Raised bed Genesis - The Summer of 2008

I had planted conventional gardens over the years - till the dirt, form the rows, plant the seeds (or baby plants), water the rows, weed, Weed, WEED, and eventually pick my bounty. That's gardening, or so I thought.

We moved up to the Inland Northwest in 2003, to Coeur d'Alene Idaho, and in 2006, we moved to Newman Lake Washington (a mile or so over the Idaho border). We moved into a large home on an acre, and the prior owners had this really cool chain-link fenced-off area they used for a garden. Because deer and other critters tend to munch on anything that looks good, the old owners wisely set-aside this area and critter-proofed it.

Our first summer here, my daughter Emma hankered for a garden, so she went forth a-planting. She made rows this way and that way, planting vegetables and flowers from seed and small plants. The morning glory and all the other indiginous weeds grew as well, competing with the good plants for food and water. Soon, the garden was overgrown and the battle was lost. I do recall eating a couple of pear tomatoes that summer, but not much else.

2007 was a gardening sabbatical for us - my job held a lot of travel and I was in the thick of working on a Master's degree, and no one had the burning desire to plant a garden (or really, weed, water, weed, Weed, WEED).

2008 was a new year. I had a new job with no travel, my Master's was finished in April, and I had the gardening bug, but this time I was introduced to the idea of RAISED BED GARDENING! That's right, container gardening! What a great idea - build some wooden beds, add soil, and grow plants without weeds! NO WEEDING! GARDENING COULDN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!!!

So I started Googling "raised planters" and found a design that looked great (from Sunset Magazine, I believe). 4' x 8' redwood planters. Just build 'em, stain 'em, fill 'em with soil, scatter seed and plant plants, and all was good. During a warm spell in May, I built four of them and stuck them in the compound, bought some tomato plants and some seeds, and made me a garden!

The problem was that Winter hung around too long, Spring really didn't come until late June when Summer was supposed to show up (it snowed on June 1st), and Summer didn't come around until mid-July. My poor tomato plants looked miserable until after the Fourth of July - they were purple, had little growth, and just didn't look right. Excepting the HoopFest weekend in late June (and it always heats up in the 90's for HoopFest), the temps were in the 60's and rarely got above the mid-70's during the whole month of June, and the nights were still in the 40's! Bad, bad BAD for tomatoes and most everything else I was trying to grow. Only the lettuce was really enjoying this "global warming".

I finally picked a regular tomato in August, and considering all of the plants I planted, I had a pitiful harvest. In fact, many of the tomatoes I planted from 4-packs didn't even produce a single ripe tomato! The best results came from those plants that were in 4" and 6" containers (so this year, 2009, I only bought 4" and 6" tomatoes). I ended up picking and ripening quite a few green tomatoes, as things were shutting down by early October.

The Summer of 2008 is now known by all local gardeners to have been one lousy growing season, one of the worst on record. Fortunately, that first season did not break me, as I regrouped and started with great visions of a bountiful 2009!

More to come...