Garden thread

lemurcat2 wrote: »

Bumping so this doesn't get lost.
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My thought right now is to leave everything basically as is but add vegetables (as a replacement to part of the grass in my backyard). Is it better to just add a box and not plant directly in the ground? Or does it depend on the plant (I assume).

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I've done both boxes and beds at different times in life, and I think there are pros and cons.

Any kind of bed system (raised or in-ground), where you plant things close together (like the Square Food Gardening book describes), will have some of the advantages @gearhead426hemi mentioned:

Above ground boxes are definitely the way to go. It gives you more control to add nutrients, control the weeds and the pests as well.

To me, as a Northern gardener**, one potential advantage for boxes vs. in-ground double-dug beds, is soil temperature. If the boxes are narrow enough to reach the center from the edges, there's the potential for the soil to warm up a bit more quickly than the ground, and soil temperature is a key variable for germination for some things (and can affect fungus issues, etc. around that). There are some strategies you can use to warm in-ground beds, but applying those to boxes will work to make them even warmer even earlier, too.

When I've had enough space, I liked the big garden I had with low raised edges (like landscape timbers). It could be roto-tilled in early Spring with a big tiller, then we'd put some scrap-lumber boards on top to create paths and growing areas that were narrow enough to reach from the edge, and intensely plant. The smaller box beds would need turning sometimes, and it was all hand work - too small for even a small tiller to be practical.

With decent garden storage, I could keep cages and even critter wire enclosures (sized to the big-garden bed areas, rolled up in off season) to protect particular plants or groups of plants.

Having some kind of solid edging that extends a few inches below ground level, even if you don't have a true box, is useful if your growing area is on a lawn. Vegetative spread of grass is always a challenge, and a barrier through their root zone really helps.

With truly unlimited space (which you clearly don't have, lemur), my dad had a great system, with wide-apart rows . . . so wide that he could disc between rows on his tractor, and only need to do a bit of hoe-weeding near plants as they got bigger. This was working great for him, well into his active 80s, getting good yields of lots of the usual garden crops. He had enough leaves that compost for the whole thing was pretty realistic, too. I've seen people with medium-large spaces successfully do a similar thing with a roto-tiller, on a smaller scale.

Bed systems (raised, box, in-ground) are the trendiest these days, and probably a good thing for most of us - it's what I've done here in the biggish-lot suburb. (I don't much vegetable-garden anymore. My neighbor has turned my big vegetable bed into some kind of weird giant Rhubarb plantation - long story, but he had permission, and it's OK. I grow some perennial herbs now, not much else edible; plenty of strange ornamentals.)

** For Northern gardeners, if you haven't run across them, I'll mention Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion, ME, as a great resource. They have the best, most honest catalog I've ever seen (they will tell you tradeoffs between varieties, like short-season vs. best flavor, or flavor vs. keeping qualities), where most seed vendors just give you glowing hyperbolic reports for everything. They're very specific about disease resistances. They specialize in seed for the North (shorter season/cooler peak versions of things like peppers, melons, okra, etc.) They have great detail (germination temp charts for seeds for each veggie, for example), and the web site has a bunch of useful calculators and videos in the Grower's Library area. They sell some things in smaller packs, many are organic seeds, some are pelletized, etc. They are not (by far) your cheapest option, but they can be well worth the $$. No, I don't work for them, it's just that I really love them.

It was snowy enough that I postponed to next Saturday. My alley is slippery when there's uncleared snow and I have a Prius which isn't great in snow.

Someone snowblowed the whole sidewalk, which was great, since otherwise I am supposed to shovel. It's been an easy winter so far but I always stress.