Boy am I tired. This is a LOT of work to deepen my raised beds.....

Well, the greenhouse guy dropped my 3+ yards of half compost/half loam yesterday morning... (compost is half cow manure from an organic dairy farm already composted and screened and half leaves/grass/organic matter)

whew.....that stuff is HEAVYYYYY....

It has been covered all winter with tarps at his greenhouse and just thawing out. There were huge boulders of it on the dump truck, lol......they are thawing in the hot sun tho.

We had 80 degrees yesterday and probably as hot again today. Dh and I shoveled into the wheelbarrow and my new garden cart. (Gorilla Cart. Boy do I love that cart. It has a dump function on it...)

I have 7 large beds. 6 of them are 4x8 ft and the last oneis like a horseshoe kinda with square corners....I have strawberries and raspberries/blackberries on one said and half way to the middle in the back part. My plan is to make it mostly strawberries someday along with the raspberries and blackberries.
The other side goes to tomatoes. The bed is around 3 ft wide with 5 ft chicken fencing thru the middle all the way around. Perfect to tie up the tomatoe vines on.

All of the beds needed more soil in them. We bought enough 1x6x8 ft rough sawn pine boards to make the sides higher and the soil deeper to about 13 inches deep now.

All that beautiful dirt is going in on top of the older soil. I limed all the older stuff last year and left a goodly amount of leaves/twigs on top of it. New soil on top of that. Hopefully the leaves will decompose and help enrich that bottom 7 inches of soil.

Well, we have 4 beds completely done. Just need seeds/plants in them. Half the horse shoe bed is done and my strawberries have new soil around them.
Tomorrow hopefully I can get the last two beds done, one of which is my herb bed which is only going to need maybe 4 inches of new soil in it cause it's already about 10 inches deep. Hopefully I won't have to do too much digging up and replanting of my herbs in there. I have been working hard to get things done before everything started to get really going and making it more work.


I pray to God this is going to help us get a really fantastic garden this year. These beds all have upper frames on them for putting plastic up and making them mini greenhouses. Still need to do that part.

When I get this all done and my tomato and pepper plants into the beds (plants on all over indoors right now taking over my kitchen........) I can take a break for a bit.

In the meantime, I am wiped out. Trying to do this with arthritis in my knees, neck, shoulders and NOW in my right hip it seems, it is taking forever.
Work 15 mins/sit down 15 mins/work/sit, rinse and repeat plus at least an hour at lunch time......

Please pray it doesn't snow or something stupid. If that happens I will have to run out and cover up what is already growing......

So, how is your garden doing so far?

Oh, forgot to add, this is Western Maine and unheard of getting things planted this early. But, I am game as long and the warm weather hangs around.

Trying to get outside work done here too before the bugs and hot weather hit. I have one big raised bed (12 x 4) in planted with spinach, beets and swiss chard. Snow peas at the ends. I planted cauliflower, eggplant, Chinese cabbage and radicchio today.

I gave an older back raised bed to my almost 5 years old granddaughter to plant her own garden. I helped her Sunday to plant green beans, spinach, carrots and flowers. She still has room for a tomato plant. She is so excited and has promised not to pull up the plants to see how they are growing at the other end like last year!

I'll hold off for a little while on the tomatoes and peppers but will plant the beans, hopefully tomorrow.

DH is building up the back corner of my flower garden. I pulled it all apart last year to try to get rid of an invasive weed. Didn't work. Sigh.

Good luck with the garden, WO. You've had hotter weather than we have. Only around 70 here which is just fine with me.

I spent quite of bit of money last year on bagged soil for container gardening that did nothing. So I'm reduced to getting my fresh veggies from the local farmers. Plus I have a 60#+ red healer dog that would tear up anything I planted in the ground and would probably destroy containers too. She's a sweety and an excellent watch dog, so I put up with her rambunctiousness, she's about a year old. No one around here does organic gardening.

WO, your raised beds sound wonderful.

Judy

Last weekend OC purchased two yards of amended top soil for my raised beds, he added another round of wood to one of my beds this year, and then he fetched two yards of composted horse manure for said beds. He did most of the work this time because I'm having some health issues that are permitting me from doing anything strenuous.

Once this snow is gone my raised beds are ready to be planted! My beds are close to 24 inches tall now, am hoping for another round of wood and soil next year and then they will be the perfect height.

packyderms_wife said:

Last weekend OC purchased two yards of amended top soil for my raised beds, he added another round of wood to one of my beds this year, and then he fetched two yards of composted horse manure for said beds. He did most of the work this time because I'm having some health issues that are permitting me from doing anything strenuous.

Once this snow is gone my raised beds are ready to be planted! My beds are close to 24 inches tall now, am hoping for another round of wood and soil next year and then they will be the perfect height.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you have a plan.....

Judy, I use 24 inches of chicken wire around each bed that sits on top of the top board on the sides. That keeps our youngest dog out of the beds. She loves to pull things out of the ground like bean plants, raspberry bushes, she don't care. It's just fun to pull em up and then tear them apart. So, I have to use the cheapest thing I could think of to keep her out of them...works great.

I have the beds almost done. Just need a little topping on the herb bed to fill it back up. The rest of the beds are about 14 inches deep now. I am SO happy. My strawberries are already happy. The garlic was already up about 8 inches now so it just got a couple more inches of dirt around each plant to make sure it gets some of that cow manure/compost stuff. This fall I will finish filling in that bed and replant my garlic for next year in deeper dirt.

The beds all look so nice now. New boards and lots of nice deep dirt in them. I may even have enough dirt left over to make one more 4x8 bed. We have a cord of wood that needs to go into the big woodshed this year. It's been on pallets next to another raised bed. Once that is gone, I will have room for another bed there......yee haw......If there isn't enough dirt, I will have to order more. Maybe just half a yard this time.......

One more thing. If you don't have a wagon/cart for your gardening or wood hauling needs, check out the Gorrila Carts. I have one and I am using for everything. It is hauling the dirt, firewood, even used it to bring the groceries from the car today. I LOVE IT....... !!!!! Dh has even used it a few times, lol. He thought we should get the next size bigger but the 600 lb one is just right. And bigger would be too heavy to pull. It has a dump function and is sturdy. We have zero level ground up here so it's either up or down and this works just fine for both.
Did I say I love my new wagon???

I think I will plant peas and carrots and beets maybe even get my beans planted this weekend. Then up goes the plastic to make everything nice and warm. Can't wait to get all the stuff done. I have tomatoes that need desperately to get transplanted into bigger pots or the garden soon. Almost 2 ft tall on half of them and the others are a foot tall now.......


Too much to do, too little time and energy to do it........

Thanks for the idea about the chicken wire, I'll try to buy some this year. I love the gorilla cart. I have a garden cart, not wagon like the gorilla, and a sweet wheel barrow. I've been known to unload groceries into the garden cart to haul them to the house (my sweet, but small, camper) or to my school bus that I use for storage.

Last year I considered getting chicken poof from the chicken farmers, but they are all commerically raised and the poop would have all the bad stuff they give chickens in it. My other consideration is a fellow I know that has horses, but I might have to shovel it out of the pasture. (ick)

Ya'lls gardens sound so wonderful.

Judy

We are in a new place, just moved in last fall, so I'm starting from scratch on the garden. I fenced a small area with sections of cattle panel (I have some field fencing, but the ground is so rocky it's almost impossible to get fence posts in it, so the cattle panels work better). Then I built beds out of whatever wood we had laying around, put down newspaper to smother most of the grass and weeds, and have been filling them with a mix of peat and purchased compost. I'll add some rabbit or goat manure as needed.

The last time I bought peat and compost at the feed store, I told the young men who loaded it for me what I was doing with it, and they commented that that was an expensive way to build a garden. That's true, but these beds should never need the soil replaced; weeds will be minimal, and should stay that way as long as I'm diligent about pulling any that do crop up while they are small; and then I was thinking that these young men (probably late teens/early twenties) might not but much produce at the grocery store, so they may not know how expensive things are. I fully expect my garden to pay for itself this year. And the soil is so rocky that I wouldn't have been able to have a garden the 'normal' way.

Kathleen

Kathleen, I hear you about the soil/rock problem except we have freaking boulders everywhere. Rocks of all sizes, etc. You can't dig more that a few inches then you hit either a rock or hard clay on TOP of a rock. It took me two hours to find a place to bury our cat a few years ago. And even then I had to pull out large rocks and cut tree roots. If you don't have a raised bed here, it's almost impossible to have a garden unless you know someone with a front end loader who can dig up the huge rock and haul them away.

Our neighbor behind us has been working for 6 years now on his place to put in gardens. He cut all the trees down, pulled the stumps and roots out and now is building the soil up about 4 ft deep to get a decent area. He sells veggies in the summer and wants to get bigger. I think he has about an acre that he is working on. He also put up a huge fence all around the place. Has about half of it done now. Once that is done the deer and moose, etc won't be in his garden munching and tearing it all up. Heard a 22 yesterday afternoon from his way. Prolly a red squirrel or chipmunk biting the dust. He throws those to his chickens who get extra protien....lol....

This is a tough place to try to raise your own food but I think now that I have around 14 inches of good soil with decent drainage, I should be good to go. I know my plants will enjoy it better, lol.....

As to compost, I try to make my own but not much to work with up here. No grass to speak of in the yard, lots of leaves but they compact down to not much of anything. All the greens that are left from the garden go into the composter but those break down to next to nothing. $65 a yard for compost is not bad considering all the good stuff that is in it. Probably get more next year to work into my beds again. Oh, and the bottom dirt is about half peat moss...just wasn't enough dirt to begin with.

I have been out planting seeds. I have my peas, some beans and swiss chard planted so far but the sun is too hot to work more till later. I am on a longish break now.
Besides, I am too tired from hauling all that dirt this past week, grins....


And did I say that I love my Gorilla Cart?????? he he he..... it's full of stuff for planting right now and it's even big enough to haul all that along with my camp chair that I sit on to plant the beds......Only thing I need now is a big umbrella to keep the sun off me.......I just can't tolerate too much of it anymore. Must be my thyroid thingie....the doc said to try to limit sun exposure.

Well, I got four more beds covered with their plastic so the soil warms faster. (the new stuff was frozen in clumps when I got it a week and a half ago...

One more to go now. Hopefully I can get my transplants outside soon. I also do this to control moisture in the soil. Too much rain is not good and not enough is bad also. Supposed to cool back to the 60's and rain Weds night thru next Monday...Not good. Fine for the ground and the woods but too much for my raised beds. I use roofs that I can just put up or take off to get rain in the beds. I also enclose the sides to make mini greenhouses. Works great. The frames for the plastic are 2x4's and cheap 3 inch strapping for the top supports. Had to replace a few top boards due to the heavy snow/ice we had last winter. That's all done and looking nice.

Peas, fava beans, bush beans, pole beans and swiss chard are in. Didn't get to the carrots or beets yesterday cause the sun drove me indoors. Had to take a nap to recover. I can't believe how hot that sunshine is. The air temps are around 78 so far but the sun feels like it is around 100 degrees. It burns even after just a few mins in it. Too hot to wear long sleeves too.

I need a big umbrella to put on the back of my camp chair to shade me while I plant, lol....

Hope everyone else is able to get their gardens started. Up here in Maine we need every day of warm we can get as Sept can be hard frosts.

I've actually gotten something planted. My cousin sprouted some lemon (balm?) grass for me in his greenhouse. Yesterday, I filled two big planters with some fresh out of the bag soil, and planted the seedlings in the pots. I put wire cages around the pots to keep the dogs from tearing it apart. Now if I can keep these plants alive, I'll feel encouraged to go farther. LOL

WO your gardening sounds so wonderful.

Judy