Mounds of Dirt

   On 12 May we hurriedly planted our broccoli in the traditional garden rows we grew up with, not exactly understanding what we've been reading in "THE VEGETABLE GARDENER'S BIBLE"  by Edward C. Smith and on several gardening blogs.  We were in a hurry because our fathers were arriving for our daughter's college graduation on the 13th.  A week later, Thursday evening actually, as we were sitting at the picnic table looking at the garden and discussing our growing plans, we realized just how much space our 8 doz broccoli consumed (our garden is now a multifamily garden).  If we continued to plant in traditional rows, with traditional walkways between the rows, we would run out of space before we planted half of what we wanted.
   I started thinking about last year's garden that did really well even though I had spaced the rows really, really tight.  It worked because we applied a PILE of mushroom soil to transform our woods soil/clay into decent top soil.  Since we took out some trees to double the size of our garden to about 1/4 an acre, we applied 30 yards of mushroom soil again this year.  I deduced that we could probably plant the garden as tightly this year as we did last, with all of that extra nitrogen laying around.  With our new plan formulated, we went in for the evening and I picked up "THE VEGETABLE GARDENER'S BIBLE" to refresh myself about the different requirements for some of the plants I would be buying the next day.  I read again "deep, wide beds", but it still didn't click.
   On Friday morning I tilled some of the garden again, while waiting on the garden center to open.  After picking up all of the plants on my list, and waiting for the heat of the sun to dissipate some, we planted the the Hungarian Wax Hot Peppers.  Melissa had scheduled dinner out with a few of her friends.  After she left I puttered around the garden some more and I put a string up below the hot peppers and stepped back to look at it.  I thought to myself, what a waste of good mushroom soil.  All of that work going into a path!  Then I got an idea.  What if I shoveled the good, nutrient-rich, soil out of the path and put it in the next row to be planted?
   Bright and early Saturday morning I left Melissa weeding her flower beds while I went for a load of mushroom soil (1 yard) for our very front garden and for the top, back edge of the back garden where we missed spreading some earlier, and more importantly, a flat shovel.  As soon as I got back I backed the truck up to the back garden and set to work with my new shovel.
   I found scooping the loosely tilled soil out of the defined path to be relatively easy, except for areas where we stepped on it repeatedly while planting the hot peppers.  I remedied that problem by re-tilling the tramped in areas.  Tilling the pathway helped immensely in reducing the the amount of force required to move the dirt and it wasn't very long before I had a 55 foot long path below the the hot peppers.
   Melissa finished with her flower beds as I was reaching the end of the row and she decided she liked the idea except for one thing, the path wasn't quite wide enough for our pull along wagon so she widened it out by another 1/2 a shovel width.  The BOOK said he (Edward) likes wide rows of 30, 36 and even 48 inches.  Needing a number of rows for different plant types, I opted for 30 inch rows so I measured down 30 inches and began digging the next path.  We went the whole width of the new garden and ended up with some really deep beds.  We leveled off the dirt we had piled on each row as we dug the path above it and ended up with our planting surface, and I was quite pleased.
   Late Saturday afternoon we were finally ready to plant.  We planted all of the raised beds we had created and then stood back to look them over. What we have looks very good and we're quite pleased but something didn't seem quite right.  I studied the book Saturday evening and it hit me like a 2x4 up a'side the head - I made the BASE 30" not the top!  Dirt doesn't stack straight up like blocks very well, it tends to settle outward at the base until there is sufficient width to support the height.
   On Sunday we worked the back half of the garden, putting in wider beds.  My goal was for a 36" wide planting surface on top and I found that a 40" base allowed me to achieve that with the amount of dirt I was digging out of the pathway (4-6") without getting the sides too steep to hold up.  I was VERY please with the results and next year I will redo the front half of the garden to have the wider, 36" RAISED beds.
   That was my final epiphany: RAISED BEDS.  Every time I read about raised garden beds I always pictured a wooden box structure with dirt poured in it.  It never occurred to me that a raised bed could be made without any construction materials!  Mounds of Dirt aka RAISED BEDS!

Of Bears and Bees

Today Sharon and Fitz from Fitzgerald's Family Farm are getting in a new bee hive and placing it on our property.  We have been busily preparing for this day to make the bees as safe as possible.  When you live beyond the edge of a small town, in the woods, bears are a huge consideration.  Especially considering one got a bag of our trash a couple of weeks ago and a few days later he walked across our front garden again.  The evidence is in the footprints.
   We have given a lot of consideration on where to place the hive.  Since we already have a 5' wire-mesh fence around the back garden that includes a small alcove at the back, bottom corner with two young apple trees, we decided to place it there.  In addition to the wire fence, we have a 7' wildlife netting on the outside of it that is "decorated" with fluorescent pink marking tape to make it visible.  The wildlife netting won't do much to stop a bear, except to create a nuisance for him.  Over the weekend we began construction of a third, outer-layer of protection: an electric fence.
   On Saturday I bought a 30 mile solar powered electric fencer and all of the supplies I calculated that I would need.  Why a 30 mile fencer for a small garden?  Power.  Bears have long hair and a tough hide.  I want to make sure that the fence gets their attention and deters them from crossing it.
   While Melissa was picking up some supplies in another store, I read the manual for the fencer and ended up going back to the hardware to get some more fencing supplies.  The second-most important component of an electric fence is proper grounding.  I had bought one 6' galvanized ground rod but the minimum specifications are for three of them, spaced 10' apart with the first one within 20' of the fencer.
   First thing Sunday morning I set the solar fencer out in the yard facing due south to start it's 3 day charge cycle that is required for start-up.  The sunniest location in our back garden is the back, upper corner, so I put the post for the solar fencer there, positioned so one side is facing due south to hang the fencer on.  I spaced the ground rods along the back fence, leading from the post I set for the fencer, down toward the bottom of the garden.  We spent the rest of the day clearing the fence line and driving in corner posts.
   Last night we did our best to finish the fence.  Unfortunately, when I was calculating our material needs I missed counting one corner (my garden isn't a rectangle) and I didn't allow for using twice as many insulators on the hinge side of the gate.  One set is to terminate the run and the second set is to connect the gate strands to it; one set on each side of the post.  Electricity at the gate is fed into the gate strands from the handle connection.  This has the advantage of removing the electricity from the gate strands when its laying on the ground while we're working in the garden.
   Melissa has picked up the additional insulators we need to add rows 3 (mandatory) and 4 (will be nice for deer). Hopefully the rain will hold off this evening until we can get those 2 rows hooked up and the fence tested.