Preparing New Raised Planting Beds

My new raised bed frames arrived from Natural Yards on Friday, just in time for the weekend. This year my garden supplies include two 4 x 4 raised bed frames, a 4 cubit foot bag of sphagnum moss, a 4 cubic foot bag of vermiculite, 1 bag of composted manure and two compost 50 gallon bins worth of composted yard clippings. I also purchased a 100 foot bolt of weed barrier cloth and 10 bags of rubber mulch. The rubber mulch is made from recycled materials and is supposed to last many years.

My soil recipe is 1 part compost, 1 part vermiculite, 1 part sphagnum, 1 part soil mix from last years garden and 1 shovel composted manure. To make it easy to mix, I added 1o shovels of my composted yard clippings, 10 shovels of vermiculite, 10 shovels of sphagnum, 1 shovel of composted manure, and 10 shovels of the mix from last year's garden. I put all of this into my wheelbarrow and mixed it in the wheel barrel. Then tipped it into my garden bed. It took four wheelbarrows per 4 x 4 bed.

The 4 x 4 beds have three feet in between each bed. I had enough soil-less mix for four beds. The trick in the plan is that I had to disassemble one half of my last year's bed which was a 4 x 8 foot bed, four boards high.

The first step my husband Brian and I did was to figure out how long the garden-bed row would be and then laid down the garden cloth. Then we removed the top two rows from last years bed.

We measured the distance from the farthest half of last year's bed to include a four foot bed, three feet space in between and then another four foot bed and three feet. So we started building the first new 4 x 4 bed ten feet away from where the near-side of the old bed that would remain. We had to leave the 4 x 8 bed intact until we assembled three beds so that it could hold the planting mixture.

Once the three beds were assembled, then I started mixing up this years planting mixture based on Mel's Mix from Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. I put four wheelbarrow's of mixture in each of the three beds. Then we scooped out one wheelbarrow of planting mix from last years bed and scooped all the mix from the half we were disassembling to the end that would remain. We began putting together the last of the five beds, but found that the ground needed to be leveled and we were running out of daylight so had to stop for the night.

One advantage of adding the planting mix from last year's garden into the new beds, was that some of the red wriggler worms I added to the bed last year were transplanted along with the planting mix. I was so encouraged to find the little guys. I wasn't seeing them at first. They had migrated over to the sides and bottom of the garden bed. I suspect they were seeking the warmth of the wooden frame. I was so happy to start seeing them as I digged a little deeper.

I hope to get the last bed in place today and to place the rubber mulch. I may hold off on the mulch because I think I may purchase some landscape edging to hold the mulch in place. I priced it on the Home Depot website last night. I looks like I will need 6 packs of edging which should run about $180. We bought the rubber mulch at Costco. It was about $20 a bag. That's pretty rich for my blood, but hoping it really will last as long as the claim! And I hope the ten bags will be enough. I think I will need to buy another bag of sphagnum peetmoss and vermiculite to finish filling the beds. Then I will be ready to plant. Yeah!

I haven't done the official talley but I estimate that I am at about $600 for this year's garden beds. The five beds will then have reached a cost of about $1000 - $1200. That sounds like a lot to me, however, these materials will last for many years. The planting mix from last year was still very usable this year. If you were able to find reclaimed lumber for your garden frames you could cut the cost in half.

We recently stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast near Herman, Missouri, Les Lavandes, where the owner, Myrta Webber, was able to acquire barn boards for free from a neighbor who was taking down an old barn on his property. The old weathered barn boards look great in their new life as a raised bed garden. Another example of a great reuse of materials. Remember the OurFriendlyEarth motto: reduce as much as possible, reuse as much as possible, and recycle as much of everything else as you can.

I expect to only be refreshing the mix each year with my own compost which is virtually free. We use a lawn service which uses only organic treatments for the lawn and we do not add any chemicals to the lawn ourselves. We water the garden with water from our rain barrles, so our garden is as close to organic as one can get in a suburban garden.

Gardens at Les Lavandes B&B

Buzz it up

Still Waiting for Garden Frame!

I was expecting to come home from work on Friday and find boxes of cedar from Natural Yards, only to find they had arrived at the FedEx hub but would not be delivered until Monday. I called the FedEx 800 number to see if they had a customer pick up option but was told by customer service that my boxes were in a container and that they would not dig through the container just to find my four boxes. I had to wait until Monday. The customer service rep was a bit snippy so I was a bit ornery and I asked nicely, "So you don't have a customer pickup service like UPS does?" "NO! We don't!" (Darn!)

So back to planning stage. I have weeded my bed area. I calculated the cubic feet of dirt that I need. My bed is 22" x 4' x 8' so divide 22 by 12 to get the feet in decimals for height (1.833), multiply 1.833 * 4 * 8 = 58.56 cubic feet of growing medium.

I am considering get 20 cup hooks or eye screws to attach to the inside top of the frame on one foot intervals so that I can string twine over the soil through the hooks to create a grid of 1 foot squares (Square Foot Gardening). I will need garden cloth to lay down on the ground first. Then the bed frame is constructed. Then fill with the growing medium. I will most likely cover the growing medium with more garden cloth to keep out weeds, then add a soaker hose and mulch.

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Shopping for Soil

Just got back from shopping for soil mix for the garden frame. It seems that the best price I can get for a soil mix is $5 a cubic foot which would be about $290 total. That was a Miracle Grow soil mix for flower and vegetable beds. More that I want to spend. So I am back to the computer searching to see if there are any nurseries that will sell a soil mix by the cubic yard and deliver it to my house. We shopped first at Ace, then we stopped by the neighborhood nursery that is great but pricey. Their soil mix was a couple dollars more per cubic foot than ACE and they didn't know of anyone that would sell a soil mix by the cubic yard.

The ACE experience

My first stop was at ACE where a young man working the lawn and garden department first told me the broken bags of soil would be half off. So I got my hubby out there and we dug through the pile of broken bags to see what they had and count it out by size of bags since they were mixed. I added up a total of about 14.5 cubic feet of soil and took an average price of $2.5 per cubic foot to come up with a total of $36.25 that I would be willing to pay to take the broken bags. This would be about half price.

I hunted down the manager who first of all told me that the broken bags were only 20% off not 50% because the bags hadn't lost any soil, people had simply put their hands through the bags. I told him that I had sorted through the broken bags and had the ones that I wanted. And that there was soil on the ground around the bags, by the way. In the game of "Deal, No Deal" he was all NO DEAL and he had NO patience. So I said, OK, let's figure out how much the odd assortment of bags will cost at 20% off. They didn't have all the prices for every size at the register which didn't help the manager's mood one bit but a clerk was able to work with me and we figured out the total for the one 2-cubic foot bag, five 1-cubic foot bags and five 16 quart bags. They wanted $65.35 at the discounted price. Wow! Too much! The manager had made himself scarce at this point so I said, "Thank you! Now I know how to compare prices."

I always think you should try negotiating a good price when you are talking about buying damaged merchandise. Not only had the bags lost some soil, we had a heavy rain two nights and the bags were somewhat water logged. Very often store managers will work with you. This guy must have been having a hard day. I guess if I was stuck working hardware on a hot muggy Saturday I might be grumpy. Still think you should always be polite to your customers! You never know, they might just have a blog! "Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man." Just not a helpful lawn and garden man. :-)

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Back to Mel's Place

After the ACE experience, I went back to Mel's site, Square Foot Gardening, and I very pleased to see that I don't really even need soil! What I really need is peat, vermiculite, and compost. I knew I needed vermiculite and peat, but couldn't remember if the third component was soil or compost. My brain is either my computer or a piece of paper...and I hadn't written this down. Ace didn't have vermiculite, but they did have a good price on peat, 3.8 cubic feet at $5.99.

I picked up a local gardening paper at Ace where I found information about the Master Garden program in the area. They have "hot-line" numbers for gardeners and you can email. Cool! Maybe I can get some help on the best place to get the vermiculite and compost. I also found an ad for Suburban Lawn and Garden, a local garden center that appears to offer soil and soil amendments in bulk so I am getting closer to the goal!

I feel that I have to get the bed up and planted this week. We take a week-long vacation in July and I want my plants to be well established before we leave town.

I do have a couple of full compost bins, but since I haven't gardened in a couple of year, they bins have been full but not turned enough to really cook the compost and break it down. I am considering turning it out on my garden area and turning it in with the soil to be the base for my raised bed, then put the 3-part mix that Mel suggests on top. I am going to try that this evening...now that the sun is lower in the sky and we have some shade out back. If it works, then I will only need half as much mix.