More Raised Bed Fun!

This week my daughter and I put together a couple more raised beds in the garden. They aren’t exactly what I planned to do in the vegetable garden layout that I made a couple months ago but the addition of the extra beds has definitely improved over the layout I had last year, at least in terms of space. They will serve their purpose and make some nicer planting areas for 2010. The two beds, which we filled using the lasagna method (also called layering), are to be designated for tomatoes while an alternative planting area was seeded with potatoes. I’ll probably plant pole beans among the potatoes as a companion plant.

When I built the raised beds I used only materials I had on hand which was untreated wood that some friends passed along.  Instead of building 2 2’x10′ beds we built a 3’x10′ bed and a 4’x8.5′ bed. The 3′ wide bed will be used for Roma and paste type tomatoes while the other one will house our indeterminant varieties. I will only allow the cherry tomatoes to grow in a couple locations so as not to have the monster cherry tomatoes of 2009 appear again. They were about as voracious as kudzu last year and completely overwhelmed the determinant varieties.

The potato area needs filled with straw or grass clippings but each potato was buried then mounded to the top of the shoots. I’ll keep mounding around the new growth using straw and soil to encourage more tuber formation. The outline of this bed was made using some logs from a hackberry tree I cut down in the fall. I was determined to reduce my gardening budget this year by using materials that I have on hand for the vegetable garden like the old lumber and the logs.

Elsewhere in the vegetable garden we have sugar snap peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, onions and cilantro all doing great! How’s your garden doing?