Tag Archives: raised beds

The Planter is Planted!

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Dirt to Dinner Individual Raised Bed Planting Areas    Dirt to Dinner Individual Raised Bed
Planting Areas

Hooray! The Dirt to Dinner willow raised bed planter is now home to 14 individual 2×4 planting sections, one for each of the families in the Spring program. And today, April 11th, was finally the day the beds were first planted. The 112′ “L” shaped bed created with willow hurdles from Master Garden Products in Oregon holds about 18″ of soil on disturbed adobe that has been lawn for the last ten+ years, with the sod removed. (We’re still trying to fit it all into the composter in layers–it could be a while!)

The planter now holds different combinations of tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, chard, beets, carrots, a wide selection of radishes, including one patch with four varieties growing side by side for comparison, lettuce, watermelon, cantaloupe and cosmos, among others!

You'll Be Missed

You'll Be Missed

During the planting of starts and seeds, a square foot of Broccoli Raab starts were transported into the front garden, in hopes of being chosen as residents of the new planting bed. Sadly, one of the broccoli starts did not survive the move. The kids chose to honor the broccoli’s return to the soil with this memorial. ;-)

Not only did we get the planting beds planted today, but we also had lunch on time! (A process it has taken us a while to perfect.) In the kitchen, the kids prepared Strawberry Lemonade, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Quinoa Confetti  Salad with beets, carrots, cabbage, red onion, radishes, celery, fennel and fresh herbs. The sweet potatoes were said to, “smell like a pie!”

Grate Help

Grate Help

The quinoa salad was not as popular with the kids as the kale salad we tried during Class 2 but it was tasty, fresh and welcomed by most of the adults. It made me wonder if there is some more fundamental reason kids tend not to like certain foods. I’ve been reading the new edition of Harold McGee’s classic On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen and in the vegetable section he talks about the chemistry of many of the vegetables we are encouraging the Dirt to Dinner kids to eat, a chemistry which is often a defense mechanism for plants designed to keep things from eating them! What if immature digestive systems are more sensitive to these chemical defenses and there’s a biological reason children turn up their noses at the foods grownups spend a lot of time trying to convince them are good for them? Certainly, feeding them fresh versions right out of the garden gets around any obvious taste or processing-into-tastelessness issues. Just a wild idea. Let me know if you have thoughts better founded in biochemistry than my musings!

Raised Bed Trials

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30" Potato and Tomato Raised Bed

24" Potato and Tomato Raised Bed

We are testing a wide variety of raised beds in the Dirt to Dinner garden. Just this week I added two new No Dig beds with tall trellising for cantaloupe and spaghetti squash. They are made of “found” lumber (it was Clean-Up Week in our neighborhood, so the finding part was easy) that 50 years ago was a backyard fence. I figure anything potentially unhealthy has surely leached out of it in all this time. Right?

The first bed we added to the front garden we took up the turf and dug the soil underneath, so it’s somewhere between 18″ and 24″ of new ammended soil mixed with the existing clay and topped with an inch of turkey farm compost. This bed holds potatoes and tomatoes, so I’m sure we’ll learn a lot about the quality of both the drainage and the new soil from the way the plants develop. It’s also in a windy corner, which the bush beans we tucked in there while the potatoes and tomatoes are getting started don’t seem too happy about. This also means the bed dries out more quickly than I would like and needs a thick mulching as soon as the plants are better established.

5" No Dig Squash Bed

5" No Dig Squash Bed

The shallowest of the raised beds is a No Dig 5″ deep bed with as close to Mel’s Mix as I could make with the materials at hand. And I do mean, No Dig with this one. It’s made out of found redwood timbers tacked together and laid straight onto the lawn. I am very curious to see how this bed does through the summer. I planted my spaghetti squash in this one, so I really hope it does well.

The idea is that the grass will die underneath the soil, turn into a natural compost and eventually become one with the dirt in the planting box. I imagine adding a lot of compost to this one through the Summer to keep the moisture content up. But will the grass grow up through 5″ of soil?

2'x2' of 6" and 12" Square Foot Sections

2'x2' of 6" and 12" Square Foot Sections

We also have a variety of Square Foot style beds in the Dirt to Dinner garden. My favorite ones, surprisingly, are the bi-levels. I thought I would want everything as deep as possible to hold all the soil and plants I could imagine, but I like the way this one looks in the garden and so far the occupants seem happy with their digs.

By far the largest raised bed in the Dirt to Dinner garden is the kids’ growing area which is over 18″ deep. The kids removed the turf and turned the soil underneath before the bed was constructed. At 112 square feet framed in traditional English willow hurdles, it is unique and also seems to be holding up well. willow-planter-almost-done1I have no doubt that the bed will provide ideal growing conditions and can’t wait to see what the kids do with it.

The original raised beds in this growing space are large plank board planters that stand 3′ high and are 4′ wide. They are great for keeping the dogs out and not having to bend over very far, and they are sturdy enough that you can even stand on the edge to adjust your cages or add to the trellis systems. But they are so deep that the soil compacts in them by a foot down and they are very ungainly to try to turn the soil in them because of their size. It’s tough to get a shovel into them and you end up breaking your back digging them out by hand every year or two to lighten the soil.

Ahead of Schedule

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Lyngo Soil Delivery    Lyngo Soil Delivery

I can’t believe it, but all the soil is in the beds for the Dirt to Dinner project. When the semi originally dumped one cubic foot of Diestel compost and six cubic feet of Essential Soil mix onto the driveway, my husband had to have been thinking to himself, “Two weeks–minimum.” But it’s all in place and looks delicious. It’s like someone covered all the bare and ugly spots and all the new planting beds with dark chocolate frosting.

Lining Willow Raised Bed "Hurdles"

Lining Willow Raised Bed "Hurdles"

The new willow raised bed is sitting on top of the ground the kids removed the sod from this weekend. It’s fully constructed, filled with soil, topped with compost and ready for them to plant in. The kids did a great job preparing the spot where the bed sits. Then we straightened the willow “hurdles” and tapped them into the ground with a mallet. After the bed was shaped and squared, copper wires are attached around all the corners to further support the “L” shape the kids decided to build in. After that, the inside of the frame was lined with black plastic and the soil was added.

We have also been thinking about adding a vertical growing element and may install trellising along two sides of the bed before we are done. It would give the project a lot more growing space and be a good exercise in growth habits and the flexibility–or inflexibility–of spacing guidelines.

Willow Raised Bed Almost Done

Willow Raised Bed Almost Done

Here’s the nearly finished willow raised bed, ordered as two 4′ x 12′ beds, then arranged in an “L” shape to add an additional 16 square feet of planting space that will be used by our instructor, Mackenzie, for her demonstration gardening space. Total growing area is 112 square feet, or 9.3 square feet per participating child, if anybody is counting. ;-)

We are built out two weeks before our earliest estimate and the weather feels ready to go too. We are also ahead of schedule in some of our growing and planting. The 85-year-old neighbor, who was raised on a farm in Iowa, assures me that it is safe to put out my tomatoes now, so I have gotten severl different varieites and am excited to see the German “Orange Strawberry” tomato plant my mother-in-law is sending over this weekend. I’m going to need a protected spot for that one.

P. Borghese in Flower

P. Borghese in Flower

I think I’m happy to report that we have our first tomato flowering. Though it might have actually been a stress response to being too crowded by the other tomato plants where it was pottted. Anyway, it’s in a good spot now growing with some Bok Choy on one side and Spinach on the other. I’m trying to find space for a dozen of the P. Borghese tomatoes to have lots of them for drying since the whole family *loves* sun-dried tomatoes. Of course, I have no idea how many tomatoes each plant will give, when they will give them, or how many we actually need for drying enough for the rest of the year. This is a year for learning what *not* to do next year!

Here’s the sum total of what I know about my dozen or more tomato plants right from the Victory Seed web site:

75 days, determinate — Italian heirloom variety very popular in Italy and California for splitting in half and sun drying. They maintain color and flavor well. The plants produce heavy yields of small, red plum-shaped fruits. The plants will benefit from support such as caging.

We plan to track how many pounds of tomatoes given by each plant, the height of the plants, the size of the cage needed for the plants, the amount of square feet required to grow the plants and anything else we might need to know to grow them well again next year if we like them.

Square Foot by Square Foot

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Square Foot Tomatoes and Chard

Square Foot Tomatoes and Chard

The Dirt to Dinner garden is starting to really take shape and I’m loving the time I am able to spend out there. One of the fun things we are doing this year is practicing some French Intensive gardening, or “Square Foot” gardening, as it’s often called. I have several beds divided up more or less in this way. Today I put in a two-level 2′ x 2′ bed with my drying tomatoes in the deeper sections and Swiss Chard in the two lower sections that will probably get shaded by the tomato plants, even when I cage them. I hope the Chard doesn’t mind too much. It should have lots of time to establish itself before then–if the crows don’t eat it!

Another bed is divided into three sections with a test bed of beans that I started ahead indoors, beans I started in place a month later, and beets. I lined the edges of this bed with carrots also, so it will be crowded as things mature and I will need to keep it fed. The bush beans won’t mind all being together and the beet tops hopefully won’t shade the carrots too much. We’ll have to see how this one works out.

Square Foot Beans and Beets

Square Foot Beans and Beets

I’m also trying a 3′ x 3′ with two tomato plants, again, and sections of spinach and chard. So that will make a nice comparison bed to the 2′ x 2′. I wish I had grown this type of tomato before. They are a determinate heirloom variety called Principe Borghese but I can’t get any concensus on how tall they like to grow or how bushy they will be. I’ll let you know how they turn out!

Mom, Can I Have More Kale?

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Massaged Kale Salad              

Massaged Kale Salad

Today in Dirt to Dinner the kids made an amazing Massaged Kale Salad with a medley of Roasted Root Vegetables. Delicious! And as you can see, beautifully presented. Can you imagine how satisfying it was for a bunch of parents to stand around and see the kids going for seconds of a salad made with raw kale right from the garden! Not to mention they were also eating roasted turnips, parsnips, potatoes, rutabagas, carrots and more. All in all a very satisfying meal to help consume. You can find a recipe for the salad (not exactly the way we made it–but close) on the “I Love Kale” blog at http://iheartkale.blogspot.com/2009/01/massaged-kale-salad-with-grated-root.html

Team Work

Team Work

And they had worked up quite an appetite finding garden bugs, playing an elaborate kind of tag that reinforces ideas about predator – prey relationships and food webs at work in a garden. And designing and digging the space for the Dirt to Dinner planting beds.

One thing we can already tell you after just two sessions of Dirt to Dinner is that when you have twelve plus kids on hand and lunch to prepare for 25, three hours goes mighty fast. Because there is so much to do, we are already guessing that the kids likely to get the most of the program will be the ones who are able to be here on Mondays for Open Garden hours when they can move at their own pace.

Dug Up Discovery

Dug Up Discovery

Just today while the group was together we had a scavenger hunt to see what kinds of insect life we could find in the garden, met the worms who will inhabit our worm farm, picked kale, celery and lemons and played the predator-prey game about cabbage, cabbage worms, moths and birds.

Then one group prepared and roasted the root vegetables and then planted potatoes outside in flexible bins and the other group prepared the Massaged Kale Salad and did a math and spatial awareness puzzle to try to figure out what shapes the pieces for the garden boxes could be arranged in to maximize the square feet for gardening while still allowing kids to reach all the plants that would be in the beds without putting their weight on the soil.

Mid-Dig

Mid-Dig

Want to try it? You can cut up sticks, straws, string, strips of paper, etc. into four 4″ lengths and eight 6″ lengths and let us know what shape configuration gives you the most square inches while still allowing easy access to the space inside the sticks. We know of two shapes that will give you 112 square inches. The largest configuration the Dirt to Dinner kids came up with today was a 112 square inch “L.” So that’s the shape that the kids measured and marked out and eventually framed with our 4′ and 6′ lengths of willow hurdles to make a 112′ garden bed.

Ready for the Dirt

Ready for the Dirt