GardenDesk

Raised Bed Garden Harvesting!

We have been eating well from the garden this summer. We've harvested squash, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, green beans, and now plenty of tomatoes from our new Cedar Raised Bed Garden Kits.

Here are a few updated pictures of our raised beds:

My version of a three sisters garden - squash, pole beans and tomatoes instead of corn.

Here, looking into the sun, you can see both Raised Beds and my half finished water tower.

I've already cleaned out the green bean plants in the front and put them in the compost bin.
This is where we will plant our fall garden - hopefully lettuce, spinach, more carrots and broccoli. That is one of my favorite things about raised bed gardening. Once one crop is finished, you can easily add a bit of compost, work up the soil a bit by hand and plant something else to keep the garden beds producing as long as possible.

More info to come!

Keep Growing!

- Marc

A Much Needed Update on the New Raised Garden Beds

Wow, this spring has flown by and now it's nearly Summer! I can't believe its been so long since I posted here at GardenDesk. I have been busy out in the garden at least, and it's high time to give you the grand tour.

First of all, this is our view of the back yard from our deck:

See the garden up there between the peach tree on the left and the chicken coop on the right. It actually looks like the garden is connected to the small chicken yard, but it is just past the chicken coop. Here it is a little closer:

These are the new raised beds made from the Greenes Cedar Raised Bed Garden Kits that I posted about back in March. Putting the kits together were super easy. What took me so much time was leveling the spot where the beds are. I have never had a flat garden before, so since we were putting in new beds, I decided to go crazy and level the whole 20' x 20' area. I made a video about the steps I took to make that happen but haven't yet found time to post it. I do love having a level garden now. Even my trellis is level for the first time ever.

I will share much more about this in the near future, but in a nutshell we have two 4' x 16' beds, four feet apart. Half of each bed is higher, so really we have four 8'x4' beds. We got a late start planting since I spent the spring building the new beds. I didn't have time to plant cool season veggies so for now this is a very simple vegetable garden layout.

In the front right bed we have four tomato plants, four bell pepper plants, heat tolerant lettuce and hopefully a later stand of bush green beans:

Next to that in the front left bed we have four more tomato plants and three rows of bush green beans.

The back beds have a 5' trellis at the back to grow cucumbers and pole beans. I have had trouble getting the pole beans to germinate, but I just planted them again in the left back bed behind two cherry tomato plants and three squash plants. This bed will be a little crowded at the end of the summer.

Three different kinds of climbing cucumbers are in the back right bed along with three zucchini plants:

The two left zucchini plants were planted a couple weeks later than the one on the right because the first planting didn't come up. The one original plant looks really good, and so do the cucumber plants that were also started from seed.

So that's pretty much the grand tour of our new Raised Bed Garden. I am now putting in a gravity fed bucket watering system. Maybe you noticed the beginnings of a water tower in one of the wide pictures. I will post alot about that later, about a bunch more tomatoes we have planted elsewhere and a whole lot more. I hope to get back to posting regularly and I hope you are having a successful garden season so far too.

Keep Growing!

- Marc