench (and subsequently processed by a herd of Red Wiggler Worms), and that the potatoes might do well in the loose, sandy soil of the bed.
Despite the fact that the pumpkins didn’t get planted until mid-July, they still ended up doing quite well, We didn’t get a truly ‘giant’ pumpkin, but I was nevertheless very impressed with the sizable specimen that was ready in time for Halloween.
The potatoes, on the other hand, were a bit of a disappointment. Looking back, I can’t help but chuckle though, since I now realize how little I knew about growing spuds. As such, I don’t feel so bad about the poor show in that department (and have come back with potato guns a’ blazin this year to see if I can grow a better crop).
Speaking of which, while I certainly didn’t intend to grow any potatoes in the sandbox garden this year (I have other beds set aside for them), as it turns out, some leftover tubers have been making their presence know by growing into very healthy looking plants. I decided to just ‘go with the flow’ and see how well they end up doing among the other plants growing there.
My main intended crop this year is actually sweet corn. I thought the corn would appreciate the sandy, fertile soil – I should mention that the garden basically served as an overwintering bed for a sizable population of composting worms, so there was plenty of vermicompost left behind when I cleaned up the garden (transferring many of the worms to my main vermi-trenches) this spring. I also predicted that, if all went well, the corn garden would make for a pretty impressive show as part of my surburban mini-farm.
Sweet corn, pole beans, and renegade potato plants growing in this year’s ’self-fertilizing’ garden
My dad (a retired professor of Anthropology) told me how native people used to grow climbing beans close to corn so as to provide the demanding corn plants with more nitrogen, while also providing the beans with natural supports (the corn stalks). I thought this sounded like a really cool idea, and ended up planting two rows of yellow pole beans between my four rows of corn.
The vermicomposting trench in the sandbox garden is pretty low-key this year. I don’t have access to the same (massive) supply of food waste as I did last year, and have switched to using mainly aged horse manure and grass clippings.
I’ve been pretty impressed with how well the plants have been growing thus far. It has been a really cool summer so the corn is definitely behind schedule, but we live in a very serious corn-growing region so I’m frequently reminded of the fact that my corn plants are actually quite similar in size to those growing in local fields – yet are not receiving any chemical fertilizers. They ARE receiving a little something extra however, but I’ll save that topic for another post.
I can’t wait to see how the pole beans do! I must admit that the plants were all in pretty rough shape by the time they finally made it into the ground, but they seem to have bounced back very nicely and are growing up the cornstalks as predicted.
Pole bean runner winds its way up a corn plant
I was a little worried about the big potato plants impacting (literally – haha) the growth of the corn, but everyone seems to be getting along famously!
Anyway – I will be sure to provide one or two more updates on the sandbox garden as the summer progresses!
Previous Sandbox Garden Posts (2008):
The Sandbox Self-Fertilizing Garden
Self-Fertilizing Garden Update
Technorati Tags: gardening, organic, compost, compost trench, composting, composting worms, worm composting, vermicomposting, vermicompost, worm castings, sweet corn, pole beans, potatoes, red worms
Written by Compost Guy on July 22nd, 2009 with 3 comments.
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I recently wrote about my serious aphid problem. Well, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) that is not the only pest problem I have this year. Slugs have been a recurring pain in the neck each growing season, and this year is certainly no different.
One of the disadvantages of using a mulch like straw to keep moisture in and weeds down, is that you also end up creating more potential slug habitat.
In past years I have simply tolerated the crop grazing, primarily due to the fact that they didn’t really seem to have a major impact on my ‘important’ crop plants, such as the tomatoes and zucchinis. This year however, with all my garden expansions and a renewed desire to nurture the best garden possible, I definitely want to see if I can mitigate the slug problem.
I’ve heard that slugs love beer. Luckily, I don’t mind having the odd wobbly pop myself, so I decided to test out the ‘beer trap’ method of slug removal – making sure that all remaining slugicide did not go to waste.
My strawberry patch seems to be slug central this year, so I thought this was as good a place as any to do my testing. My ‘traps’ consisted of three shallow containers with some beer in them. Pretty straight-forward stuff.
So far so good. When I checked on the traps the morning after setting them up, each of them had at least a couple slugs in them, along with an assortment of other invertebrate party animals – ants, flies, beetles etc. Interestingly, I left the traps for an additional day, but didn’t seem to trap any more slugs. Hmmm…these beer traps could get expensive (and fun at the same time – haha).
All joking aside, I think I’ll be trying out some other methods. If anyone knows of any good techniques for getting rid of slugs (in an eco-friendly manner) please let me know. One possibility that I’ve considered is diatomaceous earth, but I’m a little worried about hurting ‘good guy’ critters like lady bugs etc.
Anyway, I’ll keep you posted!
Technorati Tags: slugs, slug traps, pests, garden pests, diatomaceous earth
Written by Compost Guy on June 25th, 2009 with 5 comments.
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As optimistic and excited as I am about my increased focus on eco-friendly urban farming this year, I’ve come to accept the fact that it’s probably going to take a season or two before thing are rolling along nicely. Seeing my big Honeysuckle (Lonicera sp.) completely infested with aphids as of late has certainly reminded me of this in a big way.
The cool thing about learning as I go (and encountering these issues) however, is that it gives me lots to write about here!
In the last week or two I’ve been trying to decide how I should best deal with this aphid explosion. Various possibilities have come to mind, but I still hadn’t settled on anything (I was actually going to write about it here to see if I could get some ideas from others with more experience).
Then, in a VERY bizarre turn of events, I started finding Lady Bug larvae on my deck. I’ve read that these ferocious looking things can eat something like 50 aphids a day, so needless to say I’ve been really excited to find them and have been transporting all of them over to the Honeysuckle.
It is amazing to watch these larvae at work! Literally, as soon as they are within biting distance of the aphids they start attacking them. I’ve even witnessed one grabbing them off the plant while still on the little piece of cardboard I was using to ferry it over – and believe me, once they’ve got one in their mouth they are more than happy to stay where they are and finish their meal. haha
In all honesty, I haven’t found enough of these larvae to have a serious impact on the aphid population, but it will be interesting to see what happens. Hopefully I’ll be able to attract some more lady bugs into the garden in general.
Technorati Tags: aphids, lady bugs, pests, ipm, natural pest control, insects, organic, honeysuckle, gardening
Written by Compost Guy on June 22nd, 2009 with no comments.
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Wow – it has certainly been a while since I wrote a new post here! I just wanted to let everyone know I’m still alive and well, and that I’ve simply been spending all my time over at Red Worm Composting. I am planning to get things rolling again here, but I know talk is cheap (especially when I’m the one talking – haha) so let’s just start with a new post and see where that takes us!
Last year I wrote a post about how much of a lousy gardener I am. While I’ve certainly dabbled in ‘growing stuff’ for many years, I’ve never actually taken the time to really learn how to do it properly, the way I have with composting/vermicomposting – until NOW that is!
This year I decided once and for all that I was going to really put in a concerted effort to learn all about organic gardening, and put a lot more time and effort into my suburban farming efforts. It’s really silly when I think about it now, but for a while I’ve simply been dreaming about buying a small farm, where I can finally create my ultimate sustainable paradise. Of course, this meant that I ended up ignoring some prime real estate under my own nose!
I guess I was worried about ‘resale value’ and other nonsensical things, but as my brother-in-law reminds me over and over, it’s kitchens and bathrooms that sell houses NOT backyards. haha
When it comes down to it, I really have a LOT of potential growing space to work with. Last year I was amazed how much produce I was able to grow with very little effort (my vermicomposting trenches certainly helped). This year I will be getting even MORE help from my population of composting worms, in the form of more (and larger) trench/windrow systems, and variations of my ‘garbage gardening method‘.
As you can see in the picture above, I have purchased some books to help me learn more. I seem to have lucked out with the ones I selected – they are all really excellent. I’ll more than likely devote individual posts to each of them once I have spent a bit more time with them.
Of course, the web will play an important role in helping me to learn more as well. I actually just happened upon a nice little site today, put together by one of my worm customers. It is called ‘Raised Bed Organic Gardening‘. I love small, easy to read websites like this – especially when they have a personalized feel about them.
Anyway, I’ll certainly be writing a LOT more about my gardening (and learning) efforts. I just wanted to get a post up today to get the ball rolling!
Written by Compost Guy on June 18th, 2009 with no comments.
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As mentioned in my last post, I took a bit of a hiatus from Compost Guy this fall – partially to give more attention to Red Worm Composting, and partially due to a new time-challenged schedule (I decided to take on the role of ‘Mr. Mom’ for my baby girl most days during the week). I’m not sure what’s gotten into me lately, but I’ve recently had a strong gut feeling telling me that it’s time to get back at it! So here we are…face to face…a couple of silver spoons.
Sorry – you can blame too much TV watching as a child!
Anyway – I thought I would start with a MUCH needed update on my ‘Sandbox Self-Fertilizing Garden‘. Last time I wrote about it was just after setting it up in July. As you can see from the picture above, the garden did ok with the assistance from my vermicomposting trench system (link to article on RWC) – one of two I set up last summer. It was pretty funny watching the trench as my pumpkin patch grew – it was almost as though someone (in this case, the pumpkin patch) was taking a big straw and sucking down the contents of the trench.
I have little doubt that some of the shrinkage was indeed due to a significant removal of water leached from the organic matter largely food waste) as it decomposed, but the worms and other compost critters certainly helped by reducing the wastes down to some beautiful humus (also undoubtedly appreciated by the plants).
I only had one pumpkin that really took off for me – not too surprising given how late I got the garden started, and my lack of experience growing these things – but it thankfully grew very well. All I wanted really, was a nice big jack O’ lantern for my daughter’s first real Halloween (she was only an infant for Halloween ‘07). Mission accomplished!
I’ve always admired uniqueness in people and things, and I like to think that our big ol’ pumpkin was a little different from the typical boring ones you get at the supermarket.
Looking back, ‘Scarface’ might have been a good nickname for him, but we didn’t end getting to the naming stage of our relationship with the pumpkin (in fact, I’ll tell you in a future post about the horrible things I did to him after his presence was no longer appreciated on our front porch).
Our daughter seemed to enjoy hanging out with (or in) Mr. Pumpkin before he went on display, and all in all we were quite pleased with his spooky presence for the trick ‘r’ treaters on the big night.
The potato plants on the other side of the trench seemed to do fairly well also, although the final potato tally wasn’t really anything to brag about. I thought the sandy soil (from the sandbox of course) would work really well for the spuds, but I’m no garden guru, so I’ll give it the ol’ college try again next year and see if I get better results (again, starting a month or more earlier certainly wouldn’t have hurt!).
Overall, I was really pleased with the results of my trench experiments this past summer and can’t wait to use them again (and set up some new ones) next growing season! I’m planning to make some vids about this topic (trench composting), and will certainly have more to say about it here again before too long.
Stay tuned!
Written by Compost Guy on December 19th, 2008 with no comments.
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My dad surveys the patch of land he groomed for our garbage garden.
Just when I thought I might have to scale back my restaurant food waste vermicomposting project – due to the accumulation of excess waste, with no place to put it – my dad came to the rescue, suggesting that we start up some composting projects on his property. He has a fair amount of available garden space and a lot more privacy than I do, so it should be a great opportunity to really test out some different methods.
Our first project will simply involve converting his old vegetable garden into a ‘garbage garden‘. My hope is that with enough food waste and ‘bedding’ materials, this system will make an excellent winter home for lots of composting worms, and will become the ultimate grow bed for whatever we decide to plant in it next spring!
Putting my dad to work digging trenches, while I barked commands from behind the camera (haha)
In an effort to really take advantage of the space, I decided to start with a series of shallow composting trenches. There will likely be 6 or 7 of these, covered with a thin layer of soil. Next we will start piling up materials directly over top of the soil. It is going to be really important to add LOTS of bulky absorbent ‘browns’, such as cardboard. Aside from soaking up and holding lots of moisture, this will help to maintain aerobic conditions in the bed. I will also be adding lots of straw, and brown leaves (once available in the fall) to cover up the waste materials and create more good habitat for the composting worms (and other helpful critters).
Should be really interesting to see how this pans out! So far so good. It’s been great taking a bit of a break from adding new materials to my own trenches and beds – it’s allowed the worms to play ‘catch up’, and has helped me avoid seriously offending any of my neighbours.
Stay tuned!
Technorati Tags: composting, compost, garbage, gardening, food waste, lasagna gardening, lasagna composting, worm bed, composting worms, compost worms, red worms, red wigglers
Written by Compost Guy on July 30th, 2008 with 7 comments.
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