Raised Bed Gardening

Our topic for Tuesday was Raised Bed Gardening, with a guest speaker, Glenn Arnold from Putnam County. He shared a lot of his personal experience with raised bed gardens.

Some of his reasons for using raised beds:
- Less time needed
- Competition with retired neighbors!
- Space
- Family members don't enjoy gardening

He also shared some disadvantages of raised beds:
- Initial expense
- Repairs were required after 7 years
- Weed pressure along wooden frame
- more difficult to cultivate/incorporate residues
- weed trimming along the garden
- tough to dig in deep with the cultivator

He advised planting vegetables by type, for example, cool-season/direct seeded in one bed, and warm-season transplants in another. He also advised planting fewer vegetables that your family doesn't like to eat and more of the ones that they do!

Some modifications to his raised beds were cold farms, bird netting, sub-surface irrigation, and gas heat.

He shared a hint about keeping cabbage heads from splitting - when they are just at the right size, break the ribs of the outer leaves, and the cabbage will keep in the garden for a long time (protect from insects!)

He uses 12-12-12 fertilizer, about 3 lbs per 100 square feet of garden, and incorporates 1-4 inches of organic matter per year.

He reviewed troublesome diseases and troublesome insects - and gave us Ohioline flyers for several of these, including striped cucumber beetles and squash vine borers.