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It appears your beds are pretty deep. At least a foot deep by my estimation. Most edibles you'll plant won't need to be that deep. 4-6" is enough for a lot of plants except for root vegetables but you can always add an extension in those areas. You don't have to make the whole bed deep just for a few potatoes or carrots.
Since you have that much depth what ...
9
An important thing that many people miss is that if a cover crop produces fruit and seed (beans in your case) it is no longer a cover crop or green manure, but a crop, which depletes the soil rather than rebuilding it. That is, all the nitrogen a legume has put into the soil during the growth stage, is consumed by the plant during the fruiting stage. So if ...
9
I'm by no means an expert, however I am pretty sure that, at least for Zucchini, Cucumber and peppers 1% more light = 1% more growth. Thus in order to increase growth, maybe you should start moving these into full sun.
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There are two possible problems that could come from using manure on root vegetables, one of which only applies to fresh manure and the other is more applicable to fresh manure also.
The first, and the most obvious, is the potential for contamination. If you're putting the manure into the soil, the part of the vegetable you eat is growing in direct contact ...
9
There is a big difference between manure from ruminants (e.g. cows) and non-ruminants (e.g. horses, chickens, etc).
Non-ruminant herbivores produce poo which is relatively bulky and contains a lot of undigested plant material. This material is degraded rather quickly by bacteria, but until that happens the manure is traditionally described as "hot", and ...
9
This looks like blossom end rot. Here is another source of info.
According to the second link, which is from Clemson University:
After tomatoes are planted, gardeners can minimize the potential for blossom end rot by doing the following:
Once transplants become established, encourage the production of a large root system by keeping plants a little ...
8
Dog pee once in a while on the ground won't hurt anything, especially with the amount of rain you likely get - but if it's happening a lot then it can "burn" your plants with the excess nitrogen and alkalinity. And, if you have low hanging fruit and the dog pees on that, well, I think none of us would find that appetizing, even if it wasn't necessarily ...
8
First a question. What is going to be underneath your raised beds? Garden soil, lawn, patio, other?
If you're going to get into raised bed vegetable gardening I strongly suggest you look into Square Foot Gardening. It makes a lot of things easier when it comes to raised bed gardening and can also save you a considerable amount of money. For one thing, you ...
8
Normally with cover crops you want them to grow as long as possible, where possible is influenced by:
When you plan to plant the actual crop (including some time for breakdown of the cover crop residues.)
Is the cover crop about to set seed and become a weed through self-seeding?
The tops/leaves are also valuable material - you can either incorporate them ...
8
My potato bag is one square foot in diameter, and just under 2 foot high. You have 16 square feet in your bed so you could potentially plant one seed potato ( or part of one with at least 3 eyes ) per square foot. One foot deep is about the minimum you can go.
Assuming you have good drainage, and you're using a well fertilized soil, you can plant each ...
8
Topping with compost is always a good idea, it should be an annual fall event, however it won't hurt to do it in the spring when you move in.
In any case it's always good to bring some samples from each bed to your agricultural extension office and get a full test done. It will tell you what the soil has and what it should be amended with.
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The answer really depends on how much space you have to grow tomatoes. The reason most people choose to start with tomato seedlings or plants in areas that are not tropical is that the growing season is relatively short. By the time your volunteer tomatoes start to give fruit (about 100+ days after they start growing for a lot of the short-season varieties, ...
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Just wash them all in clean tapwater - the hardest are the leafy greens, so the way to do that is immersion in a sink full of water, then picking out the leaves and running them directly under the tap, at the same time as inspecting for eggs and caterpillars. Then a salad spinner if you've got one, or just leave them to drain down in a colander. You may need ...
8
Without looking at your video, I would expect the landscape fabric is being laid as a weed mat to inhibit weeds from regenerating from roots left in situ and coming up in the middle of the raised garden bed.
Some people use layers of newspapers, and others old wool carpets.
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Think about what you're going to plant and how much you want to plant. Come up with a list of everything you want to put in your garden and sketch it out roughly to scale to see if the design will work better for you. It's easier to make changes on paper before you build your beds.
A few years ago I read up on Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew but ...
7
I find that raised beds are best for:
early spring production
drainage
square foot garden (limited space)
older people
And I have also found that I can grow more per plant in the ground beds, but they start a bit later.
If you have the time and energy to heavily amend a ground bed, I think you will like the reults better. That is just my experience. I ...
7
Usually, you would wait until the plants are in full flower, and have no ripe seeds, then cut/mow the tops down and turn them under. This will add the most nitrogen to the soil (the green tops are very high in Nitrogen), and the soil microorganism population will jump, increasing nutrient availability. In a raised bed, if you don't want to turn the tops ...
7
If the soil temperature is adequate, the seeds are good, the depth is correct, then likely the seeds are rotting in the ground or are being eaten by animal life.
That's why people use seed mixes to plant seeds into, to avoid bacterial and fungal pathogens, to avoid competition from other plants (allelopathy), and for good drainage.
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Looking at the measurements of your garden bed, it sounds like square foot gardening. And yes, potatoes are included in that method, one seed per square, so sixteen for your bed.
One issue with potatoes is depth: For a good harvest the emerging sprouts are covered with soil to encourage more root mass and more tubers.
In "standard" gardening, this is ...
7
Sitting on soil allows worms and other critters to enter and exit the bottom of the bin. Also, I would think the drainage would be poor and you could get an anaerobic smelly mess at the bottom.
As another alternative, I have had good experiences with http://geobin123.com/ . My mother has had one for almost a decade and it hasn't degraded at all.
All of the ...
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I've tried 2 bins similar to the picture on the left. They did not work well. They took a very long time to break down the compost. It was difficult to turn the pile because it was so small. They filled up way too fast because they were so small, and stayed full because they were inefficient. I ended up selling them both and using the money to buy wood to ...
7
If you subscribe to the hygiene hypothesis, then there's no need to wash anything.
If you're not keen on eating insects and eggs, then a good immersion in warm salty water removes insects, and inspection is needed to remove eggs. Insects are a good source of vitamin B12 for those who are strict vegetarians.
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Full sun - most vegetables like as much sun as possible, although in very, very hot countries, some shade from the midday sun may be beneficial.The berries falling doesn't matter either way, but they'll be a pain to pick up.
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You should really wait till late winter (in pots if its not warm enough outdoors) or spring time to plant, but assuming it's ginger root you're after, then yes, you can buy it from the grocery store - select pieces which look plump, with as many 'eyes' as you can find. Soak them overnight, then either cut them up, making sure there's an eye in each piece (...
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Most continuous production systems (tomatoes & peppers in greenhouses or the tropics being the major exception that comes to mind) do find it beneficial to replace old plants with young ones on a regular basis. In zone 4 we don't really have this problem, as winter provides a defined end point (you can pick kale in the snow, but it pretty much stops ...
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I'm kind of the opposite of stormy. I love gardening directly in the ground (that is my method of choice for most things). The only reason I use raised beds is because we have some. However, I do know some pros and cons. Here are some observations:
The soil will get warmer, since sun can shine on the sides of the raised beds, instead of just on the top of ...
7
Personally, I like the separation. It will keep the back of the bed from rotting due to moisture trapped between the house and the raised bed.
It looks like your siding could be wood, and putting wood up against other wood is never a good idea (insects, rot, and fungi can run amok in all that dark and damp). Even if your siding is vinyl or fiber-cement you'...
6
Its pretty well known how plowpan reduces crop yields and is why many farmers subsoil their fields. Plowpan is the hard layer of soil 6-7 inches down caused by the repeated plowing at the same depth. Subsoiling breaks up that layer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VKsK3u_JWE
Image taken from: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030201/...
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I think it depends what you're wanting to plant. For instance a package of bush beans I happen to have next to me says "Plant in rows 24 inches apart". So if you have 3 rows, 36 inches wide, I think you could get 3 rows of beans. But if you had 2 rows 60 inches wide, I think you could get 4 rows of beans.
However, if you planted pole beans, the ...
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The reason most people build raised garden beds is because their existing top soil isn't good enough to grow in. So definitely don't use your existing soil.
People that follow Square Foot Gardening tend to use Mel's mix which is 1/3 Vermiculite, 1/3 Peat Moss and 1/3 Compost from varied sources. This seems to be the best mix if you're doing square foot ...
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