Hello folks! I have finally finished my new garden beds.
This is a beautiful sight for me. It took a long time to get this done, but these will be permanent beds ...it will be worth all the work in the future. I didn't keep track of how many hours it took to complete, but I estimate around 50 hours.
As with the first bed, I still need to dig in some lime.... about 5 pounds per 100 square feet. I'm also adding about 10 pounds of coffee grounds to add some nitrogen. I'm thinking this will help speed up the decomposition of the leaves that I dug in to the bed.
The lime that I'm using is a new product from a company named Sunniland. It is a blend of calcitic lime and dolomite lime. It adds calcium and magnesium and helps raise the ph of our acidic soil. I haven't had the soil tested, but this area is known to have acidic soil. Hopefully it will help.
After digging the leaves into the soil, I dug one to two inches of soil from the path on the left side of the bed and added it to the bed. This was to be sure all of the leaves were covered with soil. As I dug it out I sloped the soil toward the bed, so when we get heavy rain any excess water can drain into the bed and hopefully get stored in the loose subsoil.
After grading the path, I laid down a double layer of cardboard.
I'm leaving the path on the right side of the bed bare until I complete the second bed. Then I will use soil from the path to top off the second bed.
After laying down the cardboard, I covered it with a 3 inch layer of wood chips. I'm leaving the stakes on the corners to help guide hoses when I'm watering the beds.
So this bed won't need any more work until I need to apply compost about the second week of February. Hopefully my compost will be ready by then. Its not decomposing as quickly as I would like. When I built this pile I used a lot of Palmetto fronds and they aren't decomposing as fast as some of the other materials that I've used before....like oak leaves or banana leaves. I probably won't use the Palmetto leaves again when I'm trying to make compost quickly. But I will still use them for something.... I use all the organic material from my property some where.
So, I won't bore you with more step by step on the next bed, but I will post some photos of the completed project when it is finished.
Since my last post, I have removed the sod from the area for the first bed. I drove in stakes to mark the corners of the bed and pulled string around the stakes to out line the bed.
Here I have dug the first trench in the double digging process.
The soil was shoveled into my lawn cart until I need it to fill in the final trench at the other end of the bed. Digging for a few hours each day, it took two days to complete the digging. I was quite surprised at how tightly packed the subsoil was. It took more force than I thought it would to get the fork in to its full depth, so that I could fluff that layer. After digging I used a hard tine rake to smooth it off.
This bed is 4 feet wide and 25 feet long for a total of 100 square feet of growing space.
You might be able to see here that it created a raised bed about 4 inches high.
After smoothing the bed I topped it off with a layer of partially decomposed leaves and twigs, that I had from my last wood chip delivery. It does have some small wood chips mixed in, but it is the only organic matter that I have. With our warmer weather, the leaves have stopped falling so I'm just using what I have available.
I dug this into the soil in the hopes that it will decompose by March, when I will be planting my spring garden. I finished all of this up yesterday at about 4:30. At this point I was pretty much exhausted, so I will continue this in my next post. Then I will show how I do the paths around the bed.
I was introduced to growing vegetables in beds and double digging back in 1980 when I started reading Mother Earth News Magazine. Before that I had always grown in rows. Double digging was not new at that time, but few gardeners used the technique.
Basically, double digging is loosening and fluffing the soil to a depth of 2 feet. It aerates the soil and allows roots to penetrate deeply into the soil. Water from surrounding soil also settles into the deeply loosened soil, directly below your crops.
I am going to be double digging my new beds and want to be sure everyone knows how it is done.
Here is a great video that explains it very well.
Double digging is more widely used by serious gardeners today. I used it exclusively when I was young. At one point I moved to an area that had hard clay soil. I bought a tiller and got away from digging by hand. At that time in my life I was trying to feed a family of four.
Now days, I have gotten older and don't have so many mouths to feed. I'm back to gardening in Florida's sandy soil. I feel that gardening with hand tools is good exercise for this old body. So I'm back to double digging. I like the results I'm getting from it, too.
Cindy Conner from www.homeplaceearth.wordpress.com states that double digging is only necessary when first digging a bed. This may be because she practices no-till gardening. I tend to agree with her because with all the organic matter being added to the soil from compost and cover crops, earthworms will be active in the beds keeping the soil loose and friable. One can also grow cover crops, such as Daikon Radishes, that aid in keeping the soil loose.
So, I encourage you to double dig at least one bed and compare the growth from that bed with other beds you may have. A good method of comparing is to grow the same crops in two beds. One that has been double dug and one that hasn't. It doesn't have to be a large bed. I'm sure you will see a noticeable difference in the two beds.
Then you will be a double digging convert like me!
This morning I did some weeding and mulched my bed of greens. I planted this bed about a month late this year. I double dug the bed and pulled a couple of inches of soil from the paths to create a raised bed. I usually don't make raised bed.... I think they dry out to fast in our sandy soil. We will see. I added wood chips to the paths at the advice of a friend that is a permaculture designer. He said this will make the paths hold water and the plants in the bed will put roots over below the path to use the reserve of water. There is also a 2 foot high fence around the bed to keep my little dog out. He could probably jump over, but he hasn't figured that out yet.
I'm sure this bed will provide greens all winter then come on strong in the spring and I'll be putting lots of greens in the freezer.
