sugarapsa
Zone 7b
I have been interested in joining Gardening Forums for quite sometime. There are some very knowledgeable folks on here and with your help I am hoping to turn my brown thumb green.
I have been interested in gardening since I was knee high to an aphid. Perhaps a bit of a stretch. Suffice it to say for a long long time without much success. Now that I'm retired I can devote more time to this endeavor.
For starters, I always seem to pick the wrong locations for planting vegetables. I say wrong sites because my tree roots always end up enjoying these sites much more than my veggies. Then, in late fall of 2023 I decided to research raised beds and the one that appeared to suit my needs are horse or cattle troughs. I liked the idea of elevating them completely off the ground and out of reach from tree roots. I purchased a few of these troughs and placed them all in a designated location of my yard, drilled holes in the bottom, placed a layer of gravel in the bottom, landscape fabric above that, and a mixture of soil, and compost that had been curing for 8 month's or so, comprised of leaf litter, chicken manure, rabbit manure, and goat manure, oh, and lets not forget coffee grounds. I then added worm castings from the worm bin. Whew, that was a lot of work! Any who, I planted cool weather crops in January and protected them with heavy plastic. Low and behold, the plants are doing great... so far.
I hope to begin a thread on this topic so I can get input from folks who have, or are currently using this type bed.
Thanks for looking in.
I have been interested in gardening since I was knee high to an aphid. Perhaps a bit of a stretch. Suffice it to say for a long long time without much success. Now that I'm retired I can devote more time to this endeavor.
For starters, I always seem to pick the wrong locations for planting vegetables. I say wrong sites because my tree roots always end up enjoying these sites much more than my veggies. Then, in late fall of 2023 I decided to research raised beds and the one that appeared to suit my needs are horse or cattle troughs. I liked the idea of elevating them completely off the ground and out of reach from tree roots. I purchased a few of these troughs and placed them all in a designated location of my yard, drilled holes in the bottom, placed a layer of gravel in the bottom, landscape fabric above that, and a mixture of soil, and compost that had been curing for 8 month's or so, comprised of leaf litter, chicken manure, rabbit manure, and goat manure, oh, and lets not forget coffee grounds. I then added worm castings from the worm bin. Whew, that was a lot of work! Any who, I planted cool weather crops in January and protected them with heavy plastic. Low and behold, the plants are doing great... so far.
I hope to begin a thread on this topic so I can get input from folks who have, or are currently using this type bed.
Thanks for looking in.
