Back in July I shared about the raised beds that Dh had made for me. I've been steadily filling them with kitchen scraps and wasted hay and the cleanings from under the rabbits, chickens, and goats. While DH was home last time, he had to rebuild the goat buck shed- again! He went the extra mile and scooped out the composted manure that I normally clean out in the fall. I used that to finish filling one of the raised beds.
Today I went through the box of garden seeds and picked out a few packs of old ones that probably wouldn't get used next spring. They're perfect to use on a fall planting "experiment" in the raised bed! Since I'm not counting on any of them to produce well, if even at all, I can just use them to see how these types of plants will do. It's possible that the bed's dirt was still too hot for planting but if I didn't try it soon the frost would prevent success. Oh well, if nothing comes up, I'm not out anything except the time I took to plant it! I'll let you know how it goes.
Here's what I've learned so far-
1- Even though the added height of the beds will be handy after the plants are in them, it's been pretty difficult to shovel the heavier stuff into them. I don't know if there's a solution to that problem. Luckily, they only will be filled once.
2- We put the drainage holes in the bottom before we started filling in the dirt. Even though we had some rain the last two days, the dirt and other material was still desert dry. I spent a lot of time with the hose this morning trying to wet it down while the water ran out the drainage holes like a sieve. We will probably have to find a way to "shrink" our drainage some how.
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Lettuce, Radish, Carrots, and Beans |