Kitchen Garden - A First Attempt
A few weeks ago, I promised to add updates on my first attempt at a kitchen garden. For Mother's Day, I finally had all the right parts, the good weather, and the help to accomplish this task. It also helped that I significantly reduced my plans for this garden. We planted 2 kinds of lettuce, a bell pepper, a lemon cucumber, and 2 strawberry plants.
We decided to go with plastic raised-bed walls as I have read that they are the best for keeping heat in the soil, a particular problem in the Northwest climate. These 3-foot-by-3-foot grow beds are made in England from 100-percent recycled plastic. I figure the Brits know a thing or 2 about growing in soggy, sunless climates. The walls also have the advantage of snapping together easily.
After putting the walls of the raised bed together in the sunniest part of the yard and lining the bottom with gardener's plastic, we started to add dirt. My tiny helper felt the dirt needed some evening out and he was not wrong.
Then we dug holes for the plants. We tried to space them out, but my little gardener subscribes to a more haphazard approach. The plants went in where the holes appeared.
The tomatoes were planted in separate self-watering pots. We did this in the hope that we could control the amount of water they get. We'll also add some red mulch to the tomatoes. This red plastic was recommended by a friend whose tomatoes I've admired. It's supposed to reflect far-red light wavelengths upward into your tomato plants. This
triggers the release of a natural plant protein that stimulates more
rapid growth and development.
Finally, we had something that looked like it could produce vegetables. The dump truck and plastic gardening tools were optional, but if this all works out we might have our lucky gardening charms.
Let's just hope the slugs and snails don't find the baby lettuce before I figure out how to protect them.
--flauersmartini
Kevin on May 19, 2009 at 04:19 AM
It always amazes me the difference in climates in the US. We picked all of our lettuce around March 1 here in Louisiana. It's just too hot for the stuff down here from March to October. Yet you guys (I think you said you're in Oregon?) are just now planting it!
Idea: since lettuce is a short season crop, buy squash or zucchini seeds to take their place in the garden in about a month. They are very prolific.
Good luck!
Steve on May 21, 2009 at 09:04 AM
This article made me laugh, just thinking about my experience 2 weeks ago with my little gardener. I tried to lay out some nice rows, but when our garden starts to sprout, I am sure I'll see lots of clusters. Being in Florida, where it is already in the 90's, he also proclaimed after about 30 minutes of work that "Dad, you have a lot of work to do because I'm done, it's too hot" and went inside....
:)
Steve