Friday, September 11, 2009

Garden space - What do you do with all these vines??

There are a lot of great veggies and fruits that grow on vines. If you leave them alone, they'll take over the whole garden, yard, lawn furniture and children if they're still long enough!!! What can you do? The answer is TRELLIS. Trellises, come in all types of designs made of all types of material. I'm going to show you some from other sites and I'm going to show you some of my "repurposed" trellises.


You can find easy designs on trellises all over the Internet. Being the "getting back to hippy roots" type of person, I really like Mother Earth News and Grit magazine sites. They have awesome do-it-yourself articles, videos, and instructions. The trellis to the left holds about 20-30 snap bean vines. This is from the Grit article found at: http://www.grit.com/Do-It-Yourself/Garden-Trellis-Design-and-Construction.aspx. This photo doesn't show the trellis design. That will come later.






Trellises can be purchased, kits built, they can be simple and functional or elegant. Many garden centers have some sort of trellis or vertical growing apparatus. You can also, use 2 or 3 -1" x 2" x 10 ft boards nailed to the back of a sheet of lattice burying 2 ft of the 10 ft board in the ground for support (or nailing them to the side of your raised bed.






In addition a really cool design using the same idea as above is the frame and rope or frame and twine trellis. These are great because you can get quite a few plants on the same trellis. Not only that but you can use the top of the trellis to frame out a "cold frame" or plastic crop cover to protect your garden from cold weather.







As I said earlier, I would show some of my repurposed trellises. I found the main part of this trellis in the back acreage of our property when we started a clean up project. it's an old bed spring (sort of beat up) but the vines are loving it!!! In this photo they you don't see them growing but it's nearly covered now. You'll see a large branch makes up the "frame" of the bed. We have a lot of health thinning on the back property so, we will have lots of wood. Why not use it for this?


Mesquite trees are known to leech or use more water than other plants so they aren't the best thing in the pasture. So, we took down the mesquite saplings. Some are used to reinforce barbed wire fencing. I saved a few for a special trellis. I made a tipi and wove twine in a net. This was the beginning. later my husband took the twine off and put old chicken wire (poultry netting) around it (with one side open as an entrance). The idea is to have the vines climb up the outside and close in the tipi. It's a fun place for kids to play or if you don't have kids, you can grow some sensitive plants in there that could use a little bit of shade. As a master gardener said at a program a few weeks ago, "When the seed packet says 'full sun' I don't think they had the blazing Texas sun in mind!". Some plants that in most parts of the country can handle full sun might need a little shade to keep from burning up!


Trellises save space, keep the garden space neat, and make harvesting a whole lot easier!!

Join me for the next blog on organic additives..

Monday, September 07, 2009

Raised bed gardens (also known as "no-till" gardens)

Raised bed gardening, sometimes referred to as no-till gardens (more on that, later), are a great way to garden. I'm going to discuss a little about the philosophy and go into details of creating. I'm big into organic and no chemical contact with food plants so, I'm anti-railroad ties and telephone poles as well as anything that is treated with a toxic chemical that could leech into the ground and food. That said, what can you make a raised bed garden out of? landscaping timbers, boards (cedar or other slow rotting boards), cement blocks or bricks, I even have the trunk of a downed tree as part of a bed! You want something that is either 12 inches high or can stack to that height.


Before any of that, you need to scout out a location. It needs to have full sun, good drainage (if not, we'll tell you what to do about that), and room to maneuver. You don't want to walk in your raised beds so don't make them longer than twice the length of your arm. Four foot by eight foot is a good size. You only need 3 - 12" by 8' boards; two for the sides and one for the two 4' ends. You can have smaller or larger, it depends on how much work you want to do and how much room you have.

The next thing you need to do is prepare the ground where you want the garden(s). You will notice in the two pictures above, one has grass around the sides of the garden and the other doesn't. I prefer to have mulch, straw or gravel (with plastic or cardboard underneath). After all the work you will to do have an easy garden, you DON'T want grass growing up into the raised bed! So, map out your area and cover it with heavy plastic (poke holes for drainage), layers of newspaper or cardboard. This smothers the vegetation and keeps grass from taking over your garden.

Then put your frame on top of it. You will then surround the frame with the material you choose to create a path or work area around your garden (covering the vegetation smothering matter. For good drainage, you might want to put a few inches of pea gravel, granite gravel or some type of material that will accommodate drainage. Then fill with good composted soil. (ok. read all you want. There are others who say peat, sphagnum, etc. but that does NOT work where I live!).

You are just about ready to plant! This is the big decision. What to plant??? Remember, there is a small area and you may need to eliminate some choices. It's a good idea to poll your family members to see what they'd really eat before you buy the seed. Otherwise, you'll end up like me with a row of radishes that only I would eat!!

For your first time around, you may want to go to a local organic gardening nursery and buy some plants to put in the garden. Whether plants or seeds, as soon as there is green above the ground, cover the ground with a light layer of mulch (Spring/summer - light in color like straw, fall/winter - dark in color to absorb the warmth of the sun). This mulch (not too much) will help keep the moisture in and keep your garden bed easier to maintain.

That's it for today!! Next time we'll cover vining plants and trellises.