Clean Up

Lots of things to do even in our tiny raised beds.  Since room is at a premium, it's always wise to trim and thin where we can.  Most of these are brussel sprout leaves, those plants are trying to take over. The leaves are gigantic and shade everything else out. I highly recommend putting them in a place where you are not trying to grow other things because they get big...and tall...and wide...and bushy.  Who knew?  

The yellow spalsh of color is a broccoil head that flowered from the heat we've been having.  The flowers are actually edible and I saw online that they are considered a delicacy, as in expensive to buy.  And here I am throwing it away!  We definately eat the brocc that has a few flowers on it but Hubbie is not too interested in all flowers like the one here, so out it goes.  

Tomatoes - Disease Report I

Ugh.  Powdery white meldew.  It's a hotbed of disease in the raised beds this season.  Usually this powdery mildew only latches onto the cucumbers and leaves the rest of the garden alone. Not this season, it's on everything!   It's way too extensive to try any treatments so it'll just have to run it's course and hopefully not kill every single thing in it's path.

I'm starting to realize that it's futile to try and grow cucumbers in this zone.  Between the pickle worms that attack the fruit and the powdery mildew that attacks the vines, it's just not worth it.  I was very lazy in getting the diseased cucumber vines out of the garden and I'm wondering if that kicked off the wide spread damage.  Is this gonna linger into the next garden?  I guess I need to start reading about solarizing my soil.  Double Ugh.

Fill 'er Up!

A rainbow on the day we filled the raised beds.

Now that the boxes are built, we have to fill them with something. Something that plants can grow in. Something that we can find in mass quantities. Something that is cheap-like. Something that is easy to get our hands on. Hmm.......  Is there anything at the city landfill we can use? Oh yeah there is! Beautiful free compost, glorious black compost, as much as you can handle. Seems that the city is doing something wonderful with all of the tree and yard clippings they collect weekly. Some may say it's not the best, I may even agree, but you can't do better than free!

Almost to the top!

Boy, can these things take alot of soil!

We did amend the soil with some composted cow manure and rock dust to give it some more nutrients. I was surprised by how much soil these boxes could take. You're looking at 1.5 pick up truck loads to fill these 2 beds. A big thank you to one of our amazing neighbors for the loan of the truck and wheelbarrow. Without which we would likely still  be starring at empty boxes in the yard.

Adding a little extra good stuff.

The Big Build

Inspected by Ruby the Bullmastiff

There are literally 89,435,768 ways to build raised beds. Google it if you don't believe me. I'll wait. See, told ya. Everybody has an opinion. My "expert" (you remember youtube) has all sorts of great ideas, from $300 for a 4x8 bed right down to using free scrap pallets to get 'er done. Cedar looks like it's the way to go but I can't see my bed costing more than my yearly produce grocery bill, so regular old wood it is for this girl. We decided on untreated wood even though we know it won't last as long as the treated version. The new treated wood is supposed to be safe, but I don't fully trust any wood that doesn't rot. Not around my edibles anyway.

We're going with 2 raised beds, each one 4x8 with some trellis sections for climbers. We'll use untreated wood, some screws, weed fabric and cardboard boxes. Total for wood, screws, trellis and irrigation at a big box hardware store was $130.00 for both boxes.  Here's how it looked coming together.

One down, one to go!

Sides built with weed fabric and cardboard liner

Ta da!

What a Difference

Is New York really that different from Central Florida? Geesh, I thought I had a little bit of a green thumb. I mean, I can keep houseplants alive, what the heck happened to the garden? Turns out that humidity, nematodes, mold, mildew, fungus, wilt and blight diseases team up against the Florida gardener. I have to admit, a girl that can describe at least 10 different snow conditions, has no weapons against these buggers. I had no idea that any of this stuff even existed let alone how to look for it or treat it. Many of these problems don't have time to build up in zone 6b to become a problem. But in the sunshine state, it's like a hot tub cesspool and these diseases and bugs live all year long and build up to critical levels. Give me slugs and snails, please! I know how to deal with those. You know how many slugs and snails I've seen......none.....zero.....zip. Deep Breath.

So what did I learn? Our first mistake was planting anything in the ground. More experienced gardeners might be able to grow that way, but it didn't work for me. So we gotta build some raised beds. Or, rather, the hubby needs to build some raised beds. Then we need to line the bottom with weed fabric and boxes. Boxes? Yep, boxes my friends. Regular old cardboard boxes which apparently will keep the weeds from growing up into the raised bed and keep the bad nematodes out of the raised beds as well. Who knew there were good and bad nematodes? I'm not sure I even have that straight since youtube is my "expert" but I'm just going with it for now. Nothing like a hot cesspool to take the fun out of growing some veggies. But I'm still into it, so let's get building! Hubby where are you........