One Raised Bed at a Time

Raised beds are handy. They’re easier to weed, ergonomically nice for working in, and ideal for some plants that just need their own space. I like to keep things like rhubarb, strawberries and asparagus in their own raised beds because you know exactly where the crowns are when things die back during the winter (in the case of rhubarb and asparagus)  and once they take over the bed (which they inevitably will) there is a barrier to prevent them from taking over everything else. Also, plants with large, spreading foliage like artichokes do well when they aren’t flopping over on their neighbors. Last year, we reclaimed some old lumber on our property and put in four raised beds. We had room to put in another, but ran out of wood. We planted one bed of strawberries, one of asparagus, one of rhubarb, and one of artichokes. All was well with the arrangement, except for the strawberries going wild and crowding themselves out. Since strawberries are one thing I would never mind having more of, we decided to use salvaged cedar lumber from our rotten balcony demolition project to built a larger bed for them. This also freed up the old strawberry bed for basil, which was an added bonus. Some of those woodchips I wrote about the other week that we hauled home from the free city piles in town made a great mulch around the beds, and things started looking pretty sharp in the garden for winter time.

Once the strawberries were divided and transplanted, things were looking sharper still. I think the strawberries will thank us by producing more fruit, and the basil will thank us by being pampered a little more in a raised bed. I like to pinch the flowers off my basil to promote more leaf growth until I harvest it for pesto, so having it growing in a raised bed right by the walkway will keep that ongoing task on our radar.

In other raised bed developments, Corey unearthed an old cast iron bathtub I’d had my eye on for a cut flower bed, and I got to try my hand at stone work to create an herb bed along the South side of our shop. Before, my herbs were getting crowded out by other things in the stone raised bed by the back porch, and not doing so well. Furthermore, the wall of the shop was looking very long and bare. I found some piles of stones under the ivy out back, and figured if the people who built this house could do all that stonework, I could too. I just stacked them carefully, finding the right stones to fit the right spots, and within a couple of days I had a long, narrow bed against the concrete foundation at the bottom of the shop wall. 

Once it was back filled with buckets of soil from our friends’ giant compost pile at their herb farm up the road, the stones seemed pretty well anchored in place and I think as long as no one does anything crazy, like kick it, my rock wall should hold up nicely.

I already got my poor, bedraggled thyme and chamomile moved from the bed where they were being crowded, and a couple of parsley starts from the nursery. There are a few more herbs to add as the growing season gets going, and I think it’s going to transform that plain old wall into something really nice to look at. It also made a great spot to finally get out my rock collection of many, many years and display them along the top of the rock wall. Rocks are a thing in my family. My mom tell stories of my dad bringing all these boxes of rocks with him when they got their first house. I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

Having all these raised beds finished is really adding to my excitement for the gardening season to begin. Our kale, chard and collards are all having a stellar time out there, but I’m itching to get a load of steer manure and get things tilled up. One of my favorite local breweries, Agrarian Ales, has a hop farm and tasting room up by the farm that sells manure by the truck bed, so I think a field trip is in order soon. There has been talk of our recycled window greenhouse project getting started over spring break, so things might really get into full swing this year. Our homestead is certainly shaping up, and it is a more rewarding feeling than words can express watching it unfold. It’s an affirmation of sorts that dreams really can come true, in this case on raised bed at a time.