raised bed FAQ

[TightenUp]

i am planning on growing my tomatoes in a raised bed next year. i have zero experience with raised beds and on top of that i'm not very experienced as a gardener. i have some questions and would love for the answers to be dumbed down as much as possible.

my house is far from any farmland or forest. i'm talking residential backyard. so people out in the boonies who reply "i go out back and get manure" arent helping. i have a home depot and lowes or any other garden center.

so when you say "manure", are you talking chicken, horse, or something else? i've even seen llama written somewhere. these are the specifics i am looking for cause i dont know if it makes a difference.

and compost....i dont have a compost pile so dont just say "add 30% compost". can i buy quality compost or is this something i have to do on my own?.

ive seen "peat" and "organic matter" thrown around a lot. is there a difference in different types of peat or organic matter i use? what do you use?

ok so now you understand how much of a beginner i am and how much help i truly need.

my question is: what do i fill my raised bed with? all i will be growing are tomatoes

thanks so much for taking the time to read my post and hopefully responding. i am eager to learn

Jeff

[Suze]

Jeff, what is the scale of your project? How many raised beds & what are the dimensions (length, height, width, etc.) you are planning?

[maxfromaustralia]

Raised beds work well. I built compost heaps where I wanted to build raised beds and ended up with soil like cake. scavenge- just balance your green to brown ratio sometimes called carbon to nitrogen ratio 2 to 1 or 3 to 1. green =food scraps, lawn clippings brown= dry leaves, straw, newspaper .
Build a big pile interspersing layers Add anything that's lived once it will live again. Pee on it and turn it every couple of weeks. It will get hot for a while and make the best garden bed you have ever known, crumbly soil full of worms.
Cheers
maxfromaustralia

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by ChefJeff

so when you say "manure", are you talking chicken, horse, or something else? i've even seen llama written somewhere. these are the specifics i am looking for cause i dont know if it makes a difference.

and compost....i dont have a compost pile so dont just say "add 30% compost". can i buy quality compost or is this something i have to do on my own?.

The problem you run into at Wal-Mart is the cheaper bags of soil are really just scrapings off a vacant lot and are really poor quality for growing vegetables in.

If you can find Black Kow composted cow manure in the yellow bag, that's good stuff and you only need about 3-4 bags in a 3' x 12' bed to get started and then 2 bags a year after that.

If you can find sheep, rabbit, or llama manure, then you can use it immediately. You would not find these at a major retailer but at a local nursery. I always consider Home Depot/Wal-Mart a last resort for gardening products.

Chicken manure is very "hot" with ammonia and so must be allowed to age for 4-6 months before it can be safely used.

Horse manure has a different problem in that horses tend to eat a lot of weed seeds and, due to their lack of 4 chambered stomach, don't really "process" the weed seeds. Stories abound of people bringing home a truckload of horse manure and ending up with a massive crop of weeds.

If you can collect some leaves this fall (not black walnut) and shred them, that would be a good layer to add to your raised garden bed.

I use some peat moss just as filler and as it is good for drainage. Premier Peat Moss comes in a 4 cubic foot block. You'll definitely want to grab a calculator and do the math on raised bed gardens. They take a lot more to fill than you'd imagine. For instance a 3' x 12' bed 10" tall -- which will comfortably grow 8-9 tomato plants -- needs 30 cubic feet (just over 1 cubic yard) of soil.

Once you get into the realm of three or four 3 x 12 beds, it's time to start looking at a soil company to deliver a garden mix by the cubic yard.

[Tom C zone 4/5]

Every single thing that breathes, excreets. Every single plant sheds its leaves-needles annualy. It sounds to me more like you have trained yourself how to shop. If you really want organic material for a raised bed, now you've got to train yourself how to forage.

Every time I've been pressed into buying OM (compost) at big box stores what I've gotten was a mostly sterile loess soil, with a few shreds of bark mulch added.

Cost issues aside, if there was a way to buy your way out of this. More people would do that.

Without really thinking of all possible sources of OM (organic material). Five of the six following resources are free of any expence other than some sweat equity.

How does your town-city collect autumnal leaves? Can you get there first?

Does your town-city have riding facilities? Where does that horse poop go?

Have you sought out nursery sources for finished compost?

Have you checked your local Craig's list?

Have you joined your local freecycle?

[Tracydr]

I wouldn't be terribly afraid of horse manure if your plan is to prepare now for next year. Pile that stuff on! It's usually a mix of stall bedding ( normally pine shavings, rice hulls if really lucky) and start composting right where the garden is to go. Add tons of leaves, run threw first with your mower to shred. All your produce scraps, lawn clippings, etc. Your best chance of a large supply of compost fast and cheap is the horse manure every town has stables and they almost always have a pile which they'll give away, free.
Leaves are frequently out on the streets in the fall, in leaf bags. You can get them from all your neighbors or run adds in Craigs List.
By spring, you'll have awesome compost and a full raised bed.

[whistler]

I fill my raised beds with the following:

Buy 1 cubic yard of mushroom mulch at the local nursery, loaded into a small pickup truck bed. Mix 1 large bag (2 cubic ft?) of vermiculite and 1 bale (3.8 cubic ft) of peat moss into the mulch in the truck bed, several scoops of each at a time, until the area you are mixing is nice and fluffy. Toss the mixed material into the raised bed and mix some more. Eventually it all gets mixed up, and you get an excellent shoulder workout.

Once I plant the beds, I mulch with a layer of pine bark fines to keep the weeds out. The yard of mushroom mulch runs about $30, the vermiculite is $25, and the peat is about $14. Pine bark fines are about $5 for a ~2 cubic foot bag at Lowes, and cover about 2 4'x8' beds per bag.

I do have a compost pile, maybe 5' in diameter, filled with grass clippings, lawn-mowed leaves, and tons of kitchen scraps & other yard waste (oh, and worms, who happily invited themselves to the party). At the beginning and end of the growing season, I transfer the compost to the beds, where the mix seems to either compact or evaporate over time... Maybe my dog eats it. Who knows...

Anyway, my tomatoes are well over 8' tall and happy, and everything else seems to do well too, so I'll stick with this combo until I either find more money to buy other ingredients, or until the garden starts to look poorly.

Hope this helped.
Jenny

[Elizabeth]

I had to start mine from scratch in the city a few years back. There were no mature trees in my yard as the lot was scraped to build the house, so no leaves to speak of. In Southern California water is too precious to waste on a lawn (IMHO) so we have a fake one, therefore no grass clippings. I could have asked neighbors for both, but odds are nearly 100% that Bermuda grass seeds or plant bits would have snuck in either with leaves or from the rare neighbor with fescue grass, creating a forever problem. Another thing to think of is, you don't know for sure what kind of chemicals your neighbors put on their lawn - it may not be stuff you want to introduce into your veggie beds.

If you have a smaller, family run kind of nursery around, ask a knowledgeable staff person which of the brands of compost is best, and get that - they sometimes have more local ones that might be better quality than the chain outfits will have. Boutique compost as it were.

Alternatively (and this method is recommend in the newer Square Foot Gardening book), go to the big box store and buy bags of several brands of compost and mix them together plus some vermiculite (sold in large bags), and peat moss (get the big compressed bags). I add in some bags of steer manure and perlite. These are all available at HD/L. Pick up one of those great big blue woven tarps and the flat kind of shovel while you are there. The ratio of 3:1:1 compost, vermiculite and peat moss should do the trick (in volume, not bags). Most of the compost blends out there contain some steer manure, but it won't hurt to add more to your mix. If you are getting your beds ready now to plant in the spring it's ok to add more as it will have time to mellow. Mix everything up on the tarp (you can do it with the flat shovel or by lifting alternate corners on the tarp to mix things - if you go with the corner lifting method don't skimp on the tarp size or you will have soil falling off the edges. Once it's all mixed up shovel it in your beds. I find that my adding a bit of perlite (the white bits in potting mix) across the top of the pile it helps me determine when everything is evenly mixed - they stand out so it's pretty obvious if you need to keep mixing, and it lightens a heavy soil. If you are planting in containers it matters a lot more to get the ratios right, but in raised beds you have a more leeway - you have soil underneath the stuff that you are adding that will hold some moisture and presumably has at least some nutrients in it. You will need to add some good general veggie fertilizer (I like Dr. Earth) because the mix won't be as full of good nutrients as it should be. Once you get things going add home-made compost, and some good organic fertilizer each time you plant.

There are other places to get stuff in the city - our local zoo sells zoo doo, you can guess what that is LOL, and the local dump takes in green waste and composts it - they get it really hot to cook away the bad stuff, but I think it is still a bit too hot and smelly when they let you take it. When I used to use it I would let it compost further in the yard for a couple of months to mellow it out. It was a bit on the chunky side to I would also screen it - I made a square wood frame and stapled on some chicken wire. I tossed batches on the frame and shook it to remove the really big chunks. There is a hydroponics store in my neighborhood that gives out gallons of worm tea twice a week, bring your own bottle and they will fill it up. That's great to add to plants after it's diluted for the nutrients and adds good bacteria to your soil. Odds are you have similar kinds of options in your neck of the woods.

The more organic stuff you add to your raised beds, the more you will have to replace each year - this is normal. It breaks down, which is a good thing. Add more good stuff as you go along, home grown compost if possible, or the best bagged stuff you can find if not. Home grown will definitely have more nutrients and more good soil critters in it, and you will have more of that in time as you start to cycle in your yard and kitchen waste as well as garden waste. Don't compost any sick tomato plants though.

One way to go with the steer is the tried and true method of my father and his father before him - at planting time dig the hole deep, toss a shovel full of manure in the hole, add soil on top, then plant the tomato seeding. It's pretty funny - they grow steadily for a while, then hit that manure and zoom!

[TightenUp]

first off thanks to all for the informative replies.

generally speaking is Elizabeth's recommended recipe acceptable by most? its posted below.

"The ratio of 3:1:1 compost, vermiculite and peat moss should do the trick (in volume, not bags)"

[kath]

Originally Posted by ChefJeff

generally speaking is Elizabeth's recommended recipe acceptable by most? its posted below.

"The ratio of 3:1:1 compost, vermiculite and peat moss should do the trick (in volume, not bags)"

The newer square foot gardening book I have recommends 1/3 peat, 1/3 the largest grade vermiculite you can find, 1/3 compost that includes a mix of as many ingredients as possible.

I made raised beds and used these proportions, with my own compost and peat from a bog that sells it , and all the plants grown in it have done well. Each year more compost is added and I think lime and other fertilizers aren't a bad idea either. In some of the beds, some of our soil has since been added and I've not seen a difference. I mulch these beds with grass clippings, hay, straw, and those things get mixed in when the crops come out. Honestly, more compost than this would probably be a good thing and I really don't think the exact proportions matter too much- you need the vermiculite or a combo using some perlite to lighten the soil a bit- the perlite has a "look" to it that you might not like and it tends to rise to the top of the bed with rain/watering.

The other thing I did one year was to lay cardboard down over the existing ground where a new garden area was to be and alternated thin layers of peat, hay, straw, compost, soil, cow/horse manure, etc. 18"+ high and planted tomato plants almost right away by making small holes and filling with some compost/soil mix and fertilizer. They needed to be watered more often than the ones in the regular dirt, but did really well- the roots just grew down through the layers. By the end of the season, it was amazing to see how much like dirt it was. This is sometimes called "sheet composting" I think, or lasagna gardening.

[Elizabeth]

Shoot. Kath - thanks for correcting that. I'm a bozo. 1:1:1

[Elizabeth]

...of course, the ratio I gave would work fine, but its not the ratio Mel recommends. When I did mine it was a lot closer to the 3:1:1.

I never follow recipes when I cook either

[TightenUp]

hahaha! i hear ya. recipes are like rules....meant to be broken!

[kath]

Originally Posted by Elizabeth

...of course, the ratio I gave would work fine, but its not the ratio Mel recommends. When I did mine it was a lot closer to the 3:1:1.

I never follow recipes when I cook either

...just didn't want Mel to be represented, but I really don't believe there's any magic in that exact formula. I seem to remember reading in lots of places that folks have good luck with a varieties of mixes.

[endresult0710]

Chef Jeff-- I have raised beds and do most of my gardening in them. In addition to looking well-groomed, they have surprisingly produced a lot of delicious vegetables and tomatoes.

I live close to a farm which sells Garden Compost Dirt/Loam. We bought it in bulk and my husband, a more experienced farmer/gardener, says it was well worth the money. It was a rich loamy soil with lots of earthworms.

We recently added a 4'x16' bed to our garden this year and used topsoil that my company makes. It was not the same and that portion of my garden suffered. I will definitely be mixing that soil with other things to improve the quality.

A few thought/tips for you:

Make the raised beds a size that's easy for you to access and water. We did 8'x8' beds due to the location that they would be placed. It's hard for me to reach the middle and sometimes I have to walk on them, which is NOT good.

You might want to practice crop rotation and not plant tomatoes in the same bed year after year.

Plant marigolds around the edges of your bed. I did this last year and had less insects and critters in my garden.

Interplant some of your favorite herbs. Just check to make sure that they are compatible. I grow basil next to mine.

Use some kind of mulch because it retains water better and requires less weeding.

Don't be intimadated. It's a lot of work at first, but it so rewarding to see the results at the end of the season.

I am not an expert gardener and am still learning and experimenting. Good luck to you.