Gardening: The Beds Are Made

Project Green Thumb was active and in full force Sunday morning and afternoon.

The morning was spent mapping out what seed and seedlings are ready to go in and where would be the best location for each. We have three each 5′ by 3′ beds. Like any good newbie, we have planned for way more veggies than these beds can legitimately hold.

A couple of outdoor planting mistakes that many novice raised bed garden gardeners make are planting too soon and overcrowding the beds. Planting before the last frost can wipe out an entire garden. Overcrowded plants have too much competition for soil nutrients, hydration and sunlight.

The only crop that we are potentially risking frost kill to are the tomatoes in bed C. We have kinda good news there. Due to the risk of overcrowding we were only be able to fit 5 of the dozen tomato plants we raised from seeds into the bed. If frost gets the first five, there are 7 more seedlings ready to take their place. Always have a plan B.

All other crops sewn in the beds to date are seeds that can be planted before the last frost. Carrots and radishes were sewn into the beds last week. Sunday we added onions, beans, peas, zucchini squash, cucumbers and strawberry. The chart we used to map out our beds is pictured below.

Trellising was added to the back of beds A and B for vertical growing. The inside corner of bed A is home to one hill of cucumbers. The back row of bed A is home to two rows of sweet peas. The outside corner of bed B is home to a row of zucchini squash. The back row of bed B is home to 1/2 row of green beans and 1/2 row of yellow wax beans.

The outside corner of bed A had room for one strawberry plant. We are very excited to see how the strawberry turns out!

Bed C is home to 5 tomato seedlings behind the row of radish that was sewn earlier in the week. Three Roma, one cherry and one steak sandwich hybrid.

Best laid plans. In previous posts we pictured about three dozen seedlings from different types of plants. In addition to the three varieties of tomatoes that we transferred to bed C, there are four varieties of pepper, plus cabbage and cauliflower. Where are they? Still seedlings inside the house, under the grow lights.

The beds are full. Now what? Now we find more large containers like the five gallon buckets that our potatoes are planted in…plus a couple of surprise unorthodox containers we got our hands on…but that is for another blog.

R Dub checking out…for now.