Work in Progress

While the square foot garden kits served us well last year I came to think that they weren't going to be enough to grow the amount of food I'd like to grow, nor were they all deep enough to support a wider variety of crops and rotations.

I'm determined to grow most all of the produce my family will be able to eat through the summer and fall seasons while at the same time having enough left over to preserve for the winter months.  It would also be nice to have some to spare to neighbors, friends, family, and/or even the community food bank.  Perhaps I'll even be able to grow enough to make it worthwhile to set up a booth at the local farmer's market every so often or set up a micro CSA with someone.

Not only is there a sense of pride and joy that comes from being able to grow your own food and sustain yourself and your family, but with the ever-rising costs of food at the grocery stores I also see it as a way to save lots of money on groceries for much of the year.  I'm keen to start weighing and recording all the produce we're able to harvest and then add up what it would have costed at the store and see how much it all adds up to at the end of each year.  What I've been doing between last year and this year to try to maximize our gardening spaces and make them as productive as possible has definitely been costing a lot of time and money up front (the biggest cost being all of the ingredients to make up a healthy Mel's Mix for the square foot garden beds), but I'm looking at it all as an investment that once completed, will not only take much less time and labor to maintain and look after, but will also pay itself off many times over.

Thus, I've been hard at work these last few weeks remodeling and expanding our garden beds.  Below is a look at some of the progress I've made thus far.

I began the project a couple of weeks ago. The first step was to remove the kits we had started with last year and replace them with new frames I had wanted to make with some cedar fencing pieces.  I wanted all of the previous beds to be 10-12 inches deep to allow for more root vegetables to be grown as well as being able to plant tomatoes deeper and so on.  I had originally set out to use stacked 2"x6" or 2"x10" cedar boards for the walls and 4"x4" cedar posts to support them and be anchored into the ground with some cement.  As I began to add the costs for those materials up it quickly got way over budget.  I then decided to go with cedar fence boards for the walls while still using 4"x4" posts to support them, much like how John Kohler, who's Youtube channel can be found at growingyourgreens.com, likes to build his beds.  Another great demonstration of these types of beds can also be found here.

While standing in Home Depot, however, and surveying the size of the  4"x4" posts, I felt like they would be too intrusive on the growing space within the beds.  That, and the cost for each post was still a bit high for what I needed and what I wanted to pay.  I then looked up and saw some 2"x4" cedar board for half the cost and at a size that would be much less intrusive inside the beds.  I thought it out a bit more and then committed to going with that route.  I also figured that while the other route may have gotten a few more years of life, the cost savings now was worth it.

Again, it shouldn't be too hard to replace any wood that rots away in the coming years, even if it's a few years sooner than had I used thicker cuts of wood.  That, and there's something about me that isn't quite comfortable yet with something as permanent as something cemented in the ground would be.  I like knowing that I could, if a more desirable layout comes to mind down the road, be able to essentially lever and pick up any bed and relocate it without having to dig out and break into some cement.  Perhaps after these new beds wear out, I'll be more able and willing to replace them with the more durable thicker cuts of wood from the money I hope to be able save on groceries over the life of the beds.  This less expensive way I adapted from my previous plan still consists of all cedar, which is naturally rot, weather, and pest resistant, so it should still hold up for several years.  I'll be satisfied if they hold well for at least 5 years.

All of the wood unloaded and ready to be cut and assembled.

While measuring out the cuts for each board, I had the idea to use rebar rather than cement to anchor in the 2x4's into the ground.  This way, they'd be much easier to remove when they ever need to be replaced, while in the mean time, they would still hold steady and solid in the ground.  I already had a stash of 12" rebar that I was going to use to support PVC pipes for hoop houses over the previous beds before deciding to go with the expansion project.  I simply cut the 2x4s to be 1 foot each and then drilled holes about 3 - 4 inches up the middle of each 2x4 just big enough to take the rebar for the corners of each bed.

Corner posts ready to go

After that it was cutting each fence board from 6 feet to 4 feet and then screwing them onto the corner posts 2 boards high.

New bed frame ready to be flipped over and sunk into the ground.

Once the new bed frames were assembled and placed, it was time to set them up with ability to support a hoop house.  I bought some inexpensive PVC conduit clamps and mounted two to each corner.  I also added in a foot long 2x4 along the sides of the beds every 2 feet.

Hoop house supports on a corner

Hoop house supports along the side at 2' intervals

For the hoop house structure itself, I went with 1/2 inch PVC pipes at their standard 10 foot length and then simply measured, cut, and draped over some 6 mil plastic sheeting over them.  The ends are wrapped over, like a big present, and then held together with a simple clamp.  The benefits to a hoop house are that they can help to speed up the warming of the soil in the Spring for an earlier start to planting, they can serve as a mini green house, they can help protect plants from frosts, and they allow you to extend your season for fall crops and harvests.

If you leave them up for the winter where it gets cold and snowy like what we get here in Utah along the Wasatch Mountains, you can apparently keep hardy plants such as some kales, spinaches, chard, kohlrabi, and other like plants alive and growing for a continual harvest of greens and so on through the winter.  If the bed is still within the reach of sunlight, the soil will absorb that light and radiate the heat from it through the evening.  The plastic helps to hold in much of that heat.  If temperatures get too extremely cold, there are other methods to help ensure that the hoop house maintains a bit of warmth such as setting out some jugs of hot water inside of it and/or stringing up Christmas lights (non-LED).

The same hoop house structure can also be used to hold up shade cloth, bird netting, or other protection for plants as needed.  I must credit Jim Teahan of thewealthyearth.com for the motivation to get some hoop houses up.

Hoop house skeleton.  The grid across the bed is a PVC watering grid I constructed last year.

Hoop houses all completed

When days are sunny and warmer but nights are still frigid,  you can roll up the sides to allow some air circulation.  The sun can heat the inside up 20 - 30 degrees warmer than the outside temperature and can cook cold hardy plants if  allowed.

The next step, also in the pictures above, was to set up some vertical trellises on the north end (so as to not shade plants relying on southern sunlight) of each of the beds.  One of the more cost-effective and durable way to set these up was to follow what was advised in Mel Barholomew's All New Square Foot Gardening book.  That was to use 1/2 inch electrical conduit and fittings secured to the ground by placing it over some 18" - 24" lengths of rebar driven half way into the ground.

As recommended for added stability, I also got some 3' T-Posts and fastened some conduit hangers on them.  This should ensure solid support for heavier crops such as watermelons and pumpkins in addition to peas, tomatoes, cantaloupe, cucumbers, squashes, and other vining plants you can grow up them.  All I have yet to do is attach some nylon netting to them.

Vertical trellis anchored and supported just outside of the bed

At this point, most of the remodeling phase was complete.  Now it was time to move on with the expansion phase...

Recently we purchased three different varieties of some seedless grape starts (concord, red, & green) and raspberries.  While they haven't been planted yet, we needed to know where we would place them and allow us to maximize growing spaces.  At first we thought of just using the same space where two vines had already existed from when we bought our home.  The two vines already in place were both seeded varieties (green & concord) with no good trellis system in place or any proper vine training and basically got out of control through last season's growth.  We were just going to plant the 2 of the three new vines a bit away from the existing ones and then as the new ones matured over the next couple of years, we'd pull the old ones out.

Of course, after more thought, we decided it wasn't worth keeping the old vines around any longer anyways, even though I had pruned them back over a couple of weeks ago, because we just don't care for seeded varieties, especially our kids.  I also thought it would be better to pull them out now while the clay soil was was still soft and moist and easy to dig from all of the recent snowmelt and so we wouldn't have to worry about interfering with the roots of newer vines once established.

Old grape vines before they were removed

After making the decision to give up homegrown grapes for the next year or two, I had the idea to take out a chain link fence that had been propped up on some T-posts to separate what had been the vegetable garden area from some flower beds that surround our back lawn, and replace the fencing down one side with the grape vines and the other side with the raspberries.

Grape vines removed.  My daughter did all of the hard work.  =)  The length of fencing in the background has since been removed and will be replaced with a sturdy grape trellis.

This length of fencing was removed to be replaced with a trellis that will support raspberries

At the same time the decision was made to remove the old fence, I offered up the old bed frames to my wife.  We wanted to continue to make use of them since we had only used them for one year but weren't sure where and how to lay them out exactly.  After a few days of thought and some prototype placements,  it was decided to connect all of them together to make one large bed and place it in a space that had previously been occupied by a cherry tree (which we lost to an early fall snow storm this last year).  

The space was also previously home to a sickly peach tree when we had bought the home last spring and it ultimately died over the summer (the few branches that had life in the spring dried up through the hot summer we had).  At the beginning of the month we hired a friend who was an arborist to help with pruning our surviving fruit trees (apple, peach, plum) and to cut down and remove the stumps of the two dying/dead trees (cherry and peach).  

The rest of the space was occupied by a variety of spring flower bulbs, a few ground cover plants, a few rose bushes, and a few spring/summer perennials like poppies.  While this space was all very beautiful when most of it was in bloom last April, it quickly became less appealing as summer came on and most of the spring blooms went dormant for the rest of the year.  Once the apple, cherry, and overgrown (neglected) plum trees had gone into full bloom and leafing -- apple and cherry tree lied on the east side and plum tree was on the west side -- they shaded out much of this space for much of each day making it hard for many sun loving plants to grow.  We tried to keep it watered with what were several runs of soaker hoses that were already in place when we purchased the home, but had all worn out.  As the summer progressed, this seemed to only serve masses of weeds that filled up all the empty spaces.

Ultimately, my wife and I had agreed that a few weeks of blooming bulbs through the large patch of ground was worth sacrificing for months of easier to water and maintain annuals and even some more vegetables.  With the cherry tree and old sickly peach trees gone and out of the way and the plum tree nicely pruned back to a more respectable size and shape, the space appeared to be much more open and viable to sustain a large raised bed.  Bulbs like tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and chives would still be placed and permitted to grow around the perimeter of the bed as well as in all of the other flowering spaces surrounding the lawn.  

At this point I dug out some of the bigger bulbs that were starting to come up and transplanted them to other empty spaces outside of the area where the new big raised bed would go.  I then cleared out all of the remaining plants and assembled the old raised bed kits to form one big bed to occupy the majority of the space.  I still need to level them and we'll then be able to fill them up and start getting them planted in the coming weeks.  I will be the steward over the back beds while my wife has agreed to be the steward over the "new" big bed.  We also look forward to involving our young children in the planting and harvesting of all the beds as much as reasonably possible. 

Bulbs, apple & cherry tree in full bloom last April

The first snowstorm of last fall wasn't kind to the cherry tree

The "new" big bed

A distant look at the garden as of this week