Gardening Gardening

In Alaska, a Greenhouse for toms, cucs & peppers
Everything else in raise beds in the garden.

 

I just got back into gardening last year, and I'm doing raised beds.
At the end of the season last year, we started putting down layers of old newspaper, then leaves (tons of those in the woods and all over here) a few inches thick.
My wife also put down some old blankets and tarps. I've been dumping ashes in there as well.
I'll attempt to do more in the spring before the weeds get the better of me.
Need to build at least a couple more beds for this spring.
Tomatoes and green beans did pretty well, and my wife did some sort of melons or something that did so-so.
I'm on a 5 year plan to get it the way I want it, but it'll probably take longer. Hope it doesn't.......I'm getting older, fast.

 

We might even start putting down plywood between rows, the pallet company is throwing so much of it out. Heck, contemplating drilling holes in plywood for the veggies to pop out of, but that might need better irrigation to work.

 

I like the idea of the soapy water Ill have to give that a shot this year. I know with the maters last year I could spend 45+ minutes picking the tobacco worms off of them and that was only two plants My mother in law said "just get some spectricide and spray them I dont have any bugs on my tomato plants" I politely replied I plan to eat these tomatoes and would prefer them to be free of toxic chemicals she still doesnt get it. I found it to be rather peaceful drinking beer smoking and squishing giant green worms. As for water I have whatever the county supplies me most of the time its not bad but every so often it smells heavily of chlorine. I would love to get some rain barrels and use them but I just havent gotten around to it. Heck with all the rain weve been having here lately I could probably have filled one of those big 250 gallon barrels at least it seems that way.

 

The more I think about this the more I like the idea of raised beds I could get some fresh topsoil from the store and mix it with my soil fill the boxes and let it rip. Ive been reading up on companion planting and am going to try that to help alleviate bug problems and also the Alan Chadwick gardening technique based on French intensive gardening. Im going to experiment with things and see what happens.

 

We do companion planting as well, but I've not heard of Chadwick.

 

Check this out Jack theres some interesting stuff in here http://www.alan-chadwick.org/html pages/techniques/garden_plants/veg_photos.html also do a search of French intesive gardening. Basically you plant everything so close together so that when the plants reach maturity their leaves are touching and overlapping thus creating a type of mulch in a sense keeping the sun from reaching the areas in between the plants and helping with weed control. I planted my tomatoes within a foot or so of each other last year and there werent to many weeds coming up around them from below but I had nothing else around them and the weeds grew into the tomato area. I also only had two plants this year I plan to have a lot more.

 

We did the same with tomatoes last year too, following the square foot gardening method.

 

I found some organic kind of dust that is better to use than any water base on tomatoes. Tomatoes don't like getting wet. They especially don't like splash up from the ground. That is one reason they do so well in green houses.
We get a lot of cool fog. That is ideal for the spreading of tomato diseases. Ones I grow in the hoop house and solar space don't get infected. I'm not going to concentrate so much on tomatoes. They are either very good, or you loose your whole crop. Best to grow a variety of things and rotate the areas you plant them so to limit disease from carrying over. I have used that white crop cover stuff to keep the soil warm and keep some bugs out. Bugs, like cucumber beetles, not only eat your plants, they spread disease. Well fed plants with good growing space, will grow strong and fast and are more resistant to bug and disease infestations. Don't haul home those seedlings from the box stores. You are dragging home problems (I.e. White fly) that you may be years ridding yourself from.
Here are a few hints. To kill weeds, spay them on a sunny day with white vinegar. To kill slugs and snails, Use 1 part amonia to 10 parts water and spray. Be sure to get under the leaves. Amonia quickly brakes down into nitrogen which most plants tolerate very well. You can sanitize your garden tools with a weak bleach solution. General bug solution Add hot pepper to the soapy water , ivory works best. Non detergent. All these need to be done after every rain.
My son has his garden fenced in, but let's his chicken out to wonder around the out sie of it. He has very few insect problems.

 

I definitely like the tee pees for tomatoes rather than stakes

 

I like that set up also. Just need to make the teepee high enough so you can get into it. Fairly easy to toss a tarp over when frost threatens. Also can put clear plastic over it and use as a hot house until the plants get too big.
That system is also excellent for cucumbers. No access to bamboo poles here. Use PVC or metal conduit. I use slip ties to hold it together. Only drawback is when blight sets in, the whole thing will be dead and black in less than a week. I have grown blight resistant varieties and never had a crop I wanted to brag about. Just love those big boy tomatoes. One thick slice in a sandwich, nothing compares.

 

Another hint. Pellet bags can be used to line the inside of your raised beds. The protect the wood from premature rot and they keep and preservatives in the wood from leaching into the garden soil. I also lay the bags down and cover them with bark mulch, (cedar, natural color) and have that in the garden walk ways. Weeds won't cone up through it and you are not walking in mud.
I try to buy ahead and let bags of peat or mulch, or other potting soil overwinter here for the next year. My thinking is that the severe winter cold we have will kill off any thing not hardy and not belonging here. I also either start my own seedlings or get them from local greenhouses where I know the people and how they grow their plants. We never had so many diseases and bugs when I was younger, but then we didn't bring in so much from other places.

 

I prefer to mulch than weed. Works well if you have access to enough grass throughout the season. If you don't have enough to keep up, it can get ugly pretty quick.

 

I used grass as mulch last year and it was awesome.

 

Since this is a wood forum...does anyone use biochar?

 

Never heard of it.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar who knew? Looks interesting, but don't understand why, if it is so good, isn't it more widely known.