Yesterday my husband and I got so overheated doing our errands that once we cooled off in the house, we both slept for an hour or so in our chairs. When we awoke, the sky was looking darker than was usual for 7pm, so we went out to find that a cool front apparently had swooped in while we were asleep, and the temperature was in the high 80s, rather than over 100!
We took advantage of this and got the third raised bed garden box installed in the garden.
This picture shows you that the garden is now equally divided between ‘regular’ square foot garden on the right (North) and raised bed square foot garden on the left (South).
This picture is taken from the West end of the garden, looking East, so you get an idea of the three 4’x4′ wooden raised bed garden boxes on metal supports on the south side of the garden. Each box is filled with Mel’s Mix (vermiculite, peat moss, and three or more kinds of compost. We use mushroom, barnyard, and cotton burr.) The screws you see sticking up on the edges of the box are for string to be stretched across from both directions to create the square foot planting areas. We put 1×2’s across the whole length of the three boxes to support the sprinkler in the center of each box and the hose lengths going from one sprinkler to the next.
This is a close up of one of the sprinklers. We can adjust these so that all the squares are getting a good amount of water and the whole system is on a timer.
As you can see, the metal supports didn’t allow for the boxes to be at exactly the same level as the others. We settled for LEVEL at whatever height that was. You can also see here that I need to mix more Mel’s Mix tonight to fill up the third box. I also need to spread wood chips under the three raised bed boxes.
We’re now almost ready to plant the fall garden! I’ll be limited by whatever the locals have for sale, but I’m mainly hoping to be able to plant two or three different kinds of lettuce, spinach, radishes, and whatever else is available, such as broccoli, squash, cauliflower, etc. I’ll watch for our locals to start selling plants and I can jump right in and get things planted for the fall, letting the summer garden go as long as it wants.
This is the north side of the garden now. I’ve propped up the tomato plants as well as possible after they all went down (cages and all) during the last big storm. I have a lot of greenery, but not much in the way of actual harvest-able veggies. I’m still hoping for cucumbers, a couple of different kinds of squash, some melon, tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. to make.
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