Establishing Raised Bed CHEAPLY Using Stuff Destined for Local Landfill

[Nauvoo2002]

Let me introduce myself. I'm a Tennessee Master Gardener, living in rural Tennessee. My specialty is growing organic vegetables and fruits. I've been doing it for over 10 years now. I teach organic gardening as well.

If you are interested in learning how to grow the $100 tomato, you have to look to somebody else to teach you that. I'm about as cheap as they come. I don't have a clue how to grow the $100 tomato, but I can help you to learn how to grow the one that cost just a penny or two.

The secret to a successful organic garden is the soil. More specifically, it is the QUALITY of your growing soil.

Tennessee soil is heavy clay soil. From what I understand, Utah soil is a sandy soil. Neither is optimal soil for growing food.

But that is no problem whatsoever. The best way for a home gardener to grow food is using the raised garden bed -- no matter whether they live in the clay soiled hills of western and middle Tennessee, the desert sands of Utah, or even the rocky soils of eastern Tennessee.

Raised garden beds are different than "traditional" gardens in that you build your garden bed -- and grow your food -- above the ground. Many people set up their raised beds without any use of a tiller at all. None whatsoever. Other people will till the ground only when they are setting the bed for the first time, in their first year of gardening that particular bed.

But even if you are one who chooses to begin a new bed by tilling the ground that will be underneath the growing bed, you will only be doing it in order to break up the sod or other vegetation that used to be where you want your new garden bed to go. You will not be planing in the soil that you just tilled. In this way, the role of the tiller -- if it is used at all in the raised bed garden -- is different from the way most people use tillers to garden.

Personally, when I am setting up a new bed, I do till the ground where the bed is going to go. But this is because my beds are always 50 feet long and anywhere from 3 1/2 to 5 feet wide. (I live on a 10 acre mini-farm). The total amount of cultivated raised bed growing area that I had under cultivation last year was about 2000 sq feet -- and that is just growing soil. That does NOT include the grass walkways that are between each growing bed.

For smaller areas -- especially if you do not already own a tiller -- you can get away with setting up your garden bed without ever tilling at all.

This post is getting too long, so I'll break up what I have to say into several different posts to make it more readable.

In the next post, I'll explain how you can set up that bed without ever cranking up a tiller, or doing any double digging.

Then I'll go on to suggest to you several different ways you can ready your raised bed for planting.

[Nauvoo2002]

Because the soil bed that the food is to be grown in will be built above the ground, tilling the original soil underneath the bed is actually optional.

In fact, if your soil is really rocky -- like some of the soils I am familiar with in Eastern Tennessee or northwestern Arkansas -- tilling is not even an option.

What IS necessary is that you kill the grass, weeds and other vegetation that is underneath the place you will build your raised bed.

For the person who does not have a tiller available, I usually recommend the following:

1, Take a lawn mower and cut the patch where you will be setting up your raised bed. Cut it as low as the lawn mower will allow.

2, Get a weed eater and destroy all plant life above the ground. Or take a hoe and use it to destroy the grass currently in the place of the future garden. Get that ground so that there is no trace of plant life above the ground.

Unfortunately, that only takes care of the existing grass above the ground. The roots are still intact, and they WILL grow back if you do not do something to block them. So,

3, Get large pieces of heavy, corregated cardboard -- preferably without colored ink printed on it. Put the cardboard down over the area whose vegetation you have just beaten down. You can use heavy layers of wetted down newspaper (black and white is best), but it should be at least eight sheets thick. More thickness is better. Make sure that not a single inch of your future garden bed is left uncovered by the cardboard or heavy layers of wetted down newspaper.

In the short run, the cardboard or wetted down newspaper will help to keep the former grass or vegetation from growing up through your soil and into your future garden bed. Eventually the cardboard or newspaper will turn to compost, and when it does, your food crop roots will reach through it and then begin to grow into the ground below, instead of the grass growing up into the bed.

Most of the time, anyway. If you have dandelions or burmuda grass in the area where your future garden is going to grow, you might find you HAVE NO CHOICE but to either to destroy that material with roundup before you begin this process, or rototill it to smitherines. I do NOT recommend using roundup or another herbicide to destroy the ground underneath your future food bed except as a last resort. But these two weeds have been known to penetrate through even the thickest layers of cardboard or newspaper. Most other vegetation will not penetrate the cardboard or newspaper, at least not after you build the bed on top of it.

4, Once you have knocked down the grass to butchered stubble, the next step is to fill the area with at least 9 to 12 inches of high quality garden soil or compost. There are two ways of doing this:

4.a The BEST WAY is to begin your garden bed in the autumn (unless you live in zones 9 or 10, where you can actually grow a "summer" food garden in the winter). Using this method, you collect up your grass clippings after cutting your lawn (and get your neighbors as well, PROVIDED THEY DO NOT USE CHEMICALS ON THEIR LAWN). Wait till the trees drop their leaves, then mix the fresh grass clippings with the autumn leaves. BTW, you will want to use the lawn mower to chop up the leaves some before you mix them into the grass clippings. Then mix some small, broken branches or twigs into this.

You will need LOTS and LOTs of grass clippings, chopped autumn leaves, and broken twigs. Enough to make a pile three feet high and covering the entire area where you plan on your garden bed being located next spring.

That will seem like way too much material, and your spouse and kids will probably tease you about how you are depriving the local landfill. But -- believe me -- this is NOT too much material.

What you will be doing is something that experienced gardeners call "sheet composting," or "composting on site."

Grass clippings and chopped autumn leaves are the basis for building compost -- the best growing medium on this planet. But to make their magical transformation from grass and leaves to earthy compost, they must have three other things: adequate moisture, air, and time. This is why this method will only work if you begin it about five to six months before you plan on planting the new garden bed.

My neighbors (in a good natured way) tease me because I go out to water the new beds once a week during the winter after I pile all this organic material on them if it has not rained or snowed that week. But to keep the material actively turning into compost over the winter, the pile of material must be kept about as wet as a wet sponge. It must also have air in it, which is why I incorporate small twigs or branches into the pile of organic material. The branches or twigs keep the grass/leaf mix from matting up. If the material were to matt up, it would block both air and water from penetrating the pile -- and that is the last thing I want to have happen.

Nonetheless, I usually use a spading fork or hoe to kind of mix the material up some before I water the pile, and this helps to add some air into the pile of composting material.

I do this all winter here in Tennessee, and the result is that by spring planting time, the 3 foot high mound of material has shrunken down to about 9 to 12 inches of fresh, earthy compost. Sometimes it is not completely turned to soil yet, but it is definitely getting there and in another month or so -- it will be.

Nonetheless, if I need to plant before the material has completely composted, I just dig planting holes a little larger than normal in the still composting material, then put a little extra organic fertilizer into the planting hole before I put my little seedling in. (I'll discuss what organic fertilizers do best in this process in another post on this thread).

This is the method I use to establish new garden beds, and it works very well. I win alot of county fair prices for produce that is grown in beds established this way.


The beauty of beginning the new bed in the autumn rather than waiting for spring time is that you can build your garden bed's soil out of material that is normally sent to the local landfill. In addition to using grass clippings, autumn leaves and small twigs, you can also use: vegetable scraps from the kitchen (but NO meats or dairy products, other than dry, crushed egg shells), disease free vegetation left over from last year's garden, used coffee grounds from area restaurants, shredded newspaper (no colored inks), ground up beans or wheat berries that you have had hanging around in your food storage for the last 30 years, and even manure from a local farmer's chickens, cows, goats, sheep or rabbits.

I recommend that you NOT use horse manure -- even though until the last few years it was a great thing to include -- because about three years ago, the USDA approved a new herbicide called Forefront for use in hay fields that is damaging some vegetable crops even a year or more after the horse ate the hay treated with the new herbicide. This is a newly emerging problem that even your local extension office may not be aware of yet.


4.b The ideal way to set up your new garden bed is by sheet composting over the winter. But it is March right now, and you might be wanting to set up a bed right now. The method I just described won't work if you start this late.

After beating back the surface grass and covering it with cardboard (or tilling it to smiterines), the next step for setting up a garden bed in the spring time is to go to a nursery and buy garden soil by the "scoopful," or buy 40 pound bags of a product called "organic humus" or "composted manure." I do not care for the product that they call "topsoil," because in my area at least, it's just the same clay that I already have on my property. I might as well just plant in my own tilled soil as to plant in the stuff they call "topsoil" around here. Maybe it is different in your area.

This stuff will NOT be high enough quality to raise the high quality crops you want to grow in it, unless you improve on it.

So what I do is that I spread a 9 to 12 inch high layer of this stuff on top of my cardboard or newly tilled up area. Then I get a complete, ORGANIC fertilizer (I use Garden Tone, manufactured by espoma. Gardens Alive on the net has some really good stuff, and you may have some really good stuff sold in your local area. But make sure it is an ORGANIC fertilizer, and NOT either Miracle Grow, Osmakote, or some stuff that is known by three numbers.)

I mix very liberal amounts of this fertilizer into the top four inches of that newly laid soil.

In addition, I hit every restaurant I can find and ask them to save their used coffee grounds for me. Starbucks is great -- you don't have to ask them ahead of time, they just routinely save their used grounds for gardeners to take free of charge, and you do NOT have to buy anything from them ever. All the Starbucks coffee houses in my area KNOW I am a non-coffee drinker, and yet they cheerfully give me their used grounds any time I walk in to ask for them.

Other things you can mix into that newly purchased garden soil include: ground up beans or wheat berries if you need to clear out some stuff that's been sitting around in your food storage forever, powdered milk that has been in your food storage too long, shredded or chopped up kitchen vegetable scraps, whole wheat flour that has gotten a bit old on you (but NO white flour!), corn meal, blood meal, bone meal, alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal or soybean meal.

The advantage to setting up a garden this way is that you should be able to plant in it the same day that you set the garden up, unlike method 4.a, which requires that you begin your garden several months before planting season.

The disadvantage is that you have to spend a pretty good sum of money to buy that soil and the fertilizer to put in the soil. But the good thing is that if you maintain your garden bed the way I recommend in the post that follows, at least it is the last time you will have to put alot of money into your garden.

(Didn't I tell you -- I'm CHEAP!) ):

[Nauvoo2002]

I'll discuss how to maintain that garden bed so that you eventually have the finest growing soil that it is possible to have -- and to do it CHEAPLY -- in the next post.

But let me divert for just a moment to discuss a point that always comes up about now when I am teaching this material to a live audience.

Inevitably, somebody asks me what kind of walls do I build around my garden beds.

Well, the answer is -- I DO NOT BUILD ANY WALL AT ALL AROUND MY RAISED GARDEN BEDS!

You CAN build walls around them, if you choose. Walled raised beds make for neater, prettier garden beds. If you are concerned about a beautiful back yard or garden and the expense doesn't bother you, then by all means, build walls and then fill those walls in to make your raised beds.

Some materials that work good for building raised beds include: plastic lumber, cedar or redwood (but NOT treated lumber) landscaping timbers, brick, cement blocks, or stone.

I would not use treated lumber for the walls of any raised beds that I planned on eating out of, since treated lumber is treated with arsenic and other chemicals that I would rather my grandchildren did not partake of.

I would not use untreated lumber because it will rot away in just a few years, and will have to be rebuilt anyway.


But as I said before, I don't even wall in my raised beds. It really is not necessary, and believe it or not, walling them in doesn't help with weed control anyway. This is because the wind will blow weed seeds into the garden bed anyway. The lone exception to this maybe to keep bermuda grass from crawling in. A thick and high enough wall will help keep creeping bermuda out.


But I find that proper mulching keeps my weeds in check anyway (I'll discuss mulching in the next post below). So the walls neither help nor hurt, IMHO.

[Nauvoo2002]

Mulching and Fertilizing Next Year's Garden: They are One and The Same!


Let's review for just a moment what the role of mulching in a home vegetable or small fruit garden:

1, Mulch helps to keep weeds out of the garden. When weeds sprout up in the food garden, they steal valuable nutrient from the plants we are trying to raise. Plus, weeds are an eyesore -- who wants to look at a garden bed that's got a bunch of wild weeds growing in it?

2, Mulch helps to regulate the moisture levels under the soil. During times of little rainfall, mulch helps to keep the soil beneath moister, longer. During times of too much rain, mulch helps to slow the amount of downpour that drenches our root zone by absorbing some of that moisture before it penetrates the root zone, thus helping to keep the root zone from getting drenched. During times of sudden, quick downpour, mulch tends to slow the rate by which the water drips down into the root zone, so it does not all pour down into the growing soil at one time.

3, Mulch helps keep the surface soil from eroding. This is not a problem with walled garden beds, but it can be with raised garden beds that are not walled.

4, A good thick organic mulch in the garden bed makes the bed look nicer -- even when the bed is not walled.


All effective mulches will do these things.

But the organic mulch that I recommend for you will do much more than just the things listed abovel

IN ADDITION to all 4 things listed above, the mulch I recommend will do the following:

5, It will feed the earthworms and the beneficial microorganisms that God put in the soil to feed our plants. I will not have time to write it up tonight, but in a future night, I will tell you about the wonderful world of microbiotic life that lives in healthy garden soil, and how those microorganisms feed your plants and provide for a SUPERIOR crop. For right now, if you will just trust me for a day or two, let me just say that you WANT to feed the earthworms and beneficial microorganisms in your soil. You NEED to feed them, IF you want the best tasting and highest quality food coming out of that garden.

6, The mulch that I recommend will serve as a mulch during this growing season -- but eventually it will turn to rich, nutrient filled compost. Right there on the surface of your garden bed.

This year's mulch will be next year's planting soil (compost).


And if you think I'm beginning to sound like a snake-oil saleswoman or an Infomercial hawker, let me just let you know -- the mulch that I recommend -- the mulch that I use on MY garden -- is FREE!

Which brings me to the 7'th function of the mulch I recommend:

7, It helps divert stuff out of the local landfill.


So, what is this miracle mulch?

It is a homemade mix that consists of: 1/3 chopped up autumn leaves (a lawn mower can chop leaves quite nicely), 1/3 fresh (chemical free) grass clippings, and 1/3 broken twigs or small branches.


In my community, people bag their grass and leaves and put them out for the garbagemen.

Stop and talk with a few of your neighbors. Find out who does and does not use chemicals on their lawn, and ask those who do not if you can have their bagged grass clippings. I have never had anybody who refused to let me come get their bags of clippings after they had cut their grass. In fact, people usually thank me because they would rather see the grass be used to raise food than go to the landfill.

Same thing with bagged leaves, except that chemical use is not as critical there. Just make sure you NEVER use sycamore leaves, black walnut tree leaves, or anything that grew around poison ivy or poison oak. Sycamore and black walnut leaves both have hormones in the leaves that can suppress the growth of other plants. (This is why you usually see barren spots under these trees).

Needless to say, I always share a basket of fresh tomatoes during harvest season with those who share their bagged grass or leaves with me.

[Nauvoo2002]

Did I mention that once you set up a raised garden bed, that you will not have to till it ever again?


Tilling is a very destructive process. But if you garden as I recommend, you will NOT have to till your soil ever again (at least, not after you set the bed up initially).


Some harmful things that tilling does to our garden bed soil:

1, It destroys the soil structure -- even when the soil has the perfect amount of moisture in it for tilling. Those of us who live in areas with heavy clay soils know that if you till the soil when it is too wet, that you will create gummy clods that will dry as hard as rock. But if it is too dry, that the soil will be pulverized into a dust as fine as baby powder. But what we sometimes do not realize is that even if the soil had the perfect moisture level to till, that it is still damaging the soil structure. It is just not as obvious.

2, Tilling the soil each year requires that we wait until the soil is the perfect moisture level in order to minimize the damage we will do -- which means that if it has been a rainy spring, our garden will be late getting planted. Many diseases and insect infestations can be prevented without chemicals if you just get the crop in at the proper time, and a rainy spring can keep that from happening. That might not be a problem to you folks in Utah or California, but that can be a big problem to folks here in the southeast part of the US.

3, Tilling brings up weed seeds that are buried well beneath the soil's surface, and gives them a chance to germinate in our bed.

4, Tilling the soil is a very violent process that literally chops apart the earthworms that live in our garden. It also seriously disrupts the sub-surface environment of the beneficial micro-organisms that live in our soil and feed our plant roots. Next to using chemicals on our garden, this is the most destructive thing we can do to the soil that we are about to place our little seeds or plant seedlings into.


Many people think that the only way you can have soil that is pliable and easy to plant is to till each year. Especially over here in the southeast, where the soils are heavy clay.

But this is just not so!


Remember that mulch that I mentioned in the post above?

The mulch mixture is 1/3 fresh grass clippings, 1/3 chopped autumn leaves and 1/3 twigs or small, broken branches.

The beauty of that mulch is that it turns into compost right there in your garden at the very same time that you are growing this year's food crop.


In one way, this causes you some extra work.

You see, if you use a plain wood chip mulch, or plastic mulch or one made of recycled tires or something -- these mulches only have to be applied once in a growing season. They will last all year.

But the one (and only) inconvenience of the mulch I recommend is that you will probably have to re-apply it at least once (and maybe twice) during the growing season.


You see, for any mulch (other than sheets of plastic) to be effective as a mulch, the mulch must be applied between 4 to 6 inches thick above the bare soil. 4 inches is best.


Because the mulch I recommend composts right there on the spot, it thins over the growing year, and you have to add more as the growing season progresses, or else it will get too thin and will not block weeds very well.


But -- although that might seem like a negative at first -- in fact, it is not.


You see, the reason that the mulch is thinning is that it is turning into compost right there on your garden. This means that there is additional fertilizer that frees up for your plants as the growing season progresses.

This also means that next year's growing soil is being created during this year's growing season, right there in the middle of your garden bed.


This will save you the trouble and expense of fertilizing in future years.


The fact of the matter is that I only fertilize my soil at the beginning of the first two years I plant in it. By the third year, I do not have to fertilize the soil any more because I am constantly creating compost right there in the garden bed. (I do use an organic, foliar spray -- either a homemade mixture or else compost tea. More about that in another post at a later time.)

The bottom line is that the LAST THING that I would want to do is to till this rich top layer of fresh organic compost that last year's mulch has turned into, deep into the six to eight inches of soil that the tiller would mix it into. And let's face it - fresh compost doesn't need tilling to be the right texture to grow in, now does it?


Furthermore, by NOT tilling that fresh compost into the soil, all rainwater must drip through the nutrient filled organic compost before it reaches my plants' soil roots. That's more nutrition for the plants that my grandchildren will eat at a later time.


And besides, think of it this way:

God gave us the earthworms to till our soil. Not Troybilt tillers.

[Nauvoo2002]

I said in the beginning of this thread that I would be offering advice on how to grow a garden that would be the same for those of us growing in the heavy clay soils of Tennessee, in the rocky soils of western Arkansas, or the sandy soils of Utah.


Now you understand why.


Raised beds allow you to bypass the problems of your native soil -- whatever those problems might be -- and build the ideal garden with the best garden soil possible.


They take more work to build at first, but make up for that in the fact that they are CHEAPER and EASIER to maintain than "traditional" gardens, no matter what part of the country you live in.


For reasons that I have not yet explained -- but I will, in future posts -- they allow you to grow more food per square foot of cultivated space, and if maintained properly -- the crops actually will be more nutrient dense than crops grown in "traditional" gardens.

And believe it or not, there is a simple instrument called a refractometer that you yourself can use to actually measure the nutrient density of the food that you grow. You can compare the food grown by this method of growing food with the food you purchase in the store (or the food grown in a chemical fed garden), and see for yourself whether there is a significant increase in nutrient density growing food the way I am suggesting. Refractometers are routinely used in the wine making and beer making industries, but they can be used by the home gardener to test the level of nutrient density in vegetables and small fruits grown at home or bought in the supermarket as well.

[Nauvoo2002]

IF you set up a raised bed as described above, and if you "maintain it properly," then you will never have to till that ground again. And furthermore, beginning the third year, you will not even have to fertilize the soil anymore (although I still do recommend a quick foliar spray for most crops - but that is always going to be the case, no matter how great the soil).

But what, exactly, does it take to maintain the garden bed properly?


Proper maintenance of a good, healthy planting bed requires the following:

1, Regular addition of disease and chemical free organic materials, in order to feed the earthworms and the beneficial soil microorganisms that then turn around and feed our plants. The easiest way I have found to do this -- and the cheapest -- is to use the mulch I described above (1/3 fresh grass clippings, 1/3 chopped autumn leaves and 1/3 small broken branches or twigs) in the manner I described above. I prefer this arrangement because I can both mulch this year's crop AND fertilize next year's crop at the same time and with the same material. How much simpler can gardening get than that?

2, Do NOT walk on your growing beds. Walking on the growing soil compacts the soil, crushing the air pockets out that the soil microorganisms need to breathe, and reduces the amount of moisture that the soil can retain between rains or irrigation. If there are delicate roots in the ground, it can damage the plant's root structure as well.

This means that -- when setting up your raised garden beds -- you do NOT want them to get too wide. The optimum width for a raised bed garden is probably about 4 feet wide. I have ten raised beds at my place, and although they are not all exactly four feet wide, they are all near that. Specifically, I have two narrow beds that are 3 feet wide, that I use to grow things like lettuce, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower on, or else carrots and/or potatoes. Then I have two 5 foot wide beds, which I use to grow corn or tomatoes on. My other six beds are 4 feet wide.

For somebody that has room, time and materials to set up many beds, this is better than just setting ALL beds up at 4 feet wide, IMHO. But if you are like most folks and will have only one or two beds, then I recommend you set your beds up to be 4 feet wide.

The length of the beds does not matter -- they can be as long or as short as you want. It is only the width that matters -- you want the beds to be wide enough to grow what you want to grow, but not so wide that you cannot reach your plants from all sides, or would have to walk on your growing soil in order to maintain or harvest from your plants.


3, This is most important: You just CANNOT use garden chemicals on your raised bed, and expect the soil to produce the high quality, high yields that I describe in my writings.

I will explain in a later post WHY this is the case. It is not because I have some paranoia about poisons on my food. Frankly, most of the stuff you can buy on the chemical aisle at Lowes or Home Depot will wash off the food, if you apply it according to directions. (This is NOT true of some of the chemicals that the commercial farmers use on our food, but it is true of the stuff they let you and me buy).

There is a more important reason why you do NOT want to use any chemicals on your garden bed, and it gets right to the heart of why the methods I am proposing here produce food far superior to anything you can buy. I know this is a tall claim. I will explain in detail the reasons why this is so in another post, and then, you will understand too.

But for now, please just trust me. NEVER use chemicals in your raised bed garden!

And that does not just include chemicals on the official USDA "taboo" list for organic farms. The fact is that the legal requirements for what it takes to get USDA "organic certification" were rewritten a few years ago -- and the folks who rewrote them were LAWYERS who worked for Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and one or two other huge industrial agricultural corporations. And when they did so, they rewrote the certification requirements in a way that made it possible for big agricultural interests to get an ever increasing slice of the organic marketing dollar, while at the same time pushing out the growers who actually produce the high quality stuff you are trying to buy. I used to buy "organic certified" foods until the new regulations were enacted, now I never pay the additional money unless I know the grower and his/her methods first hand, because I know that the new regs do NOT insure high quality food at all. Not anymore.

But what that means for YOUR garden is that you do not want to blindly get a copy of that list and then stick to it.

In a later post, I'll talk about what things you can safely use to spray your gardens and still maintain the high quality I write about.


4, Crops need to be rotated so that you do not grow the same plants in the same area year after year after year. If you do not rotate your crops, soon easily avoidable insect infestations and disease will move into your garden bed soil. Obviously, you do not want this to happen. The best way to avoid this problem is to plan your garden in such a way that you do not grow the same thing in the same area two years in a row.


5, Transplant only healthy seedlings into your garden beds. Sometimes you cannot see the disease that lurks just under the flesh of the beautiful little seedling you picked up at the local store. Such was the case last year for the tomato blight that destroyed so many home gardeners tomato plants before they ever really got started. That tomato blight got started at a huge nursery in Alabama (Bonnie's Nursery). All of the tomatoes coming from that nursery were infected with the fungus that caused the blight, but it is the nature of that particular disease pathogen not to be seen when a tomato plant is young.

Bonnie's Nursery supplies stores all over the eastern half of the United States, and so when the different stores and nurseries accepted shipment of the young plants, they looked healthy enough.

But the fungal spores were there, and once they got into the stores and were shelved along side tomato plants from other nurseries, they quickly spread the fungal spores to the plants that came from the other nurseries. Soon, pretty much all of the stores on our side of the Mississippi River (and some on the western side as well) were selling tomatoes that had these fungal spores growing on them.

Gardeners -- both experienced ones and newbies -- went into their favorite store or plant nursery, bought some of these plants, brought them home, and then planted them into their own gardens.

Once in their own garden, the fungal spores multiplied -- and they also spread to any home sprouted tomato plants that the gardener might have grown from seed in their own personal greenhouse.

Next thing you knew, many gardeners were experiencing complete failure of their tomato crops.

It was happening all over the place, to almost everybody.

And the worst part about it is that once these fungal spores get into the ground, it is very difficult to get rid of them other than to either not grow tomatoes for at least three years after the spores are introduced to the garden soil, or else the gardener solarizes their soil. (OK, when I get time, I'll post something about how to solarize your soil too). So you can expect alot of home gardeners to have tomato crop failure this year too, even if they clean up the commercial nurseries enough to get rid of all traces of the fungal spores. Their tomato crops will struggle or even fail because the spores are still in the soil bed.

Quite honestly, I don't know what the prudent home gardener could do to prevent something like last year's tomato crop failures.

But we CAN prevent lots of other problems -- and keep our soil in pristine shape -- by just being careful about what plants we put into our soil bed to begin with. If it looks sickly, just don't plant it. The health of your garden SOIL is actually more important in the long run than the health of an individual season's crop.

[Nauvoo2002]

So -- in summary -- what is the "schedule" for setting up and then maintaining a healthy, high quality, raised garden bed?


1. Set up the garden, as described in one of the two methods above. (To be honest, there are other excellent ways to set up your garden bed besides the two I listed. If you have already set up your bed another way, that's OK.)


2. Plant your first crop of veggies or small fruits, then mulch to a thickness of 4 inches, using the mixture of 1/3 fresh grass clippings, 1/3 chopped autumn leaves, and 1/3 twigs or small broken branches.


3. The mulch mixture will have a tendency to thin out over time in your garden (that is, it has a tendency to turn into fresh compost right there in your bed). So you will probably need to replenish the mulch at least once -- maybe even twice -- during the growing season. (Usually only southerners need to replenish twice -- you northern folks are just not blessed with enough time for your mulch to need replenishing twice).


4. At the end of the growing season, apply more mulch (again 4 inches thick) before the winter snows seti in. This mulch will compost some over the winter. (Well, it does here in the south. I'm not sure about zones 2 or 3). If it does not compost all the way by next planting season, then just brush it aside and dig your planting hole, then wrap the mulch back around your new seedling when it gets large enough. You will already have your mulch set up for the new planting year.


5. Replenish the mulch again -- just like last year -- when it thins due to the composting process.


6. At the end of the growing season, replenish your garden bed's mulch for the winter.


ALWAYS KEEP A 4 INCH MULCH MIX ON YOUR GARDEN BEDS OVER THE WINTER!


That is actually one of the key components to success with this process. You see, by doing this, you protect your earthworms and beneficial soil microorganisms over the winter. They need shelter too, just like you do, and the mulch canopy over their "home" provides that for them.

And by keeping that mulch canopy over your garden bed during winter, you will be the first one ready to plant come spring time. When other people have to wait until the soil moisture is right to till their garden, you will already have plants blossoming in your bed.


Happy Gardening!