Lessons Learned – Garden 2023

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  1. Soil is Everything!

I put together some nice raised bed planter boxes…good call on my part. But, what really made the difference was the super high quality soil I made up for those boxes. Plenty of compost, mostly compost actually. And mostly organic fertilizer to help amend the soil even more.

  1. Gotta go Vertical

When you limit yourself on space, as I did with the raised bed planter boxes, you still gotta have space for those plants. I learned that next year I will trellis cucumbers, pole green beans, snap/snow peas, and maybe my small sweet watermelons.

Added benefit…I can grow less sun tolerant veggies under the trellis framework. I will be using the 16’ cattle panels for the trellis work.

And I am going to try tomatoes on cattle panels as well. The tomato cages don’t work for me. I tired wood frames and string this year…fail! So I will try the cattle panel method next year and see how that goes.

  1. Quality not Quantity

I did plenty of planting this year…wanted to see what and how plants would grow with the new system. Yeah…planted too much for sure. Next year I am adopting the “square foot” system and going for just what we eat on a daily basis.

Yup…that means one, ONE, a single zucchini plant!!!

  1. Squash can take over Everything!

So my wife loves squash…butternut, straight neck, etc. So I made sure I planted plenty of it…WRONG! That stuff took off and I can’t the pick-up truck now. On a sad note it took out some of my new raspberry bushes…just choked em out.

Next year the squash gets planted on the outside of two sides of the garden and it will be ‘trained’ to go for the outside chain link fence for some vertical space.

  1. Water Timers

I put it a pretty decent drip and soaker irrigation system. Had to run the soakers during the daylight hours to keep up with the plants and evaporation. This coming year I will have about twice the raised bed boxes and the watering will need to be rotated to ensure the right amount of water getting tot he plants. Timers will be a must to ensure that everything is getting watered regardless of my attention or not.\

I am also planning on ‘grouping’ my boxes so that plants that needed similar watering can be grouped together on the same timer.

  1. Fence

I mentioned in a previous year’s article that one of my dogs thinks organic fertilizer pellets are nothing more than appetizers. So I put up a flimsy wire fence to keep her out of the garden area. Oooooopppppppsssssss…she is smarter than me…she learned she can just push her nose into it and it separates. She then has access to all of the little nuggets goodies she thinks I left just for her to gobble up.

  1. Ground cover between boxes.

I guess I should call this something more appropriate…”Weed/Grass Control”.

You can guess by the title that I will be putting down landscape cloth between the boxes to suppress all of the weeds and grass that invariably will do as well, or better, than the plants in the planters. Downside…I could’ve sold it for hay.

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4 thoughts on “Lessons Learned – Garden 2023”

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  3. A long time ago l made some tomato cages using concrete reinforcement wire, about 2ft by 2ft by 5ft. I ultimately used plastic zip ties to connect the corners.They have served me well and the 4 inch by 4 inch holes enable easy reaching in for the tomatoes (and cucumbers too). I made them to fit my raised beds so my size is approximate.

    I also wanted to eliminate weeds so I took old used carpet and scraps from a friendly carpet company and cut it to fit between my raised bed rows. They work well because they are free, last a long time and water passes right through them. Got to watch for kids who want to dispose of them when they get dirty. We were on missions and weren’t home to stop her. Anyway the carpet lasts for years and years with no upkeep.

    When I wanted to make a frame for my pole beans, I bought some scrap plastic fence posts from a fence company and use long screws to attach them to the raised bed walls and use long sticks for the pole beans to climb on. The fence company wanted $100 but settled on $50 and may have gone cheaper if I had claimed poverty. Screwing the uprights to the raised bed frames made it easy to change where they are installed the next year.

    BTW, my raised beds are 27+ inches high which means I need a (Tall) ladder to harvest the green beans.

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  4. We’ve used cattle panels for years for tomatoes, cucumbers and even squash. They work great. These are in our green house and we plant on both sides in the ground. We use a panel cut in half for peas and again, plant on both sides. Love to read your updates.

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