Mini Raised Bed

I finally cleaned up the pile of scraps and sticks and leaves and trash and hose tangle that was to the right of the raised bed.  That's an area I was thinking about building out into another raised bed, because it does get better sun, but I decided I didn't want to take on another project and put another semi permanent structure in front of my house.

But I do need to use that space for something.  For one thing, it's got great light, it's pretty accessible, and it's wide open.  It used to be the location of the compost turner, which I moved to the little nook behind the air conditioner (much better).  I'm thinking I need to do something to raise up whatever planting area goes there, because the soil is quite compact and full of clay and rocks.  All winter I'd kind of start at it out the window, thinking if I could magically change it with my mind or something.  I few times I tried to go out there and measure it, but it was kind of tough because of the garbage pile, the snow, and the giant rock.  (Two of those three things are gone, but the third one is going to be a challenge...)

I was thinking I could take the wooden planters that I've had for a while and maybe take them apart and use the long sides as a makeshift raised bed.  This would be most importantly free, it would create sides that would match the existing raised bed, and it would be a use for those planters that are too shallow and drain and dry out too fast to be much use for anything.  Not knowing the dimensions of that space, I wasn't really sure it would work.

It looks like the width of the space is exactly the length of two containers, hooray!  (Still, what am I going to do about that big fucking rock?)  

Now, I could either take the planters apart completely, which looks like it won't be a big challenge, and then just prop the sides up and fill the space with soil, and figure they'll stay in place.  Or, I could somehow remove the bottoms, and bury the frames partly into the ground.  This would create two teeny tiny raised beds, inside the frames, and one larger one, in the space between them and the wall.  That's kind of a cute idea, but it seems like it's unnecessarily complicated for planning where to ultimately plant things.  If I take them apart, I might still need to do something to keep the two slats of wood together.  But that shouldn't be hard, I think I ought to be able to do that with a power drill, whatever hardware I have lying around, and the wood from the planters.  (Reclaimed wood raised bed!  Pin it!)  I think I don't want it as deep as the raised bed... the main one is 2 feet deep.  If this one was like, 18 inches, that would look nice, right?  And I believe that length is 4 feet, which will look nice, half the length of the main raised bed.  

My plan is to use this spot for Green Beans.  They can't really be right up in there with Tomatoes, cause shit gets wild.  Googling images for Square Foot Gardening shows some with 4, some with 6, and some with 9 bean plants.  I usually think the SFG method plants things awfully tightly.  I mean, 1 square foot for a tomato?  So I should probably be planning on 4 per square foot. In a space that's 4 feet by 1 1/2 feet, that's still 24 bean plants.  And maybe I don't even need 24 bean plants.  Yeah, no, I'm going to leave the surrounding 6 inches, maybe plant short flowers or something in there.  That leaves 3 feet by 1 foot, so 12 bean plants.  Half purple, half green. 

Now, I can't plant Green Bean seeds until May 15th.  And seriously, no, you can't; they just won't do anything until they are ready, and it's probably bad for them if you try to rush it, like with tomatoes.  If I get this space put together, I should try to use it for something in the next 6 weeks.  Like maybe lettuce?  Lettuce would be the obvious choice, but why not Strawberries?  They could be right up front, so they'd hang over the side a little if then needed to.  Quick search says beans and strawberries should do fine together, that the nitrogen fixing will be helpful.  Of course, that's not the order they're going to happen, but at least there won't be any problems.  The important thing here is that the strawberries are low growing and the beans are super tall.  I think Strawberries are also 4 plants per square foot.  

Ok, this is very exciting!  I've got another little raised bed to play with.  And I didn't have to buy anything.  I'm not sure I'll even need to buy any more soil.  I was kind of wondering why the hell I bought a package of bare root strawberry plants.  I think I have 25 of them.  And only 8 can go in this bed, so I'll eventually want to figure out something to do with the rest.  I don't know if I should plant them today.  The 10 day forecast looks fantastic- overnight lows are in the mid 40s to 50s for the next 10 days, except for tonight, which gets down to 36.  So if I were to plant them tomorrow, they would probably be happier.  

And the rest of the mini raised bed, I guess I will fill with the leaf lettuces and arugula, when they start to grow under the lights.  Those are also supposed to be really fast to reach maturity, so I can still get plenty out of them before May 15th when I want to put in the beans.  And actually, if the lettuce still looks ok on May 15th, I don't have to rip it out.  I just need to make space for the bean seeds, and for the trellises, and the beans will start to grow around them for the first few weeks.