(no subject)

[rafiwinters]

Last year I had ambitious plans for our strip of raised garden bed. I ran into several obstacles: inexperience, drought, fibromyalgia flares, and lack of planning. Also the ambition--and the expletive deleted morning glories/bindweed. Even the herbs that I brought inside for the winter died, partly because I didn't water them enough but partly, well, I dunno why. I kind of gave up and thought, "Well, that's never going to work."

However, I want to make another try at it. And I know some things now that I didn't know last spring. So here are my current thoughts.

J is willing to do the heavy work like chopping up heavy soil and hefting bags of new soil around. That kind of work is what brought on fibro flares.

Research some methods of keeping down the horribly invasive bindweed. YES, THEY'RE PRETTY, BUT THEY STRANGLED MY GARDEN.

Make lists of everything that catches my eye to plant--then plan. It was all a bit random last year. I mean, tomatoes, marigolds, seven kinds of herbs, Asiatic lilies (like those pictured above) that were in the garden bed already... and some other things I don't even remember. Too much.

Here's what I'm currently thinking about planting this spring:

--tomatoes

--basil (yummy with tomatoes; plus a website tells me that planting basil near the tomatoes improved the flavor of the tomatoes!)

--lavender

--a bunch of different things like stonecrop and hens-and-chicks and creeping thyme--these might keep down weeds (my thinking), and would certainly serve to cover up the ugly cement blocks that are the walls of the raised bed

--some spring-planting bulbs, for pretty flowers--maybe begonias and freesias

And next fall:

--fall-planting bulbs such as crocuses and snowdrops, to bloom next year in spring.

The bed is mostly in full sun during the summer; there's one tree (not sure what kind) of moderate height that casts some shade on the bed at times.

I already have what should be all the tools I need. I think better preparation of the bed would help, though I worry that adding any more soil or any fertilizer at all would just help the **#)$(&*ing bindweed. I also learned that the bindweed LIKES having its runners chopped in half; it just makes more. So there will have to be some way to deal with that.

In case you're wondering, the bed is four feet deep (back to front, I mean) and 24 feet long. It is easier to access along the long wall, so maybe we plant in a strip along there. But maybe plan to put snowdrops and crocuses at the foot of the tree. I so like that effect in spring.

Comments

[ewt]

My instinct would be to break it into manageable sections.

If J is willing to do heavy work, the most important thing is probably to get them to dig up all the bindweed roots, or as many as can be found. They are quite light in colour and easy to see, but they are brittle and tend to snap, so they're a pain to deal with. After a section is de-bindweeded, cover it with a double layer of cardboard or several layers of wet newspaper (I find spreading it out and then wetting it works best -- but you do want it a good ten or twenty individual sheets of paper thick), and put new soil on top: there's no need to dig it in. This blocks light from reaching any weeds, and you can plant straight into the soil on top. If any bindweed has been missed, well, you will know about it in May or June: but it isn't inexhaustible, it needs sunlight to feed the roots to survive, and if you do pull up every single piece, you'll eventually be rid of it. It's almost impossible to dig out every piece of bindweed, but if you get most of it, then you should only get the odd piece that makes it to the surface, and these are pretty easy to pull up.

You can also skip the digging and go straight to cardboard/newspaper, but you'll have a lot more work to do later in keeping on top of the bindweed in that case. Personally, I would put perennials like lavender in a section that has had all the bindweed roots dug out.

I think you have the right idea with getting some groundcover plants, too. Depending on your local climate, if you have a section you're planning on using for something like tomatoes, you can plant a temporary green manure in the very early spring, then chop it down and cover it about a week before you put the tomato seedlings out. This also helps keep weeds down, and improves soil structure and nutrient levels.

How to deal with drought depends on your local climate and also on what resources you have available. I'm putting a watering system in my back garden this year for my beans (I grow a lot of beans in my back garden); it isn't anything fancy, but I can turn it on, and it will water my beans for me while I do other garden maintenance. Even if I also need to do a bit of manual watering now and then, I expect it to save me a lot of time and effort, and on bad joint pain days I can just set up the watering, eat my breakfast, turn it off again and go back to bed. If I had an outside tap (rather than having to run the hose in through my kitchen window to the kitchen tap!) then I could get a timer and not have to worry about it at all. For a long bed I think a few lengths of soaker hose might be the easiest way to do something similar, but it might require a bit of planning in terms of which plants need more water than others.

[rafiwinters]

Thank you! Very helpful! Especially re: dealing with the bindweed. I think I will divide the bed into three sections, one to cover the bindweed, one for perennials and the part that's easiest to access for annuals.

I'm looking into garden planning apps. Or might just draw stuff on graph paper... ;)

[ewt]

I don't even get as far as graph paper, but I have a pretty good feel for how much space plants take up. I also a) assume some plants will be lost to pests etc and so always sow more than I need if I'm starting seeds indoors and b) never sow all my seed at once, in case of freak weather. The worst-case scenario here is that I have way more plants than I have space for, and have to leave some on the front pavement with a "free plants" sign. Not a bad way to get to know neighbours.

Square Foot Gardening might be of interest to you -- the book of the same name is slightly tedious in some ways (I don't recommend removing the soil that's already in your bed and creating his soil mix, for example), but gives a pretty good idea of what the spacing should be like if you don't need to leave rows in between to walk on.

[rafiwinters]

I've heard about square foot gardening. I think though that we will only use about a third of the garden and divide that into two or three different areas. And only some are veggies, the others are likely going to be ground cover and/or things to cover the (ugly!) cement blocks that make up the retaining wall of the raised bed.

I will have to learn what plants need how much space, but that's presumably available online.