Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Penny you are building the square foot gardening boxes, pretty much. I couldn't
figure out how I was going to reach across 4 feet so mine are all 3 feet wide. I
did wind up with a couple of boards across one of them. I did a combination of
pet food/litter buckets and other food type buckets of that size with the beds.
I got the shorter carrots which are sweeter and grow better. Everything else has
been fine in 1 ft tall other than the stuff in the buckets--tomatoes and peppers
mostly. would garden benches to sit on work to perch on? the kind kids stand on
that are about 15-18" high.

Dianne Koehler
Austin, TX zone 8b
Teaching painting & art
mini-camps http://sites.google.com/site/woodenitbewonderful
visit my art blog: http://wonderfulartsncrafts.blogspot.com/
visti my garden blog: http://dianne-gardening-in-wells-branch.blogspot.com/
George's
story http://www.scribd.com/doc/37201998/The-Horror-at-Wells-Branch-Crossing

________________________________
From: Penny Swann <pennybugs@yahoo.com>
To: Organic_Gardening@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, October 25, 2010 12:09:12 PM
Subject: [Organic_Gardening] raised garden bed question

I want to garden in raised garden bed/boxes. I built one last year for my
strawberries, I just pulled some lumber out of a pile and built my box. First
lesson learned, made it way too big, it's 5 feet square. I had to put a piece
of wood down the center so I could get to the middle. It's also only 1 foot
high. Okay for strawberries, but I'm not sure about plants that need more root
space (carrots, for example). Also, I thought these things were supposed to
make it easier on me to weed, this is too short, I wind up kneeling on the
ground to weed (admittedly, not many weeds) and to harvest. I do better
sitting, my knees aren't as good as they once were. This is too high for me to
just sit, so I have to kneel. Again, problem may be partially the size of the
thing. I share my garden area with my mom and dad and dad can't kneel at all
and mom can't get down on the ground and up again without aid. So... I'm
looking at needing to build these things taller. My dad's friend came up with
the idea to get old bathtubs and put out in the garden. Mom's against this.
Dad says you can't build these boxes tall enough without spending lots of money
on reinforcing. (Dad's been laid off and is going to school, mom's unable to
work, so there's just my little paycheck getting us through right now.) There's

got to be a way to do this economically. Can someone recommend a site where I
can see finished product of deeper boxes? Dad's pretty handy once he gets the
picture in his head. Better yet plans somewhere? Is this feasible? Am I
dreaming? Is my problem simply that we're thinking too large a box, if we
shrink it down to say 2 x 2 then does the reinforcement problem go away? Dad is

talking about rebar, cement, railroad ties, all as my reinforcement, then adding

plywood and then we get to put dirt in. I need to get us all on the same page,
but I've got to figure out what that page is first LOL Thanks for all your
wisdom, advice, and help on this!
TTFN
Penny
******
Teaching you about the very best in essential oils and how to create better
health for yourself and your family. http://www.TracesEtc.com

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