thanks to my mom and step dad investing in my garden this year as a mini csa, this was my first year to venture into raised beds! woohoo! I found a GREAT deal on a raised bed kit at sams....greenland gardener, 3.5x7 bed kits made from composite lumber for less than $40! After some shopping around I found a local place that sells potting soil for a GREAT deal...so I bought 2 raised bed kits, a TON (well, not quite...but my back sure thought so) of soils....I ended up mixing potting soil, top soil, and mushroom compost to fill my beds....they worked GREAT!!
I used square foot gardening guidelines...kinda sorta....for the plant spacings.....probably should have followed them a bit more closely...but despite that, I was still pleased!
again this year I planted most of my summer veggies from seeds, but a lot of the fall stuff was from transplants
here is what I planted in 2011:
summer
tomatoes in raised beds (5), hanging baskets (4) and a few deck containers (2)
peppers mostly in raised beds (at least 10 plants, maybe more)
bush beans in raised beds
squash and zukes in raised beds
pole beans in the same place as last year
lettuce and mesclun, chard and spinach in pots
cukes in a side bed
fall
brussells sprouts where the pole beans vacated
cabbages in raised beds
chard in raised beds
radishes in raised beds
kale, bok choy, mustard greens, lettuce, mesclun in containers
lessons I learned:
1)peppers take FOREVER to grow into seedlings and even longer to produce....but once they do...whew! next time I grow serranos, I should only do 1 plant...because with 2 I was covered up with those little hot peppers!
2)I wonder if my overcrowding my peppers affected yield this summer...at least with my bell peppers. they just seemed to take forever and weren't all that impressive. I'm not willing to give up yet, because those pretty peppers are expensive in the store....but I need to tweak something....
3)5 bush tomato plants in a 3.5x3.5 square was just too much...next year I will just plan to do 3 per square
4)I am intimidated by indeterminate tomatoes....but 99% of the cool heirloom tomatoes are indeterminate...so I decided to try those in hanging baskets...something called an upsy downsy where I could plant in the top AND bottom of the pot...and I planted the same amount of plants that they called for...if not less...but yield was pathetic! I had semi good luck with the pot that had yellow pear tomatoes, but I never saw a mr stripey or big rainbow, and I think I only got 1 or 2 amana oranges that year. bummer. I want to try again...but with tweaking.
5)I did a tiny bit of "interplanting" this year with putting mesclun around the perimeter of my container tomato plants (may have done this in 2010 as well...cant remember) and that worked pretty well....
6)I was covered up with radishes from doing a whole 3.5 square bed with them....and I'm really not a radish fan....but I discovered a recipe for radish top soup that was interesting....probably wont do a whole bed of them next year, but interplant them instead.
7)I LOVED growing kale....now I just need to learn how to cook with it! :)
8)I purchased a "strawberry pot" this spring, and I think it is entirely possible that I planted those little strawberry bare root crowns upside down....so no berries this year...I am DYING to try strawberries sometime in a raised bed...not sure when I'll have the spare space....but the strawberry pot was a waste of money :(
9)this summer we had a hail storm that really affected my garden...especially my squash plants...you should have seen how sad those big beautiful leaves were when they were ripped to shreds ! As a result of that storm, we had to get our roof replaced, and as a result of that, we had some wooden pallets laying around. I took them and made a compost pile in one of the vacant squares of my raised bed....and I was a bit nervous doing this is OCTOBER when it was just starting to get nippy and frosty....because compost needs HEAT...but I decided to try anyway....and it worked GREAT! I felt very "green" by taking our kitchen veggie waste outside, putting our fallen leaves in there, even our shredded sunday paper and paper plates and dryer lint. cool, huh? I just dismantled it in mid february 2012, and although there was still a fair amount of stuff that hadnt yet decomposed....I am certain that a whole bunch of it did! probably thanks in part to the wierd warm winter we have had....barely any snow at all....so the stuff never really froze all the way through....but it was cool enough that the smell never got offensive and the bugs didnt seem to pay much attention at all...and boy you should have seen the size of those earthworms when I was dismantling it to transfer it to the new spot....they were MASSIVE! good sign! it was exciting to be able to spread all that nice dark brown goodness to the other beds!
not sure if I will do it that way again since I invested in one of those black plastic compost bins from sams and put it near the trashcan.....I'm a bit nervous how much I will like having a compost bin this summer when it is nice and hot and buggy.....we'll see
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