Planting Seeds in My Raised Bed Circle

Last year I put together the circular raised bed in my vegetable garden.  It’s in the center of the garden layout which is in the parterre style garden layout I planned last year.  Of course my plans are changing a little this year too.  It never fails, the only thing I don’t change in my garden is the fact that I am changing my garden!  I’ll show you that plan soon, possibly next week.  For today though I’ll share with you the seeds I planted in the center circle raised bed.

My center circle is made from concrete retaining wall blocks.  Concrete can make some excellent raised beds since it doesn’t rot and doesn’t need much in the way of special assembly techniques if you keep the garden low.  Most of the concrete retaining wall blocks are recommended to go up to 2′ high (or 4 levels) without needing mortar. I used this bed last year for greens and beans but added some amendments to nourish the soil more.  It was covered in weeds so I turned the soil under, broke up the larger clumps of soil and removed the major root systems of the remaining weeds.  I left some of the weeds to die off naturally and “return to the soil from whence they came!”  Then I made trenches a little over half an inch deep in the soil.   

The trenches were where I placed the sugar snap peas.  I put four in each spoke of the wheel for a total of 24 seeds planted.  Once the seeds were in place I covered the trenches with the excavated soil.  In a couple weeks I’ll start another round in another bed.  On one side I sprinkled some spinach seeds, pressed them lightly into the soil, and covered the spinach seeds with a sprinkling of soil.  Essentially you could say I have a sugar snap pea pie with a side of spinach!

I really enjoyed the warm weather this week. Who wouldn’t with 60 degree weather in January! How about you?