Our Kitchen Garden

Making a kitchen garden

Last year I had a raised bed made from old fencing, 4 tire beds and 2 pallets. Oh, can’t forget the failed straw bale gardening experiment. This year I went bigger. I now have 4 raised beds, loads of tires next to the fence for vining plants (gourds, cantelope and cucumber), a lettuce bed and a carrot tire. I think I’ll get a few more tires. Some things did rather well in them. I’ll make more raised beds as I have time and resources. All of the things I use in my kitchen garden are free.

Oh, can’t forget the other part of the kitchen garden, the sunken corn hugel. See the linked post for more on that.

I started with cardboard, lots of it. And tires, lots of them.

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This is the lettuce bed. I laid out cardboard and then put compost over it. I also have cardboard under and compost in all the tires.

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The lettuce is already coming up. I had to chase a chicken out of it. Chased her all the way around the house. Then I fenced it like I should have to begin with.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I am not the best at planned design. So I simply cut all the wood in half. The new raised beds are as large as the wood would allow and that’s that.

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I have cucumber and leeks in the big one, eggplant in another and okra in the last one. I have cardboard going around and in between the raised beds. Dirt is on it to keep it from blowing away. When I get it done enough I’ll be putting a nice layer of straw/hay to help with the ease of walking and to suppress weeds. Last year the surrounding plants made it almost impossible to reach the garden. I’m planning for that this year!

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Here is a shot of Son’s photo bomb and asparagus in last years raised bed. Daughter is in the backpack which she loves. Oddly she’s not much for the outdoors and doesn’t like to walk much. Our ground is rather uneven and she horribly takes after my side of the family in the grace department.

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I started some of the gourds inside. I have birdhouse gourds, apple gourds, giant gourds and cantaloupe. I’m hoping to make some birdhouses out of all the varieties- minus the cantaloupe.

 

This is pretty much it. We do have squash planted all over on the berms and potatoes as well. I think we are almost ready for growing!

Experimenting with various garden techniques- triumphs and failures

2014 was a year of experimentation and learning for me. I moved the kitchen garden to a new location and used a variety of materials to make raised beds. I also tried many of the gardening techniques I’d found on Pinterest. Here is a list of what I tried and what worked:

PALLETS:

Verdict: Failure for onions. Might be a triumph with lettuce.

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PALLET GARDEN

I grew onions in pallets this year and it was only mildly successful. I had ants move into one, which was partly good and partly horrible. They were army ants and I liked having them there as I saw them eat quite a few grubs. I did not like having them there because they swarmed whenever I watered or weeded. Unpleasant. I do think the idea of pallets is a good one, perhaps my technique was just off. I had to put more dirt in halfway through the season as it settled quite a lot. Keeping the dirt moist was also a problem. I mulched the rows with straw, but the pallets were thin and thus the dirt layer was as well. It just dried out pretty quickly. The onions I pulled in the fall would be considered pearls. I decided to save them for replanting this spring.

So would I do this again, maybe, but not for onions. I think this would work well with lettuce but that is about it.

RAISED BED:

Verdit: Triumph

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Squash planted around watering hole

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Asparagus (above and below)

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Our property came with a pile of old wooden fencing. I’ve used it here and there for various things and this raised bed is one of them. It is about a foot high, and 10 feet square. I planted asparagus, pumpkins and zucchini into this bed. For the pumpkin and zucchini I put a big hole in the middle of the bed for watering and planted the seeds around it. It worked pretty well. Also around the entire perimeter I planted marigolds. They got HUGE!

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RAISED BED GARDEN

I really have nothing bad to say about my raised bed. Everything in it grew large and fast. I had more zucchini than I knew what to do with. It worked great! In 2015 I’m going to plant my tomatoes and peppers into the raised bed instead of the straw bales.

 STRAW BALES:

Verdict: Failure

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Pumpkin plants growing in straw bale

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 Mushrooms growing out of straw bale

bell peppers

This picture sums up my straw bale experience. I fertilized with chicken poop for about 3 weeks before planting. I also added dirt into the planting hole and mulched with extra straw over the top after planting. Nothing did well in the bales. The straw bales were planted out weeks before my raised bed but the one pumpkin I planted in the bale never produced while I had several pumpkins from the raised bed plants. I had 4 bales. The pictured bale had bell pepper plants in it. I had 2 with tomatoes and one with squash. Again, nothing did well. I did have mushrooms popping out, which I was told meant my bale was decomposing like it was supposed to. It just didn’t work out. I would not do this again. The only benefit is that I had nicely fertilized straw to mulch my other beds with in the fall.

STRAW BALE GARDEN

Fertilizing straw bales.

TIRES:

Verdict: Undecided

 TIRE GARDEN BEANS AND CORN

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corn and beans

peas

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peas and sunflowers

Tires, my favorite material. I had one large, square, raised bed in the middle of my kitchen garden. On two sides I had two tires set up. I planted potatoes in one, carrots in another, beans and corn in another and sunflowers and peas in the last. The dirt was a mixture of my clay soil, horse manure compost, peat moss and straw mulch. The potatoes did very poorly. I had nothing eatable from that. BUT I just planted store bought potatoes which may be the reason for that. The carrots also did poorly but I know I did that. When I did the initial watering of the carrot tire it washed all the seeds to the very side of tire. Big mistake. So they never got very large. The peas did well and I did get some 4′ sunflowers as well. I got maybe 2 green beans and no corn. They grew up tall but nothing ever happened with them. I did plant peas and beans in my swales and they did much better there.

 

potatoes

potatoes 2

carrots

 I will use tires again I think. I’ll try potatoes in them again. The other tires will be used for spreading herbs though. I’ll plant my veggies out in the berms, it did better there.

 BROADCAST SEWING ON BERMS- LATE SEASON:

Verdict: Triumph

green berm

In late July I bought a ton of different seeds and simply threw them onto my berms. Not everything did well but most of it did amazing. I’m a big fan of broadcast sewing now!