henless' garden, 2018

[henless]

@rainey ~ Thanks! I already find it much easier than in ground gardening. My beds are just a little bit wider than yours (inside the blocks), at 2.8' wide. This width is easy for me to take care of. We tried it with one more block, but it was just too wide for me to tend the middle of the bed comfortably. The blocks add another 16" of width that your not gardening with (unless you use the squares). It took me 3 days to plant all those strawberries around the property. My joints can only take so much before they start protesting. I push them all the time, they aren't too happy with me when I do.

I've got a big pile of leaves to make leaf mold with for amending the beds in the future.

@Beekissed ~ I like your hay bale beds!! What kind of hay is it & do you have problems with the hay sprouting? The hay of choice around here is Coastal Bermuda & Bahia. Both are very invasive.

Hay would be a good way to start new areas for raised beds. Place them were you want a bed and let them break down. Then when your ready to make the bed, you will already have a good start for your soil. If we hadn't gotten our top soil, I had planned on doing lasagna gardening in my beds to build up the soil. It would have taken me a while to get it done.

No rain today!! I have a lot of things I need to do. Purple onions I need to plant. A butterfly bush I need to move. I have 3 more blueberry bushes to plant. I need to take apart my asparagus bed to get ready for the rebuild. I better get a move on and get some of it done.

 

[digitS']

You are doing great with those garden beds!

Henless, we had/have a few things in common. I used a 9n and a Ferguson, about the same as an 8n. Graduated to other people's equipment on their farms.

The Quinault strawberries, I hope they do well for you. They did fine here except the two places I had them in the backyard were too shady. You know, Quinault is a community on the Washington coast. It might be quite a bit different from East Texas.

RA and Osteo. Oh yeah. @Pulsegleaner having a birthday in his 30's made me remember turning 30. I didn't think that I would live much longer because of the RA. The 40th birthday was a little odd. Don't work as a florist if you want to sneak past these milestones, unnoticed . I actually had people apologizing to me after all the Hoofla about gravestones and black balloons . I thought, "oh well - I'm still alive!" In fact, my health steadily improved thru my 30's!

Double that 30th birthday plus, plus ... sure the Osteo is a torment. I've gotta get some better stretching going on or I'm carrying the stiffest frame into the gardening season ever! Of course, without raised beds, there will be a lot of stretching out there! Even with them, you will be getting plenty of exercise!

My problem with blocks was soil and weeds in them. It would be nice to sift what soil gets trapped inside out, at least once a year. Putting a board over the top and I'd bet voles would move right in, at least - in my garden. And, be careful with that bloodmeal. Wear a mask or use a long-handled shovel.

Have fun! You are doing great.

Steve

 

[rainey]

Yup! The dimensions of the materials will petty much define what you end up with. I used 8' boards and Gardeners' Supply's channelled corners. Two foot widths meant no waste. One 8' board per container and stacked for the width.

Is there a reason to use hay bales instead of straw for raised beds? Straw will sprout despite what anyone says but it will sprout a WHOLE lot less than hay. I don't know what it is that sprouts and it may vary across the country. But I get a long grass that's pretty easy to pull up and feed to my chickens.

I only use the bale as a step to climb up into the coop that's over part of the run. ...tho it will break down eventually and I guess I'll have to spread it. If I put it in the run I'm sure the chickens will ensure that whatever sprouts never gets a chance to invade.

But do consider straw for your raised beds. I've also heard of planting directly in bales. That is, making holes, putting in a bit of soil and then letting the plants' roots and the water break the bales down as the plants grow. Someone here in LA who had soil compromised by chemicals did it. They did a keyhole arrangement.

You can follow their progress with it here if you want to.

 

[ducks4you]

Very Jelly of your tractor!!! I don't think that where you live you should have much trouble with freezing and cracking on your cement blocks. We up north see that ALL OF THE TIME on roads (like in IL) laid down with cheap materials that need mid winter repair from heaving. We had a real winter with temperatures down to -15 degrees F this year, which is 25 degrees below our normal. I have had pots with water crack in a normal winter, but it wasn't until at least January of constant below freezing temperatures to create this. You are too far south and are sub tropical AND you have a drier climate than we do.
I think we all start out looking at what everybody else near us OR what we see done on the Internet and copy that. Raised beds are great, BUT it takes time, money and effort to build them from wood. They only look great the first year. The woods lasts, on average, 5 years and then starts to fall apart. If you have screwed/nailed them together you HAVE to recover the screws and nails, unles you want your sneakers or mower (or, in my case, my horses) to find them later.
It can be a little bit more money initially to use cement blocks, $1-2/block and I can get wood sometimes cheaper, sometimes not, but the cement blocks last forever, so it is a good investment. I can also buy wooden end pieces for my beds with clearance pieces, hit and miss at Lowe's where the "suburban mindset" doesn't want the extra pieces after they have had theirs cut, so they leave them. They charge me 25 cents each. You can also get "spacers", which divide drying plywood/other for free there and use those for the corners of your beds. They are about 2 ft. long.
I no longer screw/nail into my beds. I either buy wooden stakes or cut spacers, pound them in the corners and secure the sides with inside/outside/inside or vice-versa. Then I can remove them and store for next year after the season is over. When any of the wood rots out I can safety burn it without having to remove any metal, although I do have a spot where I burn wood WITH metal, which I retrieve after the pile has burned and cooled, then store for scrap metal recycling.
AlTHOUGH I don't have a Homeowner's Association policing my back yard, I store anything that looks like trash, even if it will have a gardening purpose. Where you have a HA, there are strict rules about what you can do in your own back YARD!!! Like where to put a swingset, what kind of shed you can purchase, how far from your neighbor's property anything can be placed, etc. Some HA's easily would prohibit cement raised beds bc they don't like the looks. I think they resemble ancient planting beds, like in Rome, so I like them.

 

[henless]

@digitS' ~ Quinaults are the most common strawberries found in my area. They spread like crazy, and taste pretty good. I didn't let many bloom last year since they were new. Since I redid the bed, I'll have to see about this year. Most of the ones I transplanted were new ones. I was out planting onions and found a few of the berries with blooms on them already.

Sorry you have RA. It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Actually, the OA gives me the most pain, but I struggle with extreme fatigue due to the RA. So far, I've found nothing that helps with the fatigue. It's like having the flu 24/7. I was at my Rheumy's last week and the nurse was taking blood. She asked if I was going back to work when I got through. I told her no, I don't work anymore. She said "aren't you lucky!". I looked at her and though man, you have got to be kidding me! I told her that I would much rather work every day for the rest of my life than have to live with RA. She kinda looked funny, and didn't know what to say. Some people.

@rainey ~ It's hard to find straw around here. Isn't straw the left overs from growing some form of grain? I do use leaves & pine straw as mulch. It works great. Thanks for the link to straw bale gardening. Their's did really good!

@ducks4you ~ I don't have a HOA either! DH & I talked about moving into town as we got older, but I don't think we could. I'd much rather move further out in the boonies on 40 acres than move into town.

Wood doesn't last long here, even if it's treated. I just pulled apart one of my asparagus beds. It was made with treated wood that we had used as a sandbox for my granddaughter. There was nothing wrong with it when we put it out in the garden last year. Today, termite damage almost halfway up the 12" boards.

I like the cement blocks too. If I was really ambitious, I would paint them. That's NOT going to happen! lol



Work I did today out in the garden:

I planted 62 sweet purple onions in amongst my strawberries. I still have 37 left. I'll either plant those tomorrow or see if Mom would like to have them to plant. Her problem is the neighborhood cats like to use her yard as a litter box. I told her to use mothballs. Anyone else have any ideas?

I put up my trellis for my sugar snaps and get them planted. I moved my butterfly bush to the front yard. I had it planted in the corner of my BTE garden. Since I tore it all down, it was planted out in the middle of the yard. DH liked to run over it with his tractor. Always claiming he didn't see it. Yea, whatever!!

I did take apart both of my asparagus beds. It's a shame those boards will have to be burned due to the termite damage. Almost lost my shoe stepping into the asparagus bed. The ground is so wet it just sucked it down. My jeans were wet up to my knees from walking in all the muck. The sun came out today so hopefully it will dry up a bit. Rain is due back in tomorrow night.

I didn't get my blueberries planted. I'll probably wait till the weekend to get them done. It's almost too wet to dig holes right now.

 

[henless]

We got another inch of rain today. My beds are doing good, but the ground all around them is a soggy mess!
I planted the rest of my purple onions. Also put in some different varieties of lettuce & spinach.

Spring is here. Look what I found out in the orchard.

My Methley is blooming

 

[baymule]

We used to live next to a cat hoarder who also fed all the feral cats in the neighborhood. They used my garden as their toilet. I bought a bunch of plastic forks and stuck them, pointed side up, in the garden. Cats squat to poop and the fork tines poked them in their stinking patatootie.

Your garden is looking good. This weather needs a break, we got another 3/4" rain today. Last week we got 6 1/4 inches. When it's not raining, it's foggy, drizzly, nasty and just enough to keep me inside. Phoooey.

 

[henless]

@baymule ~ I can hear them now, squalling and hauling butt back to their homes! LOL I like cats, but sometimes they can be a pain. I hadn't thought about plastic forks. I'll let her know and see if it works for her.

We got another inch yesterday. More on the way later tonight, if it makes it this far. Some of it looks like it could be severe, specially with it so warm & humid outside. It's so nasty and muddy outside. Have to watch where you walk or you'll take a slid.

 

[baymule]

We got another 3/4 inch last night for a total of 7 3/4 inches in a week. At least we didn't get it all on the same day. Everything is slop, chicken pen is squooshy slop. Sheep lot is slop. And it splatters too. Yuck.

 

[thistlebloom]

We got another 3/4 inch last night for a total of 7 3/4 inches in a week. At least we didn't get it all on the same day. Everything is slop, chicken pen is squooshy slop. Sheep lot is slop. And it splatters too. Yuck.

That doesn't sound fun.

Hey, maybe whatcha need is a foot of clean white pristine clean beautiful clean white snow!