What We Built Today

I'm too tired to even describe it much, except to say it's probably the biggest raised garden bed in town. LOL. More pics and information later; just wanted to post this for now.

It's rough-cut cedar and is 4x16' long and 15" high.

Update! Plants in bed have been moved by now, and it's almost filled--over 1,000 lbs. of compost, humus, topsoil, etc. later! And the six new eggplants that started this whole crazy process have been planted in the far end.

Happy spring! (and Thank God for pain pills.)

bobbi c.

Raised Garden Beds

I finally found a better photo of my raised garden beds made from inexpensive cedar fence pickets and metal tent stakes. I was using wooden stakes, but they only lasted about 6-months. These stakes (found at Academy) will last much longer. At the time I took the photo, it was early spring and I had a wonderful crop of volunteer sunflowers.

Right now, I'm growing all sorts of beans and greens in the vegetable garden beds, including mustard, arugula, collards, brussel greens (leaves from brussel sprout plants), radishes and have recently just planted spinach.

I've just had my largest early fall harvest yet, was able to put many gallon bags of beans and greens in the freezer, and look forward to many more during the late fall and winter.

My little organic garden sure helps to keep our grocery bills down!

Happy trails!

bobbi c.

What I'm planting....and yes, I'm one of THOSE people!

Dear garden friends,

A plant nursery worker expressed amusement last week when I bought four fruit trees for my back yard. He said, "You must be one of THOSE people." I laughed, because I knew that he meant I was one of those gardeners who don't stop planting during the summer. Never mind that it was 95-degrees yesterday, and hit 107 sometime last week. I know that as long as I water anything I plant until it gets established, AND mulch like nobody's business, the plant will be OK 99.9% of the time.

To wit (love saying that!), I'm copying some of the home decor blogs where they list the chores they've accomplished, and will be listing the plants that I've successfully planted, and some that weren't so successful (very few of them are not.)
Today, I planted:

**three more rosemaries (to replace the water-sucking vampire plants AKA golden euonymous that never took off, even after a year)

**two more lavenders (they do VERY well here)

**three purple coneflowers (echinacea, a gorgeous landscape plant and a great medicinal, to boot)

I also have a Gregg's blue mist plant (which is supposed to be an excellent butterfly plant) and a fig tree to get in the ground, and a little bay laurel to pot up.

Notice a theme? Yes, I'm also one of THOSE gardeners who use lots and lots of herbs for landscaping. Sure, I mix in some annuals, and some Texas native Xeriscape plants, but in general, herbs look great AND we can cook with them. What's NOT to love??

All in all, not bad work for a hot Sunday morning!

Before garden (July 2007)


And now garden (July 2008)


Raised beds are made by simply leaning cedar fence picket boards against stakes pounded into the ground in rough rectangular shapes, then filled with top soil, compost, mulch,shredded leaves, you name it.

dig it!

bobbi c.

Brrr! AGAIN!

Dear gardening friends,

I managed to finally get some EZ cedar fence picket beds filled with that great Garden-Ville humus and cedar mulch, and went out this morning to work out there and it was COLD! This is very unusual for this time of year here in Central TX. I know my new bell pepper and tomato plants will be shiverin' for sure! I told Husband it was better than working out in 120-degree heat, though.

I'm thinking that with this cooler weather, maybe I should go ahead and risk planting more lettuce and cold weather greens seeds. Couldn't hurt, right? The worst that can happen is that it'll get hot, they'll bolt, and I can either eat them bitter or compost them. I think it's worth a shot.

I still have to get pics of the new garden set-up. I'm SO behind!

dig it!

bobbi c.

Oh, my achin' back!

The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
February 26, 2007

Dear friends,

I stooped over one of my raised garden beds on Saturday morning and planted at least 70 very teeny little scallion onion babies. I haven’t planted onions in years, because, as we all know, they are so cheap in the stores. But when we started buying organic onions, the price went up. Well worth the extra cost, I thought, especially given the problems that some restaurants have had lately with scallions.



I had already planted a bunch of onion bulbs in a pot inside, and in a larger tub outside, but wanted some of the long thin onions to use on salads, stir frys, etc.



After planting the first 25 or so, I got the hang of it, and started using my finger to poke just the right sized hole in the soil. I would poke, put the onion in, pinch the soil around the neck of the onion, poke, put in, pinch, etc. It became a meditative Zen thing, and while doing that I managed to turn off the Critic for a while, and actually got a few ideas for short stories, maybe even a short play. Amazing how that works–the garden has always been a source of inspiration for me in so many ways.



Onions are simple, take care of themselves, and can be harvested in a short period of time. You can find scallion starts in garden centers, hardware stores, some grocery stores and even at Wal-mart in their garden section.

It’s much warmer here the last few days, spring can’t be far behind!

dig it!

bobbi c.
Copyright ©2007 bobbi a. chukran.

A 7-acre, small space garden?

The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 15, 2007

Some person yesterday commented to me that anybody could be a good gardener if they had seven acres to play on. LOL. Well, that’s not the case here. Yes, we have seven acres, but it’s almost solid rock and rubble covered by scrub and thousands of junipers. I got around that by enclosing a small area in the front of my house where the garage and house make an “L” shape and fencing it in. We have horrible deer problems out here, and lots of resident wild critters, so we had to make the fence at least 7-feet high.



As for the garden itself, raised beds to the rescue! I built a series of small raised beds, some perimeter beds and two larger ones. The small ones are built from untreated 2×12″ cedar boards that have lasted for over ten years so far. The larger beds are simple, inexpensive concrete blocks laid on the ground in a rectangle. The perimeter beds are simply rocks that I gathered from the property and stacked around the edge of the fence. I filled all the planting areas with a mixture of top soil, compost that I either made or purchased, a few loads of good garden dirt from Gardenville in Austin, and whatever else I could scrape up to include. We have almost no topsoil here, either. Did I mention that?

I thought you might enjoy this photo of one end of the garden, the one closest to my office. To the left, you can see one of the rock beds, at the far back you can see the deer fence where I’m growing a grapevine. To the right you can see a few of the raised cedar beds.

That whole area is around the size of a small suburban backyard, and most of the veggies I grow fit in that space. So you see, you don’t need lots and lots of acreage to have a garden. I actually prefer gardening in small spaces. It gives me a sense of an enclosure, a garden wall, secluded and safe. AND it’s more manageable. So far, the fence has kept the deer out. The squirrels are another matter!

Spring IS coming, I promise!

dig it!

bobbi c.
Copyright ©2007 by Bobbi A. Chukran

Every third bite...

The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 22, 2007

Mornin' earthly gardeners!

Just ran across this quote about the disappearing bees in the My Dog’s Nose blog. Experts have a name for the disappearing bee thing now….Colony Collapse Disorder. The blog author has an opinion that the bees don’t like the genetically modified plants out there. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that’s not a correct assumption.

“Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. Every three bites….think about that for a minute.

Many people have written to me, saying that they’d keep bees if they weren’t allergic to them. This can be a problem for many folks. As far as I know, I’m not allergic to bee stings (although I am allergic to everything else in the world), and I will truthfully say that I work amongst them everyday in the garden and have never been stung. Honeybees are usually docile creatures, unless you happen to disturb their nest. One thing to remember, never swat at a bee!

This story is “burnin’ up the wires” so to speak, and it should. It’s an important issue for all of us.

We’re getting lots of nice, soft spring rains. We need it badly, although it’s too wet in the garden to plant much. I get around that by digging a hole, filling it with slightly moist potting soil, then smoothing that over. That way, the roots aren’t over-saturated. That’s one advantage of growing in raised beds; they drain fairly fast and are a bit drier than the surrounding soil.

dig it!

bobbi c.
Copyright ©2007 by Bobbi A. Chukran. All rights reserved.

Starting a spring garden...

Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 30,2007

Mornin’ earthly gardeners!

I thought I’d share a photo of my little Mexican lime tree with you.



A friend says it’s the same as the “key lime.” Last year it bloomed off and on all spring and summer, and actually made a handful of fruit. What fun! It sits on a semi-shaded porch, and was doing great until we got a lot of ice last winter. I thought it was dead, but it’s not–it’s coming back! I’m always amazed at the rejuvenation power of plants.

It’s been raining profusely here off and on for the past week or so, and the garden is waterlogged. I’m really anxious to get these seedlings out of the office and into the ground. They aren’t quite ready, but I figure IF the sun comes out, they’ll catch up eventually. That’s the hope, anyway.

I hope some of you others are closer to spring. I haven’t heard the weather reports from other parts of the country in a few days, but I expect some of you are still chillin’. Now is the time to pore over those garden seed catalogs (if you still do the paper thang) or sit and browse through all the online garden seed suppliers.

If you haven’t started seedlings yet, there’s still time. My new idea is to set out a few at a time, spaced a few days apart. I don’t really have room for all these seedlings, so some will have to go into containers. Speaking of containers, the tomatoes in the EarthBox are doing fabulously, as are the two remaining tomato plants out in the raised beds.

Next week, I’ll talk about using raised beds in your garden, and tell you how you can build an easy, fast, almost instant garden anywhere! Really! So until then, do a Google for “small raised bed gardens” and get some ideas. And have a good weekend…

Until then, dig it!

bobbi c.

Copyright ©2007 Bobbi A. Chukran. All rights to photos and text reserved.