Raised Beds

[PaulF]

This year's raised beds. The big watering tanks were free because they leaked badly and the farmers were glad to be rid of them. The flower raised bed was on sale for $40 and the strawberry raised bed I built out of scrap lumber and put a big rubber tub inside.

The big round waterers have oak logs in the bottom, a window screen mesh on top of that to keep the soil in place, regular soil in a one foot layer and potting mix to fill up the space. The small tub had plastic 2 liter soda bottles on the bottom and filled with potting mix. Last year was the first year and the results were spectacular.

[wildcat62]

Originally Posted by taboule

I built a new garden of raised beds last year using 2x10 douglas fir, loaded with organic compost from a nearby farm.

Attachment 88231

Had amazing production, you can check the entire thread and construction method here

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ht=garden+2018

Beautiful

[b54red]

I have been using raised beds for over 35 years now. For the first 34 years the beds were made of 2X8 treated pine and were just replaced this year with 2X10 treated pine. If you have the room I would make the bed slightly less than 4 feet across and as long as you need. I have one bed that is 40 feet long and my shortest one is only 15 feet long. When I rebuilt the beds I used 4 ft lengths for the ends and screwed them together with 3" deck screws with the the long sides butted to the 4' end pieces.. This leaves me with beds about 44 inches wide which works great for me but a little narrower would be find but I don't think I would go as narrow as three feet unless I had to. It is nice to have enough room between the beds to easily move a wheelbarrow so filling and working the beds is much easier. With the long sides butted to the 4' end pieces. I used 1X6 two feet long to join the sides as I put it together and used 1 1/2" deck screws to fasten them together. I then used 2' long pieces of 3/4" galvanized conduit every 5 or 6 feet driven in next to the boards on the outside to keep it straight and held tight with a simple U strap or what is called a 3/4" two hole strap. This bracing is more and more critical over time as the boards try to warp and move with the constant wetting and drying that goes on.

Or house sits on a high clay knob and the clay is very dense. Before I buillt the raised beds I had all the topsoil in my garden which wasn't much wash off during a period of especially heavy rain. I filled my beds with what topsoil I had and mushroom compost and added pine bark fines, compost of my own, and lots of peat. At the beginning of every season I add cottonseed meal, alfalfa pellets, any compost I have, some chicken manure and a slight amount of fertilizer to aid in not losing nitrogen as the alfalfa breaks down and work that into the top 4 inches. I wet it down good and cover it with a heavy layer of cypress mulch and then plant in a few days or weeks. The cypress mulch is removed each season to work the beds up and then replaced. Some of the mulch always breaks down and is worked into the beds so that by using the mulch I am constantly adding organic matter to the soil. The cottonseed meal attracts earth worms like crazy and after a few years I always have a layer of worm castings just below the mulch at the end of each season which is a real plus.

In one bed I made the mistake of tilling some of the clay up into the bed and for years that bed would turn into a brick every summer and every dry spell. And when it wasn't a brick it was so dense and heavy that drainage was poor so I would advise you to dig out a bit more below your beds if it is heavy clay. It is better to start off with the bed a little low than to fill it with something that will cause problems like the clay did for me. I ended up having to remove over half the soil from that bed to get it to the point that it was decent for planting. It isn't critical to fill the beds to the top immediately, you can add peat, compost and pine bark fines every season to gradually get them near the top in a year or two.

Bill

[bower]

@ taboule, your raised beds are deluxe! 2X10 is a very nice depth to have, really ideal.


My perennial garden beds which I built 25 years ago are raised clay with rock instead of board. I have to agree with Bill, you are better off not to dig any clay up into your vegetable beds. After a lot of amendments over the years, those clay beds are still clay. The deep rooted perennials are fine there, but forget about planting a few vegetables in the bare spots. Believe me, I've tried.
The way I have built my vegetable beds, there is usually some vegetation where you want to put the bed, grass or whatever (I have dug out some gnarly weeds) and then lay cardboard under your wooden frame before filling with soil. This kills the vegetation below and once it all rots it will create some organic subsoil below your bed without having to dig out clay (unless you decide to go hugel, which is very cool too). Anyway, the cardboard is easy to do, and even with 2X6 or a little more it is deep enough for garlic, squash or any vegetable I've tried. My shallot bed is new last year and is really on the shallow end at about 5 inches. The shallots rooted right down through the cardboard and made it through a winter of soaking then freezing repeatedly. You can see how much shallower it is than the clay beds where a vegetable won't grow.(I do want to make this one deeper though.)

[Worth1]

I am a proponent of adding sharp sand and humus to clay soil but clay soil is sometimes miss-defined for what it really is.
I once lived in a place that had gray potters clay about one foot under the sandy loam and round rocks.
It went down for many feet.
Where I am now I have a red oxidized red clay that drains fairly well but is worthless without some sort of soil building going on.
One of my beds was loaded with logs sticks leaves and so on.
I dug out the bed with a tiller, use the soil for along side my drive and added a dump truck load of garden soil which included compost and decomposed granite.
I added pearlite and peat to it later.

[TomatoDon]

These are 5 x 100 built with 2 x 12 treated. It will not hurt you. The only thing I've found better than this is when I built a bed the same way, but 24" high.

[taboule]

Don, impressive setup. Have seen your pics before and always wanted to ask: do you use the white tubes for watering? One by one, that seems like lots of work. Or are they for the occasional feeding, and you have drip irrigation under the plastic? Thanks.

[arnorrian]

Really impressive.

[bower]

That's amazing Don. Really like what you've done with the plastic mulch!

[TomatoDon]

The PVC pipes were my original way to water and fertilize. I still think it's the best method. I sized these to hold enough water to equate to an inch of rain over the one square foot around the base of the plant. In my opinion, lees would not be enough, and more would be too much and wasted. Liquid fertilizer and water goes straight to the root zone and nothing is wasted. It's more efficient than even drip irrigation.

As the operation expanded, I went to drip irrigation under the plastic, and also tried it on top since there are so many slits in the plastic that all of the water can find a way to the plants. This was less expensive and easier, since all I then had to do was turn on the faucet and the drip line did the rest. Filling each water pipe takes much longer, but I still think it works better and you know exactly that each plant is getting enough of everything. I believe these four beds had about 50 plants each, so a total of 200 plants for four beds.

This year I expanded more, somewhere around 2,500 plants, with plans to do more. I have been in the selling end long enough now to see the problems that arise from getting too big. Mainly, you have to hire labor and that is what makes it unfeasible for most people. I recently talked to a grower about 150 miles away in one of the tomato capitals of the mid-South and he said he got up to 260,000 plants of 55 acres and his goal was to net just $2 per plant. But, he had to have a full time crew of 75 just to run the place, while he flew around the country to meet his delivery 18 wheelers of tomatoes in order to get paid when the tomatoes were off loaded. It was a long and complicated story, and he ended up quitting the tomato business and went to work selling subscriptions for Reader's Digest and liked that a lot better. Now, he grows about 300 plants for fun and to give away.

The bigger you get, the more expensive, risky, and complicated it gets at an exponential rate. I did more plants this year than I ever have, tried more experiments, and tried more varieties, but I won't do that again. I know what works here and will stick to that, keep it smaller, and keep it simpler.

I will also go back to more raised beds, too, even if I don't use lumber. I can make the beds with a tractor a lot cheaper and they work very well. However, I do like raised beds built with lumber, and I can get in those and get them planted earlier in the spring, even moreso than in the fields where I build them with a small tractor. I've never found anything that works better than a 12" tall bed built with lumber, other than a 24" built with lumber. But then, the costs skyrocket.

I also did over four hundred tomatoes in 25 gallon containers this year, but will definitely cut back next year, if I use them at all. They require daily watering, and I have blossom end rot for the first time, but only in the containers. I am experimenting with ways to keep the evaporation down and the soil mix moist. I may plant some determinates, bush varieties, and/or dwarfs, but definitely no more container grown indeterminites. The containers are more work and more time consuming than working with the watering pipes in the field grown tomatoes. I've been out there watering them at 6 in the morning and at 11 at night in really hot, dry weather, and that gets old in a hurry.

I'd love to do about 200 in raised beds in a high tunnel house, but, there again, the costs go out the roof with that. But I do believe the best way for me to get the earliest market tomatoes will be from a raised beds built with 2x12x12 treated lumber.

BTW...they make a 1.25 mil plastic mulch, or cover, that is white on top to reflect heat and black on the bottom to prevent light from getting to the soil and sprouting grass. That is cheaper than the 4 and 6 mil I have been getting at the local building supply house, and I shouldn't have to add hay on top of the plastic to keep the heat down before the plants have shaded it all out. I didn't get this kind of plastic early enough this year for tomatoes, but I can still try them with some melons or other vegetables this summer to see how well it works.

I love raised beds and think they are the best method of them all. But when you are planting a lot of tomatoes, the cost becomes a factor. I think I can comfortably handle up to 1,000 plants with water pipes and CRW cages, but I doubt I will ever want to grow more than that again. It's about the right amount for local sales and that's all I want to do now. The world of big time commercial tomato grower is just not for me. <EDIT> I could never get the quality of tomato using the methods that the big commercial growers use. The best way I know to raise top quality tomatoes is with raised beds, large planting holes (at least 12 x 12 inches), lots of organic material, and 24" diameter concrete re-enforcing wire. AND by using tried and true tomato varieties that produce best in my home area.

Keep us posted on your success with the raised beds.
Don

[TomatoDon]

PS. The guy in the background is an old friend, and was our mayor for years. His father was a local backyard tomato baron, and a fantastic grower. The lovely young lady is my friend's daughter, and she is now one of the best collegiate softball pitchers in the US.

A bit more about the watering pipes. They are 2" X 30". That length, 30" inches allows for 4 pieces to be cut from a 10 foot stick of PVC pipe with no waste. I went back and cut the ends at an angle so they are easier to push into the ground. I also a 48" length of 3/8" rebar to punch even deeper at the bottom of the pipe. The pipes will clog from time to time, and if they haven't drained completely by the next day, all you have to do is then punch through the dirt at the bottom with the rebar.

You may notice I also use rebar to help anchor the cages. The water pipe also helps to make that stronger. I put a 4' piece of rebar on one side and the pipe, pushing into the ground, on the other. You will be surprised at how the tomato plant will put out enough foliage to even cover the pipe, so I'm always pinching or cutting off tomato "limbs" there to have good access to the pipes.

[taboule]

Thanks Don for the thorough explanation and your thinking behind it all.

[tryno12]

Very good looking setup and explanation. What varieties do you plant?

"I can never match the quality that I get from a raised bed with the other, somewhat different, methods the big commercial growers use"

Did you mean you really can't produce better tomatoes than the commercial growers? I always thought my homegrown tasted better than the growers tomatoes.

Pete

[TomatoDon]

Sorry for not being more clear Tryno. I meant that I could never get the quality that I get from raised beds by using the methods the big growers use.

My wording was confusing. I'll edit that. Thanks for pointing it out.

[tryno12]

Thanks Don, i'm glad!! What varieties do you grow?
Pete