Organic Green Spot Gardening

Raised Bed Gardening

High-yield container gardening can help reduce the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides for healthier and more naturally grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers. A raised bed can help extend the growing season, make outstanding starter beds for larger scale gardeners, and can also be used in greenhouses.

Advantages of Raised Bed Gardening

1. More production per square foot – The traditional home garden yields about .6 pounds per square foot of vegetables while research at Dawes Arboretum near Newark, OH found an average yield of 1.24 pounds of vegetables per square foot.

2. Improved soil conditions – Tractors, tillers, or human feet compress the soil and make it more difficult for water, air, and roots to move in a flat garden space.. In a raised bed. saturated soils get a dose of lime every spring via percolation. Acidity can be maintained in the 5.8 to 6.8 range that vegetables prefer because percolation is reduced by gravity in a raised bed..

3. Use less fertilizer – Fertilize the growing area and not garden paths.

4. Use less water – The gardener waters plants where water is needed avoiding waste on paths or to the side of the beds.

5. Pest control – The bottom of the bed can be lined with poultry wire or hardware cloth to stop burrowing rodents.

6. Less weeds – Lining the bottom of the bed with plastic, mulch or cloth stops the weeds. It is easy to remove weeds from the loose soil in a raised bed.

7. Extend the growing season – The soil warms faster and cools slower so beds can be planted earlier in the spring and will produce later in the fall.

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This year I tried a new approach to growing our kitchen garden which is located next to our urban house.  Space has been limited and our share of sunlight is cut down to three hours a day because of the large office building which shades the garden in the morning and the house itself which shades the garden in the afternoon.

Six hay bales were brought into the space which receives most of the sun.  They were saturated with water and organic plant food for three weeks and then they were covered with a layer of organic topsoil.

Plants were selected to occupy the garden space.  Tomato plants, pepper plants, cucumber plants, and a number of herbs now occupy the space.  I did not count on the volunteer bean plants that had occupied the original soil last year but they have also sprung up.

Composting of the bales has been fast and next year I will plant on the same spot taking advantage of the new rich soil being made by the hay bales.

My lush kitchen garden resembles more of tropical jungle as rainfall has been plentiful this year. Even the giant sunflowers that were planted between the bales will soon be in bloom providing seeds for neighborhood birds.

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