In the past, I have successfully grown tomatoes, beets, summer squash and zucchini (with great harvests until the squash vine borer killed my plants, and herbs—all in Grow Box containers with their fertilizer patch or regular containers. Then I didn’t garden for a few years. We started a small chicken farm here this summer to produce our family’s eggs (we eat about a dozen a day and eggs are very expensive now), and since we now have a lot of pine shavings mixed with manure needing to be composted, I decided to resume gardening.
First, on Aug 28 of this year, on the south side of the house in full sun, we built a six-inch deep, 4x8 raised bed with the lasagna method—paper to suppress grass (then wet down), leaves and fresh old chicken bedding (which I now think was a mistake), then purchased garden soil from Home Depot (likely another mistake). We planted chard, lettuce, beets by seed and a purchased yellow squash, basil, and early cherry tomato plants and transplanted them. Then we had that 9” of rain deluge followed by scorching heat. I should have used shade cloth, maybe. I did keep the soil moist an inch down. The results of that garden? Chard never germinated; lettuce did well once the fall cooled off and we still have a good stand of lettuce; beets were scraggly, failed to mature, and only three germinated; squash plant withered and died; basil did fine till the first frost in Nov.; tomato grew slowly and had green tomatoes by the first frost (I made chutney with them and took out the plant). Was decaying manure stealing all the nitrogen? It was the fresh manure burning the roots of some plants? Why did the lettuce thrive in this while the rest of the plants struggled? I don’t know. Soil test last week showed alkaline soil with depleted NPK. Lettuce doesn’t seem to mind.
We put in a second raised bed on Sept 20 next to the other one, before I had learned much. 3x6x1. We filled the open bottom with paper again, wet it, then the fresh manure/pine shavings again (mistake!), then filled over half with a mix of Miracle Grow Vegetable Herb soil (because cheap—$5/1.5 cu ft) and Earthgro Humus and manure (also cheap). We planted chard, turnips, and beets by seed. Turnips grew well, at least the greens. Roots were tiny. Chard was slow to grow but after I added fertilizer, seems to be growing now. Beets germinated and stayed tiny for a long time. I added fertilizer early in the season and they still grew slowly. Soil test last week showed alkaline soils and depleted NPK, so I added the recommended fertilizer. Will they grow? Unknown.
I say these beds are in full sun, but maybe not in the winter. They face south, but my neighbor’s trees shade some during the morning. In summer the sun is higher and they are in full sun.
I also planted 5 of the Grow Boxes on the north side of house in full sun filled with a mix of bagged garden soil, peat moss, and perlite. I mixed in fertilizer. Then I planted by seed beets in two, chard in one, lettuce in one—outdoors—then a patio yellow tomato and merlot pepper indoors under a grow light. Everything is growing fine, esp the indoor plants. I fertilize with Jack’s Classic once or twice a week.
We also built three hugelbeets, filling in the logs/branches with kitchen scraps and uncomplicated chicken manure/pine shavings, then topping with bagged Earthgro humus and manure and the Miracle Grow vegetable soil. We planted Austrian winter peas in one in mid-October and boy, is it happy. Thriving. Greens for us all winter. That hugelbeet is against the N fence facing south. We planted red clover and more Austrian winter peas in the other two on the south side in early Nov. and they have germinated and are growing. Cover crops are great!
In a 1x25x4 inches skinny bed between our house and driveway, which I filled with bought soil and more of the humus/manure mix, plus fertilizer. I planted sage, parsley, and thyme from transplants on Aug 28. They are happy. I have given them bloodmeal. On Oct. 15 II planted garlic down that bed —14 in all—and they have grown 7 in leaves already.
We just planted two peach trees, a semi-dwarf harvester and dwarf red haven, in 4x4x1 raised beds in front of our chicken coop, which faces south. In the summer, that area gets scorched with sun and heats up the nesting boxes too much, so we hope the peach trees will shade it while providing us fruit to eat—in a few years. (Till then, a tarp will shade the coop. Full size, martyred crepe myrtles are behind the coop on the N side, so all but the S face is shady. The peach trees are 10 ft away from co-op and 10 feet apart. We had to put them in raised beds because after a heavy rain, that area holds water for too long even with the French drain.
We are switching to square foot gardening for the spring. We are adding another 4x8x1 raised bed in the S garden. I need recommendations for affordable bulk soil to put in it. Will the fresh manure/pine shavings we put in the bottom of the other beds be decomposed enough by March to support a vegetable garden by then? (Put in Aug 29 and Sept 29). The hugelbeets will have cantaloupe planted in them a few weeks after I chop and drop the cover crops (giving some to the chickens) and add more soil and compost to the mounds
Our goal is to grow our own vegetables, herbs, and some fruit. We have 5 blackberry plants in that same south garden which we have neglected for several years. And yet they survived the drought without us watering them! I’ve added a soaker hose for them and will prune in February and fertilize in the spring so hopefully we can build them back up again and start producing berries.
That’s a long explanation of our recent gardening efforts!
