Raised Garden Beds Archives - One Hundred Dollars a Month

Mavis Garden Blog – Spring Vegetables in My Garden

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By Mavis Butterfield on April 2, 2014 · 9 Comments

I’m hoping the rain will hold off until this afternoon so Lucy the puggle dog and I can finish cleaning up the raspberry patch. Clipping dead canes and pulling weeds takes a surprising long time when you have a dog helping you out. But I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way. 🙂

Have your raspberry plants started to leaf out yet? Our are looking really healthy this year.

The garlic I planted last fall is doing really well too. Just a few weeds here and there but nothing I can’t keep up with.

Beets! I planted beets seeds about a month ago and they finally decided to make their appearance. I planted 4 kinds of beets this year and let me tell you Bob, I can’t wait to harvest them this summer.

I can however wait for the Brussel sprouts. 😉

While Lucy checked looked for hidden treasures I thinned the radish seedlings.

I suppose I could replant them somewhere else in the garden if I wanted to, but with only 10 garden boxes this year I’m already running low on space so I just tossed them onto the compost heap.

Now, if we could just get the weather to warm up {and stay warm} I could really get some work done. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to for heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil.

Ahhh summer… we need you.

~Mavis

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Building New Garden Boxes

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By Mavis Butterfield on September 17, 2013 · 27 Comments

When I first built our garden boxes back in 2009 I was totally new to raised bed gardening.

I was going for maximum space and didn’t put to much thought into how deep my garden boxes needed top be. So I purchased the most inexpensive untreated wood I could find, 8′ x 8″ x 2 ” inch boards.

I can’t even remember what kind of wood the boards were made of, but the total cost for each bed was somewhere around $20 – $25.

And they worked great. 8 inches of soil was plenty for crops like lettuce, zucchini and beans.

But when it came to room crops like carrots, beets, turnips and even potatoes, 8 inches just wasn’t going to cut it unless I wanted to grow the smaller varieties of the vegetables. Having nice long 12 inch carrots just wasn’t going to happen.

Unless I upgraded to larger beds.

Which brings me to one of my fall/winter garden projects. Replacing all 16 of my raised garden boxes with deeper ones. The plan is to replace all the boxes in the main garden as the crops are harvested. Then, re-purpose the wood elsewhere in garden.

If you were planing on building a garden box, ideally you’d want to use cedar boards. But they can be expensive, especially in my case because I have 16 garden boxes to build. This time around I used {3} 8’x12″x2″ hemlock boards and stained the outsides of the boards before putting them together.

I plan on using a few of the old garden boxes {which are still in great shape} to create new lettuce beds alongside the greenhouse, and maybe move the rest down near the chicken run. I’m not happy with the way the hens Swiss chard and kale garden looks right now, my little OCD heart needs some sort of structure down there. And I’m hoping by adding a few garden boxes, it will spruce things up a bit.

All I know is, gardening is rad. And I want to keep on sowing seeds.

It’s going to take awhile, but I think the new garden boxes will not only look better, but grow more food in the long run for my family. Gardening is cool, there’s no doubt about it.

Do you have garden boxes? How big are they?

Mavis wants to know. 🙂

Carrot seeds I planted for a winter harvest:

Little Finger
Cosmic Purple
Danvers 126

Thinking about growing a garden this fall? Check out the book The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live. It’s loaded with all sorts of cool tips.

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Raised Garden Beds – Cabbage, Beans, Tomatoes, Potatoes and Garlic

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By Mavis Butterfield on June 13, 2013 · 10 Comments

Lucy and I snapped a few pictures of the raised garden beds this morning and I thought I would show you what’s growing in them. 17 heads of cabbage were planted and so far 2 of them are bolting.

I always think it’s weird when you plant something in the same soil and the conditions are the same but one or two of plants decide to do their own thing. It’s kind of weird if you ask me. I mean I get how the whole bolting thing works, but still. I think it’s odd.

This fat head of cabbage looks perfect though.

Remember the two garden beds where I couldn’t get anything to grow? Well knock on wood because after several attempts, we have green beans and beets coming up in one of the beds.

And potatoes and corn in the other. I don’t know if I’ll actually get any corn to harvest since I only planted a few seeds, but the stalks will still look cool on the porch this fall when it comes time to decorate.

A sea of tomato plants.

Artichokes and garlic. I’ve stopped watering my garlic because the leaves are starting to die back a bit. We typically harvest garlic around the end of June or early July. The garlic plants are looking pretty good considering they got a bit of a late start.

The artichoke plants were started from seed in January and for their first year, I think they look great. This was the first time I had ever started artichokes from seed and for being such a large plant, I’m amazed at how well they are doing.

Squash. Finally! I planted some butternut squash seeds up by the pea teepees early last week and they are just now starting to pop through the soil. I LOVE winter squash and I planted a bunch of seeds so we’ll see what happens.

And last but not least, the potato patch. The HH has been laying grass clippings in the potato beds each time he mows. So far so good. I haven’t noticed any additional slugs. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Did you plant potato plants this year? Are you using any type of mulch?

Mavis wants to know.

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Raised Garden Beds – Beans, Tomatoes, Beets, Carrots, Peas and Radishes

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 24, 2013 · 16 Comments

It’s been raining all week at our house. All stinkin’ week. And you know what? The cool season crops like cabbage, radishes and peas are loving it. The vegetables are growing like crazy!

Check out this gorgeous head of cabbage. Don’t you just want to give it a big kiss?

The Swiss chard has really taken off too. If you have a favorite recipe that calls for Swiss chard, please leave your recipe or a link in the comment section. I think I’m going to need as many chard recipes as I can get this year with the amount we are growing.

Even with all the rain we’ve been having, the tomato plants are still looking pretty good. Water on tomato leaves is not ideal, but hopefully they’ll be okay. We’ll see.

Beans! From now until the end of July I’ll be planting green beans every two weeks to make sure we have plenty to harvest {and preserve} throughout the summer. Do you do this too? These beans were planted 2 weeks ago. This weekend I think I’ll plant some Roma beans.

The garlic isn’t anywhere near ready to harvest, but it sure looks cool.

These are our beets. I thinned these bad boys last week, but with all the cool weather and rain we’ve been having, I may have to go out there soon and thin them again so they have some room to grow.

Carrots. Ugg. I’m not sure what happened, but not all of the carrots germinated. So last week I had to plant some more. Growing carrots takes a lot of patience and it’s a total crap shoot when you plant them super early like I did this year.

The napping gnome is doing a fantastic job.

The potatoes are looking great and before too long we’ll be enjoying our favorite fully loaded baked potato soup again.

Here is the view from the back of the garden. Pretty cool huh?

Now, if we could just get the sun to come out I’d be happy.

How is YOUR garden doing these days? Everything growing as planned?

~Mavis

Keep Calm and Garden On T- Shirt

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