The Rain Notebook

The first year I moved into my house I had a garden. Shocker huh?

There was a 10 foot gated fenced 150sf area that was once used as a dog pen. Since my dogs are little pipsqueaks and this was only a small fenced in area in the rest of my fenced yard I thought this would use this area as my garden. After all the 10ft tall fencing would keep out elk and deer. It worked perfect the first year, I cleared everything out and got rows dug and built and had a garden. I had a fairly nice setup and a good harvest that year.

The second year I had a garden.

This one however was pathetic. I waited too long to do anything in the garden so I just planted my stuff. But I hadn’t prepared or conditioned the soil none. I didn’t even build rows. Then came the monsoon rains and washed everything away. Well not really everything but most of my soil washed away from my plants and I did lose a few. I try to forget the harvest we got from that garden. It was so pathetic we just got a handful of vegetables. It was a waste of time, money and effort.

The third year I changed my garden.

This year is my third year at my house I plan on having the best year ever for this garden. Because of last year My Honey was convinced we needed to put in raised beds. I however was convinced that would be a lot of effort, time and money not needed. After countless arguments and discussions, I gave into his point of view. His major argument was the soil and plants washing away. He felt that building raised beds would prevent the monsoon rains to just wash away our food. And I hate to admit, he’s right.

So raised beds it is this year. But what are the benefits of raised beds? I did some research and this is what I found:

• One of the major reasons is you can control the soil.  Many gardens have less then ideal soil for a vegetable or flower garden.  Raised beds give you the ability of excellent growing conditions without having to do more extensive work on the main part of the ground.
• Prevents soil compaction.  As you garden you can’t help but step on the soil which causes the soil to compact.  Plant’s roots need air and compacting the soil prevents them from getting that air.  Raised gardens prevent this problem.
• Water & Fertilizer can be focused more on the plants instead of all of the ground.  Especially when you have unlevel grounds, raised beds create a flat area that you’re able to water and fertilize without wasting it on other parts of the ground.  Especially with our water issues this is very important to us.
• You are less likely to get weeds, which means less work and more fun.  Because you are mostly using bagged soil you don’t have to worry about the weed seeds that are already in your ground waiting for water to grow.
• Another kicker for me was that raised beds mean your soil heats up faster after the cold winter.  Which means you can get started earlier with planting.  Of course this didn’t work this year since we don’t quite have them up, but I look forward to it.
• Along those lines, its much easier to build a cold frame around your beds.  Just a few rebars, pvc pipes and plastic sheeting you have a simple yet very effective cold frame.  I can’t wait until next year when I can have this going too.
• You can get a lot more garden into a much smaller spot.  Because you don’t have to have room to walk through you use all of the space in your raised bed for your actual plants.
• And the best?  The research I’ve done is that raised beds produce 1.5-2x more produce then the regular ground.  Now that is awesome!

So what can you make beds out of?  Absolutely anything you want.  Another thing I did a lot of research on.  You can make it out of bricks, wood, railroad ties, rocks, and even hay.  Basically anything that you like and have around or are willing to buy.  As for me I’m trying to keep this as cost effective as possible so I used what I had laying around.

For one area in particular I’m wanting a couple flower beds.  So I used some landscaping material that was given to us over the winter and I’m pretty impressed with how it came out for the little work I did with it.  It literally took me 10 mins this morning IN my pajamas to do it.

So besides the soil I’m putting in the actual bed itself, I’m putting soil in each of these hollow bricks and growing herbs around the perimeter in each of the holes. Come summer this will be a pretty impressive set up and it was all free.

But as for my vegetable garden it was harder to figure out what to do. I certainly didn’t have enough of bricks to do this area, and honestly don’t have much money to build these out. I sat and calculated what it would cost to build these raised beds out of wood or brick and the costs would be starting at $300! Which was my side of the argument of building raised beds to begin with. So in the spirit of compromise I came up with a cost effect way of building beds. Rocks. We have an abundance of rocks on our property and it would really compliment the rustic/natural look we have outside anyways.

So last night we gather up some rock and I start laying out the beds. Even if you are going to use other material I highly suggest using rocks to first lay out your plan as you can see what it will look like before you start building. I decided the first layout didn’t flow and had a lot of wasted space. I changed the layout about 3 times before I was happy. I am excited to see how its all going to work out and should have all the beds built by this weekend.

Next week is the official planting time and I can not wait! Its going to be so fun and I truly think this year we are going to have more vegetables then we will know what to do with. What a wonderful problem to have, :)