Raised beds (split from New Heirloom Tomatoes)

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by kelleyville

Yeah that tylenol replied to a post of mine at GW about Cherokee seeds and he sent me the link to here, link to his pics, which of course spurred more questions, and now we are building earthboxes for next year! It is his fault I have become a tomato nut Not a bad thing though!

If you got some Cherokee Purple seeds, grow 8-10 plants of that. Arkansas Traveler doesn't look exciting on the outside, but it's a fab tomato.

Check out the This Years Winners? topic to see what's in vogue this year.

[kelleyville]

Originally Posted by feldon30

If you got some Cherokee Purple seeds, grow 8-10 plants of that. Arkansas Traveler doesn't look exciting on the outside, but it's a fab tomato.

Check out the This Years Winners? topic to see what's in vogue this year.

I do beleive there are some Cherokee Purple! as well as some other fabulous seeds I have wanted to try! My husband just rolls his eyes and I can see his mind whirling with the agony of digging more hard georgia clay and making it plantable

[feldon30]

Ignore the clay and rise above the problem. I see you are getting into EarthBoxes. But if that's not enough space, look into raised beds:

Suze's raised beds

a few days later

[Hilde]

Those are beautiful raised beds! What are the dimensions on them and how many plants in each?

Also the speed of growth is very impressive!

Hilde

[kelleyville]

Wow what a beautiful layout of raised beds! My small garden is made of raised beds at present but they are very small beds. My problem is not space, it is space where there is sunshine! The goal is to create one more bed at the edge of the patio but the slope and the deck supports have been giving me fits! Hopefully that bed will be ready by next year early!

The earthboxes will replace pots on the decks and patio and wherever else I find sunny spots like mayby between the crepe myrtles on the front lawn hehehe!

What are the dimensions of your raised beds and how many plants in each one? Looks like a beautiful tomato farm! Are you using some kind of drip irrigation or soaker hoses? Don't see anything but imagine it would take a good long while to water that by hand

Kelley

[feldon30]

Those pictures are from Suze's garden. She has 20 raised beds. There are two rows of 8 and then 4 by themselves. The beds are 3' x 12' with 6-8 plants in them depending on how big the plants get.

In Austin and Houston, most of the watering is done automatically for us by the Big Guy. But soaker hoses are in place just in case. If you click on the photos above, you'll be taken to the gallery where you can view a larger version of each picture. Soaker hoses are easily seen in the larger pictures.


Pictures of my garden beds:







Click for Larger Size

[kelleyville]

Your beds look very nice too! My goal is to have my beds full of tomatoes that look like that next year! My beds are also pretty controversial. Everyone keeps telling my you can't do that!

My beds started when I was looking for someway to support watermelons and pumpkins off the ground. My yard is everything you could want but lacks proper vege garden space so I was trying to do something decorative. A very nice lady from Texas told me she uses wire hog panels. We got to talking and she sent me pics of the panels bent over between two beds all along her garden house. Yes garden house. The garden is like a structure without walls, it has fencing instead.

This garden was made up of rows of raised beds of single stacked concrete block. I started asking her about it and the more we talked the more I liked the idea. I have seen pictures of her crops and they are better looking than any I have ever grown with the exception of beans and purple hull peas...I don't think you can hurt those too much!

I did not have the space to completely duplicate her garden house but planned out two rows of four smaller beds to incorporate more of the wire hog panel arbors so that I had space for growing lots of things up!

Push came to shove and only two beds were ready and my seedlings were needing to go in -so- I did something I don't think anyone else would do. I was out of money, the blocks were free but the dirt to go in them was not! I applied that one plant per square foot intensive gardening theory of raised beds and said ok if they can grow in a foot they can grow in 8 inches. I never did plant that intensively but the tomatoes really needed much more space!

I count myself lucky to see these hybrids 8 feet tall and still growing at all much less have tomatoes on them! My tomato crop at present is already way more tomatoes than I have ever grown in one season so I am happy no matter what the outcome!

I will modify the beds slightly and only use one arbor connecting two beds down center of path for next year and plant half the tomatos or less in these beds! I also want to take the fence down and move it back a bit just h ave not come up with something yet that I think will make the landscape better instead of funny looking! I am presuming that each year these beds will be better because of all the amendments and water running through them and plant roots too, that the hard clay under the blocks will start to soften up with every tilling!

I forgot to account for dirt sinking because it was all new, and I did not hill up the dirt....I also did not count on not being able to use the hose to spray with so this cramped space has been difficult for staking and getting rid of bugs!

Here are a couple of before and after pics of the two completed beds...more at online at myspace.com/kelleyville

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by kelleyville

Push came to shove and only two beds were ready and my seedlings were needing to go in -so- I did something I don't think anyone else would do. I was out of money, the blocks were free but the dirt to go in them was not! I applied that one plant per square foot intensive gardening theory of raised beds and said ok if they can grow in a foot they can grow in 8 inches. I never did plant that intensively but the tomatoes really needed much more space!

As you now know, square foot gardening is absurd for tomatoes and melons (unless you are growing straight up). Especially in Georgia where there are stink bugs and high humidity causing fungal problems with the plants being too close together. I don't see a problem with cinder blocks but if you can find some used lumber and/or old fence material (I'm about to go around the neighborhood here and put a note on people's door saying if they tear down their old fence, I want some of the planks to make raised beds) to make 12" high beds that would be fantastic.

Sounds like you know the theory, just are limited on the space and resources you have. Aren't we all?

Thanks for posting the pictures!

[Hilde]

Hi Feldon,

thank you for all those pictures! How big are YOUR raised beds, especially those where you have two rows of tomatoes? I am thinking about building 4'x16' beds. Two rows should fit there, right?

Hilde

[kelleyville]

Feldon,
Definitely limited on resources this year! Of course in my previous gardens all these tomatoes would have fit fine in this space hehehe I know better now! Goal is to rearrange these a bit, have some trees limbed so the second row has sun next year, amend, till, check soil with a test and start over next year! I am staining the block to blend in and not stick out like a sore thumb though! planting things in the block holes was an added benefit This year was definitely experimental! Now that I know how big tomatoes can really get I will plan better next year!

The melons will still go on the hog panesl but elsewhere in the yard!

I appreciate all your comments on every thread I read and file much away for future use!

Kelley

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by Hilde

Hi Feldon,

thank you for all those pictures! How big are YOUR raised beds, especially those where you have two rows of tomatoes? I am thinking about building 4'x16' beds. Two rows should fit there, right?

Hilde

4' x 8' had 8 plants.
4' x 16' had 16 plants.

The plants weren't as crowded as you'd think. I am thinking of putting 14 plants in the 4' x 16' next year and adding another 4' x 16' bed with a similar number of plants, for a grand total of 36 plants. The only reason I will do this is if I have folks lined up to buy some of the tomatoes, which I think I do.

If I am selling some of the tomatoes, then I will want to grow 2-3 plants each of reliable varieties like Ark Traveler, Jet Star, Gregori's Altai, Jaune Flamme, etc. and reduce the amount of experimentation.

[kelleyville]

Feldon
I wasnt all that far off your mark LOL I had a 6*4 bed, and 12 plants! Just with all my arbor wire hog panels I can't get to them So 6x4 with arbors three plants and 6x4 without 4? 6 even. Since 12 grew there to begin with! I will not repeat the 12 and 6 might be pushing it! And raise the level of the dirt to the edge of the block and hill the plants?

[dice]

(Kelley)
Use the swamp. If you take a bent pitchfork
or a rock rake and drag it along the edges,
you'll come up with lots of rich organic material
for compost, already half decayed. Probably fairly
acidic due to being wet most of the time, so
consider pH (throw some wood ash into the compost
pile with it if you don't have alkaline soil to begin
with), and compost it for a few months to kill off
as many weed seeds as possible before adding it
to your gardens.

I had to finish off one end of a raised bed and was
running out of horse manure. It was already about
half full of a mix of compost and horse manure,
already limed and phosphated, so I filled it up most
of the way with oak leaves that someone had
bagged the previous fall and let set out over the
winter, generously scattered flax seed meal, alfalfa
meal, lime, and K-mag around on that and mixed
it up a little with a rake, used up the rest of the
horse manure to get another inch or two, and finally
added a few inches of heavy clay dirt on top, to fill
in low spots and get up to the edge of the sides of
the raised bed.

Plants are growing fine in it. I shredded up the rest
of the oak leaves and used those for mulch.

If you look around the edges of that swamp,
I bet it's just loaded with good things to put
into a compost pile.

[kelleyville]

Dice,
Thanks!
Right under my nose and did not think about it! I have been raking up loads of leaves for my compost pile and I bet the dirt under the trees is awesome from all the leaf mulch. I added two five gallon buckets of half composted wet leaves from the rain gutters to my soybean bed. I am going to work on filling my small empty bed this weekend! Then get started on the larger one! With this in mind I may have a better winter garden than summer!

Kelley

[dice]

I don't know if you have nettles in your area,
but they do make a valuable addition to compost
(long pants, long sleeves, and gloves required,
of course).

If you can shred leaves and grass clippings,
they decay faster. One person (lacking
a shredder) posted that he uses a weedeater
in a garbage can to shred leaves (wears
a dust mask while he does it).