Garden Update: Raised Beds

I posted earlier this year about having some raised beds built in my backyard.  They are now filled with a mix of wood shavings (which had sat in a big pile all winter covered by snow) from Marc's garage renovation using pallet wood...

...goat-and-sheep-poop-filled-hay (thank you Lucky Nickel, Twilight and Tucker) from cleaning out the barn from the past winter's "deposits"...

...and some aged compost from a local farm.  They looked great when they were finally filled on May 10.  The layers will mix over time and I will keep them topped off each year with new compost.

After the beds were finished, I waited a couple of weeks, and then put in some seeds, because I was unable to resist the gardening bug.  Then I ordered some new seeds, because most of my seed stock was from 2007 to 2010, before I left Iowa, and that's way too old for decent germination rates.  I can't believe it has been that long since I had a proper garden.  As usual when I order seeds, I find it hard to choose just a few things.  So I ordered a lot of exciting seeds.  I bought Nikki Jabbour's book, Veggie Garden Remix, to give me some ideas, and it was chock full of interesting varieties that I hadn't tried before. Meanwhile, we continued to have cold, frosty weather.  My pak choi seeds emerged, and fortunately they are quite hardy, so the frost didn't get them.  I have some carrots coming up as well.

Meanwhile, I realized that it would be best if I had an irrigation system for the raised beds, since that would save me time (given my busy work schedule) and it would improve my harvests.  I ordered the raised bed irrigation kits from Lee Valley Tools.  My parents visited a couple of weekends ago and we sorted out the hoses and attachments and realized that a few more parts were needed to complete the system the way I wanted it to work, so the hoses were laid out in preparation for completion, but things were on hold for a while.

The additional pieces arrived and I was excited to get it all installed, but that had to wait until I had some time this past weekend.  I dug the header lines into the ground so they don't interfere with the lawn mowing, and have lengths of header coming up the side of each bed.

I then used a short length of header that comes into each bed and is capped off.  Three 1/4" hoses lead from the capped header to sprayer heads in each bed.  Each sprayer head has up to a 2 foot radius.  I have adjusted them so that they keep the water to the inside of the bed.

The sprayers keep a fairly low flow so they have a flat profile and won't spray loads of water wastefully onto the ground.

I also bought some white plastic "dividers" which seem to be some kind of strip that is used to join thin panels together, such as one might use in paneled walls. One must be creative when it comes to garden uses of non-standard materials.  These are going to be a test for my floating row cover that will keep insect pressures down as the season progresses.  We'll see how it goes.  My pak choi is looking good as you can see in the row in the bed below.

Here's the same bed with the floating row cover on it.  Working well so far!

I also had a spare cattle panel.  I used to use cattle panels for 'cheap' fencing in Iowa, but here in Atlantic Canada they are extremely expensive and not easy to find.  I am using this one as an archway for climbing plants.  On one side I have planted cucamelons, and on the other side I have planted Poona Kheera cucumbers.  I hope both will grow well on it.  This picture was taken before I had completed installation of the header hoses, which is why you can see one on the ground.

My parents also helped install a couple of pieces of wood lattice that I had on hand.  We planted "golden sweet" peas along the sides, which will grow up through the holes and make for easy picking of peas later in the season.  The peas have germinated extremely well and are already approaching the lattice holes.

Planting thus far includes a variety of carrot types, parsnips (my favourite!), pak choi, peas, herbs, Superior potatoes, Scotch curly kale, cabbage, beets, fennel, zucchini, winter squash, cucumber and melon.  It's so wonderful to have a good garden again!