new garden.. need layout ideas

[nightshade]

okay so as most of you guys know we are moving in the spring/ summer. Completely starting over, building a whole new farm. Well I am dreaming of the garden this week. Probably has something to do with the extra 6 inches or so of snow we just got last night into today. I am thinking I would like raised beds in a fenced in area of 40x60 or so. I want to give enough space so I can move my pegodia a built from scrap with us and put our hot tubs ( two old claw foots lol )under it in the one corner of the garden for like a lounging area. As well as some flowers in that area. I love to spend time in the garden even if it is just to have a cup of coffee in the morning, so this area would be really important to me.

I also saw somewhere in a magazine where they had built a small green house right into the garden fence and used it as a gate area. I thought this would be great to, I am currently trying to get up the never to ask my husbands Grand Mother if I can buy pops old 10x10 green house that sits out back in the weeds. He passed away this fall and somehow it still does not seem right to ask for it.

I know I want to run raspberries on the north side of the fence and possibly some grapes so they do not shade everything else.

I guess what I am having problems with is the idea of the raised beds. I would really like to go that route because they seem easier to tend and care for. But in the same token I have no idea really how big to make them or deep to support veggies instead of flowers.

What would be best to build them from stone, block, or wood? I can get wood scraps for free from a local mobile home builder, I used the 12x2's and 10x2's last year to build some beds out of for strawberries and they seemed to work well any draw backs besides them rooting over time?

Any ideas or thoughts for a lay out for them would be great. Pics would be wonderful if you have any of your gardens.

 

[keljonma]

I think it takes a year of living with it, to become familiar with a new piece of property.

For the garden, I think I would mark it out with inexpensive fencing or posts and string at first. Something easy to move around and get comfortable with before you put down a permanent boundary. That way, if you decide it needs to be moved 20 feet, you're not wishing you were so gung-ho at first... ask me how I know this..

 

[patandchickens]

okay so as most of you guys know we are moving in the spring/ summer.

a) congratulations and have fun! and b) what keljonma said -- it is quite often a significant mistake to put in anything permanent or immovable til you have lived at a new property for 1 full year. I assume this is why our horse barn was built in what turns out to be nearly the lowest part of the apparently-flat property, lol.

I guess what I am having problems with is the idea of the raised beds. I would really like to go that route because they seem easier to tend and care for. But in the same token I have no idea really how big to make them or deep to support veggies instead of flowers.

You wanna make sure you have a really adequate water supply if you're going to do raised beds. They are thirstier than regular garden beds. Even if you are planning on supplementing with rainwater barrels, remember that the time when the garden needs water most is, sort of by definition, the time when you are not GETTING water into your rain barrels...

Depth is not an issue, really. Lots of vegetables don't use much more than the top 6-8" of soil anyhow, and the ones that go deeper can just grow into the native soil underneath the raised beds, which you have hopefully improved or at least loosened. The main virtue of raised beds is just that they warm up faster in the spring, and offer a way of concentrating all your soil improvement (and protection!) efforts into a limited area rather than 'wasting' effort on improving area that ends up as pathways between rows anyhow. So I would not stress on trying to make 'em real deep.

What would be best to build them from stone, block, or wood? I can get wood scraps for free from a local mobile home builder, I used the 12x2's and 10x2's last year to build some beds out of for strawberries and they seemed to work well any draw backs besides them rooting over time?

There's the whole issue of how smart it is to use pressure-treated wood to grow food in (I am not taking sides, although I avoid it myself on the general grounds of erring on the side of caution) and if it's not pressure-treated it will rot out fairly fast.

You don't really NEED retaining sides, you know. And in some ways it's easier not to have them. Why not start out the first year without them, one less thing to do , then see how it goes. Y0u can always install them later.

All you really need to do is mound the earth up. Let it slope away at the edges. You can tidy them back up every few weeks or months if you are really neurotic about it or get FIERCE rainstorms, but really once the plants get growing well the bed will stay in shape pretty decently just from the cover of the leaves and the knitting-together of the roots.

Just try to avoid doing anything too permanent for a year or two. It's really hard to say what's going to turn out to be a longterm skating rink in winter, or collect floodwater in your biggest summer storms, or this or that or the other thing. Until you've been there a while. Same goes for planting trees

have fun! ,

Pat

 

[me&thegals]

You might want to pop over onto TEG (The Easy Gardener), a sister website to this one. See the bottom of this page for a quick link. This topic has been discussed over there, too, and might provide you with even more responses.

 

[nightshade]

thanks guys! I am thinking no permanent beds for the first year or two sounds like a good idea. After all there is going to be so very much to do anyway the first year. I will have to go look at the easy gardener and see what they are saying.

 

[lupinfarm]

Well...


We have raised beds, and I suppose it really only matters how long you want them to be. Our main garden is probably 30ft long by 15ft wide, we have rasp, blue, and blackberries in two complete rows at the bottom with a 1.5ft gap between them for picking. After that we have 6 rows 15ft rows of beans, and peas, they're old farm fencing strung between t-posts with about 1.5ft between each one. The remaining space is raised beds with 1.5ft of space between them.

What I did with ours was dig down 6 inches in my rows, and then placed some chicken wire in the bottom, I covered that over 4 inches with some nice black earth and compost, then put in 2x6 CEDAR frames, and filled them to the top with more soil and compost.

Theres a guy on the main road who has like a junk shop and sells VERY high quality lily's and ornamentals and his raised beds are 2x8 cedar, but he doesn't dig down into the earth.

Ours are temporary beds, obviously. We also have a strip away from that part of the garden for Pumpkins, Zucchini, Cucumber, and Watermelon because they're larger plants.

I wouldn't build out of stone only because you won't have the flexibility you'll want from year to year. We're only going to have one garden out of stone, and that'll be our front yard for our own personal growing. We're not going with boxwood for our knot garden, we're using the limestone we have from our "quarry," which really means the old owners threw all the field limestone into the spaces between the fencelines LOL, but my auntie calls it a quarry... says it makes it sound much more refined ahaha.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Yes, I agree with Pat. Just mounding the soil is sufficient and it gives you the flexibility of moving it around should you decide you need to.

Another option is to grow your veggies in pots the first year, which you could move around, if need be.

 

[SKR8PN]

Our garden is about 70-80ft square,and in addition to that, I have built the wife 9 raised beds. I used 8ft lumber and made each one 8 ft x 4 ft, three courses high. That makes them about 30 inches tall with no waste, just right for reaching to the other side and you don't have to bend over to far to tend them. Now, I did use PT lumber because it is cheap and the correct width for what I wanted to do. I am not to concerned about it leaching anything into the soil,because it will leach DOWN and not INTO the soil that the veggies and stuff are growing in. PLUS I also build them, fill them 3/4 up with "junk soil"(clay) and top them off with compost and topsoil. Then I let them set a year before we plant in them. If the wife had her way, the entire garden would be raised beds!!

 

[nightshade]

We're not going with boxwood for our knot garden, we're using the limestone we have from our "quarry," which really means the old owners threw all the field limestone into the spaces between the fencelines LOL, but my auntie calls it a quarry... says it makes it sound much more refined ahaha.

lol I know what you mean right now all of my flower beds are in 2 foot high stone walls that I built from field stone that the farmer piled in the woods when the plow ever spring. It is free but alot of labor

I know that I am going to end up with raised beds eventually but I guess soon is a little much to hope for. I like hearing that they are as easy to tend from other people as I think that they are or would be. I have pretty bad RA in my legs already and it is creeping everywhere else no too. So I have to plan ahead for when it gets worse as my Dr. says. That is just the reality and being smart about it. :/

I was planning on filling the bottom half of them with horse poo and topsoil from clearing the lot and then adding good compost and soil mix to the top half. Is this what most fokes do for their beds? I mean I can't believe that I have to fill the entire depth with the black rich stuff, unless they are on shallow side.

 

[lupinfarm]

We're not going with boxwood for our knot garden, we're using the limestone we have from our "quarry," which really means the old owners threw all the field limestone into the spaces between the fencelines LOL, but my auntie calls it a quarry... says it makes it sound much more refined ahaha.

lol I know what you mean right now all of my flower beds are in 2 foot high stone walls that I built from field stone that the farmer piled in the woods when the plow ever spring. It is free but alot of labor

I know that I am going to end up with raised beds eventually but I guess soon is a little much to hope for. I like hearing that they are as easy to tend from other people as I think that they are or would be. I have pretty bad RA in my legs already and it is creeping everywhere else no too. So I have to plan ahead for when it gets worse as my Dr. says. That is just the reality and being smart about it. :/

I was planning on filling the bottom half of them with horse poo and topsoil from clearing the lot and then adding good compost and soil mix to the top half. Is this what most fokes do for their beds? I mean I can't believe that I have to fill the entire depth with the black rich stuff, unless they are on shallow side.

haha yeah, I fill up the bottom with a mix of native soil and compost... ranging anywhere from chicken and garden clippings to horse to whatever was in the aisles of the barn before we cleaned it LOL to horse. Then some egg shells, then black earth because it looks nice lol and on top of that landscape fabric and mulch.

my mum has degenerative disc disorder so she doesn't garden as much as she used to, meaning its allll me.

raised beds are much easier to tend, our ones in the front are going to be taller than our usual ones because i want them to make a statement, some of this field limestone is BEAUTIFUL and we found some pretty big slabs we'll use for steps down to the driveway. forget the landscaping store, its allll about what we have. we're using the flatter stones to make crazy pavers, something like flagstone with thyme between them as walkways. can't wait!