6 Weeks after Planting Raised Garden Bed

Food Drying At Home the Natural Way, Over 300 Recipes, from Meats to Vegies & Fruits & Much Much more!Here I am again folks with some news on my raised garden beds.

I will add a few photos here so that you can see what a difference it makes to use Worm Juice for fertilizer and how quickly the Vegies grow.

Mine are a bit shaded from the afternoon sun at present, but they will soon get full sun.
However, it doesnt seem to make much difference to their growing capability.

Without further ado, here are my latest photos, you will be able to compare the dates by looking at the first pictures I put on regarding having finished the building of the raised garden beds.

Peace Rose. My 1st Bloom this year.

See what Growth comes just by adding some worm Juice.

Showing Lettuces among the potatoes
to keep using space available.

Only 6 weeks of lush growth.

Showing Worm Farm handily placed for
ease and quickness of use.

Marigolds planted among Vegetables.
Neat eh?

Lovely scrunchy leafy veges,
soon to be eaten. Yummy!

Showing Leeks, Lettuces and some Marigolds,
For Companion Planting.

1st Rose to open for me this season,
0n 10th October 2010

Garden is showing heads in the Broccoli now and also small cabbages, plus cauli heads beginning to show. Potatoes are in full flower and looking amazingly healthy.
That worm farm is really doing them great. Have used the juice twice now.

You can almost see them grow overnight when you add some extra wter to them. Its fabulous watching them.

I have another nifty little piece to add here to help you all along:
http://danncobay.jhw00.hop.clickbank.net/

And a look at my latest blog in Wordpress. Some real goodies there folks.

Video showing how to Make Raised Garden Beds

Putting some videos on these pages to explain some of the making of Raised Garden beds, saves me a bit of time, but also helps make the idea clearer for some that may not have thought about it before.

No matter how small your section may be, you can still have fresh home grown Vegetables!
Plant your potatoes in a rasied block of old tyres, stacked one on top of each other. Work your way around in a circle by putting one thry with a potato, then another tyre with a potato slightly further round than the previous one. Do this until you have about 5 or 6 tyres in place. This will allow you to have those lovely new potatoes for your Dinner without the "lovely new" Cost!!

All your lettuces can be grown in cheap round bowls about 18 to 26 inches across the top. They dont' need to be deep because Lettuce are shallow rooting. Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts, bokchoy etc can all be grown similarly. Pots or buckets, many of them second hand from neighbours who no longer have a use for them. all of them make ideal places to grow vegies when you have a small section, or apartment block.

Try it out, you will be surprised, not only by the lovely flavours you have grown yourself, but also the more money you now have in your wallet because you can go to your garden for those very costly vegies and some fruits.

I realize not everyone can grow large fruit trees, but there is the option of Dwarf fruit trees nowadays, and these are wonderful.
My very 1st one was a nectarine and although it looked very small as far as the head of the tree was concerned, there ended up being a total of 17 Nectarines in its very 1st season! So you see, even fruit tres can grow on your patio in a tub. Just keep them watered and fed as you would any other, and you too will have your own fruit.

enjoy it folks. Don't let lack of space stop your enjoyment of fressh fruit and vegetables from your very own garden.

Garden Collars - stackable modular Raised Garden Beds

Garden Collars - stackable modular Raised Garden Beds

Growing and Using Worm Farms for Fantastic Organic Growth!

In a recent post I spoke about how I have a worm farm for my garden. I am so thrilled with mine and the growth it makes in my garden I just have to come and tell you what it does for my garden.



The little Blue and Black box is my current worm farm.

 That small blue and black box holds my very first set of Tiger Worms and they are really getting through my scraps etc.
I will show you a new photo now of these 2 gardens less than 6 weeks after this photo was taken, and only 1 week after the 1st feeding with juice from the worms.
It made a huge difference. I deliberately kept my garden at the front of my home free of worm juice just for this time so everyone could see what a huge diference they make to your gardens.



Those worms are totally amazing!! The amount of kitchen food and cardboard or paper they get through is absolutely fantastic. They are so voracious.
I am truly lost ofr descriptive words. They do such a wonderful job. They turn all my kitchen waste into fantastic soil and mulch for my whole garden.
All they require is that I give them a bit of warmth, some rain at times, not too cold, and heaps of food scraps, and also approximately 1 3rd of their diet needs to be cardboard or paper.

You wouldn't guess it would you? They actually look like ordinary worms but they not at all. These are called Tiger Worms, or Red Wigglers in some parts of the Northern Hemsiphere.

I have succeeded in finding an excellent book regarding the growing and using of Worms for enriching your gardens.

It is called "The Business & Biology Of Raising Earthworms"
This book itemizes the types and their separate needs food wise etc.
It is truly a fascinating book.
Worm castings are what we receive for our gardens as they chomp their way through our left-overs.
You see there is a use for everything if we use it correctly.
Imagine how much less we would need i landfills if folks used even half their home scraps etc and amde good garden compost and mulch from it?

I never had much interest in worm Farming until a couple of years back when I dabbled at it and ahd a little go at it. I wasnt very successful, mainly becuase I was too hasty in my desire to get it going completely, and also didn't ask for advice either.
We really do need to know their requirements to be successful. Like any farming. (smile)

Forceful Insecticides and Pesticides--HomeMade Formulas!!

I have been doing some searching for the way to get rid of pests etc in my gardens. For some reason, (I wonder why), slugs and snails just love my new plants!!



These snails will make a real meal of your
young plants if you don't find a way of stopping them.













They really love munching on those fressh new leaves, but then again, so do we.
However, we do need to stop them otherwise we end up not succeeding in our efforts to grow our own vegetables.

This is not only foolishness, but wasteful from 2 angles.
Firstly it cost us to get the seeds or plants, then it is also going to cost us more to purchase that food in the coming months.

At last I have found a man online who really knows his "onions" as they say.
He's been gardening for more years than most would like to know about. :)

Click Here!

To buy this book will cost very little but what it will save you in pest control costs, and also save your vegetables to eat later, will far out-weigh its cost.

To find others similar to this or for further garden tips just pop into this spot.

there is a huge amount of pleasure in not only growing your own food for your table, but the taste is so much different to what you find in the Super-market.

Taste just does not have any comparison to home-grown vegies and fruit.

If you have any questions please feel free to comment or leave a question.
In the meantime enjoy youyr gardening as I do, even though I have had to get my Son to make mine raised garden beds now as I have an arthritic hip condition which makes it difficul to bend down.

Tomatoes Grow Well in Raised Garden Beds

Tomatoes Grow Well in Raised Garden Beds

Wow! Don't These Look Luscious!!

This is probably a very good assistant for you too. Get it while you can. I had quite a task finding this again and it really is good!

I have been searching recently for ways of using my new raised garden beds for growing tomatoes. With my raised beds there isn't a great deal of width for them as it is a small section.

However, I have recently come across a person who really knows how to make a home garden grow to perfection!

Gets one away from the chemical fertilizers etc, and also away from those ghastly insecticides and pesticides.

This is a Brilliant Book to describe all those little things we so easily forget when we are doing something like designing a new garden.

These books are extremely cost effective, becuase the information in them is always up to date. Gardens change over the years, but the ways of putting them together only differ with the people who are designing them.

Essentially they remain the same things to do each year.
When putting my own raised garden beds together this season, I became aware of having done something similar once before.

Make Raised Garden Beds

Swinging in the peace and tranquility of my garden.

I have been trying for a while now to get my thinking cap on and work out how to explain how we made our raised garden beds.

I absolutely love the peace and tranquility one gets sitting in a lovely peaceful garden wherever it may be planted, either city or country areas.

I don't think there is anything nicer or more calming to one's soul than to sit and listen to the birds, or watch as some of them seek the seeds left in the Summer sun.

Those birds have such pretty colours. Just like many of the flowers.

However, that doesn't give us any information regarding how to make raised garden beds.

They are not difficult at all, and many different types of  materials can be used.
For the ones we made this time we used corrugated iron which was discarded from someone's roof when they re-roofed their home.
We also had some used timber from someone else, plus some weed mat which had never been used, but came in very handy as a good lining in the raised garden beds, so that the soil didn't trickle out from some of the gaps in the corner of the frames.

These were put together very quickly with virtually no planning because I needed to get my seed potatoes in so they would be ready for our Christmas Dinner this year!

This picture will show you how little effort was put into the making of the raised barden beds, but also how very functional they can be.

The new beds before the weedmat was pinned down properly.

The three posts which are quite high, are there for the purpose of adding a small trellis to allow my scarlet runner beans to climb on as they grow. Saves putting in extra supports later.
As you can see there is a small blue coloured "box" in between the beds.

That is my Worm Farm which produces all the necessary nutrients for my gardens from the household left-overs.
They are called Tiger worms and they eat cardboard and paper as well as food scraps.
In fact I was taught by the people who have supplied them here in NZ for many years, that these Tiger Worms, require approximately one 3rd of their diet to be paper or cardboard.

Their "castings" which come about because they munch up all the household scraps, and the juice that also comes from them, are extremely valuable for your production of fruits and vegetables.

The castings can be put directly on your gardens to help fertilize and also build them up, and the juice gets taken from the lower box via a tap, then diluted at the rate of 1 part juice to 10 parts water.

If you have plenty of juice etc, and no  further need for more on your raised garden beds, then you should dilute it and sell it to folks in the neighbourhood.

They would be very glad of it because it is the one thing I have seen which really makes your garden grow.

It has an extra benefit for me, as I discovered last season, that by putting the juice, un-diluted, around the drip line of my tomatoes, that they didn't get tough skins! It made a huge difference to them. My neighbours found it worked for them too.

Of course if you decide to sell the pure juice you would need to price it a bit higher.

These are the sorts of things that happen
with flowers when using this lovely worm fertilizer.
They grow so much more robust and deeper colours.

These flowers here have sprung into bloom about 2 weeks earlier than usual, and the lovely thick solid stems on the Freesias in the blue tub, and the richness of the double yellow tulip, are a sight to behold.

The perfume from them is utterly glorious. You can no doubt realize they are some of my most favoured flowers!! :)

A little more to add re the raised garden beds, is that once we had the frames put together it only took 2and a half cubic metres of really good garden soil to fill the beds.

As to size they were, 2400mls x 810mls x 650mls.
I just rang the Topsoil people and asked how much I needed and they told me, then they also delivered it to me free of charge.

That means this season our vegetables are not going to be expensive like they were last year.
We had to buy everything last year as we live in rented accomadation. Not so this season.
We will provide our own.

I already have lettuces, brassicas, leeks, capsicums, carrots, potatoes, and tomato seeds planted. these will ready in about 80 to 90 days.

Some of them slightly less. we really look forward to the beautiful flavour of well grown home vegetables and fruits.

By using the left over corrugated iron from the roof, and the left over bits of timber and posts, we have created our raised gardens beds at almost no cost.

This is what you can do too in most places just by looking around your neighbourhood and seeking out the odds and bits you require.

You can make raised garden beds from almost any type of material. Just make sure it is strong enough to hold the soil in.

You need to be aware that the soil "settles" after a bit, meaning it looks like there is less in the garden almost. However, it is only because the garden has "settled". You just add a bit of mulch or extra compost or some more garden soil to fill it each season.

If you have a worm farm going as well, you will have enough soil being added from the "castings" of the worms.

I trust you will find this information useful, and that you can try your hand at making yourself a raised garden bed.

The raised garden bed built by my friend, already growing vegies.
Notice the frame work around it to carry the climibing beans
and tomatoes, also cucumbers etc.


This is another way of using whatever materials you have around to make your raised garden beds.

Go to it and enjoy yourselves as well as the rewards once your vegetables are ready to eat.