Harpo, the final Marx brother has been completed. Writing about the reconstruction of these garden beds feels very deja vu, so we’ll keep it tight.
How’s that for efficiency? I’ve gotten quicker at replacing these beds now that the work is essentially done, so there’s not much innovation when it comes to rebuilding. It goes something like this:
- Remove old bed and junk from top of soil
- Shovel perimeter dirt into the center to make space
- Level the dirt
- Screw together 4 walls and place
- Put in post supports in corners and on long sides
- Break up existing dirt
- Bring in bags of compost and soil, mix in
- Screw in 2×4 railings
- Spread bag of mulch over the top
But wait…there’s more! Call now and you can get a SECOND bed absolutely FREE! (plus cost & materials & time)
That’s right. I lied when I said the final Marx brother has been completed. In the old Marx Brothers movies there were 4 staple characters (brothers); Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. However they had a 5th brother who was part of their vaudeville acts but took a different life path and never showed up on screen with the rest. That was Gummo. So, off to the side of the 4 mostly identical raised beds is a smaller (but deeper) 4×4 raised bed rebuild. Gummo! I plan to have Morgan help me screen print the Marx Brothers characters on wood that I can screw into each plot to spice things up 🙂
Gummo is 20 inches deep, with 2 10″ boards stacked on top of one another. There wasn’t much soil in the previous, much flatter raised bed so Gummo received a lot of additional soil. I used mostly raised bed soil, layered with both plant-based and steer manure compost in-between and topped with chipped mulch similar to the other raised beds. This the only bed with 2 bags of steer manure-based compost since Home Depot ran out of regular plant-based compost bags. I’m curious if/how that affects plant growth down the road.
The other raised beds clock in at 16 inches high, so I wanted to raise this one up a bit further to 20 inches for future planting of root-based crops like potatoes. I figure it’s nice to have one really deep bed for these types of crops for when I want to go that route.
Onto actual planting! What better way to kick off the season than to plant our onion starts in our first rebuilt bed Groucho. The end result of the starts were:
- 27 Transylvanian Red Onions
- 24 Golden Princess (Yellow) Onions
- 14 Zebrune Shallots
This was pretty close to what I had hoped for, which was ~25 of each onion and at least a dozen shallots. All of these varieties store well so if they end up producing you can look forward to a post where we cure the onions for storage after harvest.
Morgan and her parents decided to participate in the festivities of the first planting. Here’s Morgan and her mom Rosalie untangling the onion starts. I read that onions are surprisingly forgiving when it comes to untangling their roots which is why I planted so many in each 4″ container. Suffice to say that they weren’t any trouble at all to separate. The internet was correct.
After some back and forth about spacing, we opted to space them 5″ apart, both plants and “rows”. I decided to ignore row spacing as the real common denominator and important spacing is plant spacing, while row spacing is more for convenience.
Overall, the planting took about half of the raised bed between all 3 varieties. We gave them a good soak and then celebrated with pizza, fireworks, a live band, and all our family and friends (in my mind).
Finally, Rosalie brought over one of her existing chive plants as a staple to put in the large (unnamed as of now) raised bed that I don’t plan on remodeling this season. There is still a large amount of soil in this bed and we figured we could use some of our extra mulch and plant some things. So we started with a transplanted chive!
In my original garden plot last year when I started at Gabriel Park, the plot was mostly overgrown with weeds, but there was a single chive plant that was thriving on the border of the plot and in full purple bloom. I enjoyed the look of it but had to remove it as it was nearly in the path. With more research around alliums and how they help deter pests, I wanted chives as not only a useful perennial staple, but also as a nice way to spruce up the place. We’ll see how it transplants and if it ends up thriving down the road.
We’ve almost finished making the beds, and now it’s time for crops to start lying in them. I’ve got plans for one more raised bed addition along the border of the plot for more vertical gardening potential which I will delve into in a future post. That can’t be done until I remove a lot of the wood I’ve deconstructed that is lying in it’s future home in the plot’s corner. Until then I will be focusing on building out our crop portfolio and getting things growing.
There’s not much activity on other seedlings and starts for 63P. Many of the next crops I plan on planting are better sown directly into the soil since they don’t do well being transplanted. These include squashes (summer and winter), cucumbers, pole beans, radishes, carrots, etc.
It’s fun to see other gardeners out and about more often, prepping their beds. Perhaps I will write a post on some of the other creative structures I’m starting to see out yonder in the Gabriel Park Community Garden.
Until next time!
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