Mel's Progress @ 1.5 weeks

So my tomato plants have been in their 'forever spots' for 1 week and 4 days. The first week was disappointing... the tomatoes in the raised beds seemed to do nothing at all, apart from develop discoloured leaves and blow in the wind. I attributed this to root development - I had planted them to at least 6" up the stem.
Sure enough, after the first week I noticed a bit of improvement - especially with the "Amish Paste" variety I'm growing for canning. A little after 1 week I started to stake them, and the Yellow Bells and Japanese Black Triefel also grew tall enough to stake.
Today I put stakes up for all the vining tomatoes, and tied them all off, even the slower ones - I'm working in the city all week and didn't want to come home to snapped stems from an expected growth spurt (poor Tara!).
I did a little experiment and planted 2 x Bonny Best in containers and 1 in the raised bed, and 1 x Marglobe in a container and 2 x Marglobes in the raised beds. The container plants I planted pretty deeply, although probably not as deep as the ones in the raised beds. But the container plants seem to have adapted faster and started shooting upwards a lot quicker than the ones in the raised beds. I wonder if it is the soil temperature, or the fact that the soil is lighter in the containers (even my 'homemade' potting soil was basically my garden soil with lots of vermiculite added in).
The rain this week also has helped a lot - the raised beds got a thorough soaking (something I could not do given my limited water in the rain barrels, so only the plants themselves got a watering when I did it by hand). It's raining now, so they'll get another nice long drink.
Today I made a salad with radishes and onions, all from the garden. I don't really like salads much, but it was exciting to eat one that I had grown. Everything else is starting to progress - the peas are growing a lot quicker, the beans are popping up, and the peppers seem to have survived their transplant. The only losses I've had so far are 2 basil plants which have been eaten by something... 1 plant eaten two nights running. By daylight, the culprit has disappeared.
I hope that everyone else is enjoying their own success.

Tragedy

Tragedy has struck.

My promising Brookpact Tomato plant (standing about 2 feet high!) snapped in half yesterday. I came home to find it on the floor :( I am hoping that from the root (because its a big one) that it may regrow... does anyone know if this is possible?

On a positive note, I have more Cayenne pepper plants than I know what to do with! my Tiny patch of Herbs are doing well.. so well I think I am going to plant more this week!

I hope everyone else is having a successful time

Cheers

T

Planting out

Since the weather this week has been so hot where I live, I decided to plant out the tomatoes into their permanent beds. I planted the Brookpact, 1 x Marglobe Supreme, and 1 x Bonny Best into containers on the deck. I planted my 'bushier' varieties into 2' squares ( as per square foot gardening suggestions), so I have a 4' x 8' bed with Striped German, Marglobe, and Bonny Best in them. In the other beds, I planted (in 1' squares, again as per square foot gardening) my Amish Paste, Black Japanese Triefel, Hillbilly, Russian, Purple Russian, Purple Calabash, Opalka, San Marzano, and Yellow Brandywine.
The wind has been hard on them during their 'shock' period, so I put up some burlap around the windward beds, to provide a bit of respite. I've been watering them daily... the raised beds seem to dry out quicker than a normal garden bed (mine are 18" high) and by dinner time the soil around the tomatoes seems dry a couple of inches down (thanks, no doubt, to the wind). So far, they don't seem to be faring too badly - they're a bit shocked, but I've had no casualties yet (knock on wood).
I interplanted some marigolds, onions, and nasturtiums, to boost my chances against pests.
In my remaining squares I've been planting a wide range of beans (mostly bush varieties) and had some space for parsnips, carrots, and beets. I've left room for the peppers and basil, which are hardening off on the deck.
I hope that next year I will feel far more comfortable with my own abilities and the with the resiliance of plants.... so far I feel stressed out about doing things properly enough to give my guys a fighting chance.

Sunburned Seedlings

Yesterday a couple of the seedlings (from the second batch I started) showed some yellow/white on their leaves, which I thought was from the cold weather on Sunday night (as I posted earlier, I had left them in the unheated mud room overnight). Today there were more leaves and more yellow/white and so I quickly put them in a sheltered, shady spot (under our patio table on the deck) and ran to Google.

Google "sunburned tomato seedlings" and you get a lot of advice. It seems that I've sunburned some of the plants. How, I'm not sure - they've been hardening off for the better part of 2 weeks (although they were inside for 2 days last week when it was too cold and REALLY windy) but from the descriptions on the forums, they're sunburned.

Most of the advice on the forums was to bring them inside for a few days to recover, then start them again.

This batch of seedlings were 'gifts' I'd been growing for my dad (in Barrie) and for my mom (near Huntsville) and since they're in an area where the last frost date is May 31, I've got some time to repair the damage and still (hopefully) give them healthy plants.

There were quite a few people on the forum who grew their plants like Andrea - after they sprouted they were pretty much outside all day, and those people didn't have any sunburned plants at all.

I'm curious about the difference in progress between the 'outdoor' plants and the 'indoor'plants (who then have to harden off and get stressed). Do the outdoor plants thrive from day 1, even when the temperatures are between 5 and 15 degrees?

Because I was growing so many, it was hard to track the individual progress of the plants, so the sunburn got a bit out of control. But it seems that in my first year I'm fortunate to have a variety of struggles, enough to round-out my gardening experience.

Since we have the space, I was thinking that for next year I'll try a modified approach - I'm going to build a quasi-greenhouse space outside (made of glass, not plastic!) and put the plants out there at an early age, to get them accustomed to the UV but to protect them from the incessant wind out here.

At any rate... WARNING to those of you who are only starting to harden your plants off.... be careful the poor little guys don't fry. I did read on one forum that spraying Vit C on the plants might act as a sunscreen, but it sounded a bit much to me.

More hardening off struggles

I've taken my time hardening off my plants, because it is SO windy where I live. There is not a moment when there is not some kind of wind, and usually by mid-day the wind is powerful. I've been trying to get my plants acclimatized to the wind, after all they will have to live in it day in and day out. As a result, quite a few of the plants have 'injured' leaves, and few of them stand up very straight. I think that this will all be fine once I plant them in the ground, up to their first set of leaves so that they can develop strong (and deep) roots for anchoring.
I did a little experiment on Sunday. I knew that we were expecting frost that night, and so I planted 2 tomato plants that were not doing well at all (had not, in fact, thrived since day 1). I wanted to see if I could keep them alive through a frost. I used plastic ice cream containers over top of them, and put the containers on early enough in the evening that the air wasn't cool yet. When we took the containers off the next morning (the sun was coming up but the air was still cool) they looked as if they had survived, but after an hour it was obvious that they had frozen, despite the containers. I wondered if I had used cardboard or fabric (something with a bit more insulating power) would they have made it? I am not fretting about it - they were, after all, my 'sacrificial' experiment plants.
But what was also interesting was the marigolds. I had been leaving the marigolds out all night for weeks, and had planted them in the ground on Sunday (it was pretty warm, despite the wind). I was worried about them in the frost, so I covered them with plastic water bottles (bottoms cut off). I ran out of water bottles (I've been collecting them to use as container self-waters) and so used yogurt containers, juice containers (the cardboard type) and one cardboard box. When I took the 'frost protectors' off the next morning, they all seemed to be fine. But just as with the tomatoes, after 1 hour all but 1 of the marigolds was dead - obviously frost bitten. The one that survived had been in a plastic container (there goes my theory about plastic not insulating). But what was strange was that they had started off alive and well and only died after being exposed to the sun. So, I wondered if it is a combination of the cold ground and weak early morning sun which did them in.
I had over-nighted my tomato plants in the mud room, which is uninsulated - to expose them to cold nights but without the possibility of frost. A few of the plants have developed white blotches on their leaves, which I'm guessing is from the cold.
But yesterday we had to go to Home Depot so I went to the Gardening Centre and looked at their plants - I saw some evidence of the white blotches on a couple of plants (although not nearly as many as with mine, but their growing conditions are a lot better, being protected in the greenhouse) but not as much evidence of wind exposure (again, happy greenhouse). I did notice that their tomato plants are a lot fuller than mine -but I'm growing mine without benefit of chemical nitrogen (or any other artificial fertilizer) and I'm certainly not growing hybrid varities conditioned to all look but no substance. I'm looking forward to seeing the end result (ie the yummy tomatoes) to see how they stack up to their big box cousins.
Anyway, the weather is supposed to turn today so I'll be putting the tomatoes in the ground likely by Thurs or Fri. I expect they'll love being able to stretch their roots.

My Mother in Laws Plants

My Mother In Law Peggy lives In Barrie....

She has planted her plants inside/ outside in pots that she can bring in at night, and her Bean, Kale, Peas and tomatoes are all growing well and strong... She has had no such luck with either of her peppers (lipstick and Fish) Barrie temperture is definetly a bit colder then in the GTA so she has been only bringing her plants outside when there is a full sun.

I will up load her pictures when I head back to the city after the long weekend.

(and I am going to try and get her started on this blog with her own account, she is just a bit timid)

I will keep you updated regardless..

Andrea

Free is great

Free plants are WONDERFUL plants. Of course the kind that provides food are even more fabulous, but a few free hostas and bleedinghearts and irises are exciting.
Free SOIL is PERFECT SOIL and so perhaps think about composting in your backyard (or under your sink with worms, if you're a keener). You can buy a composter at the municipality offices (or go to your local Earth Day hosted by your MPP) or buy one at Lee Valley. OR you can build one (fancy or plain, they both work). Then you can divert all your non-meat products (including dairy, milk and grease)out of the greenbox, include a lot of your paperstuff (paper towels, toilet paper rolls etc) and toss it into the composter with the leaves you rake up, the grass you clip (or mow if you have that much lawn?) and any other yard waste. Water it if it gets dried out, turn it once in a while (if you feel like it) and by next summer you will have gorgeous FREE soil to put next year's tomato crops into.
If you are lucky to be friends with a farmer (or a farmer's kid) you could probably get free manure....

Worms

When people (or books or magazines) talk about digging new beds, they don't talk about the worms. Or the killing / maiming / dismembering of worms to be precise.
The soil where we live is mostly clay. This means that while plants hate it (because it is too hard / gummy / thick to bury roots into), worms love it. I am not kidding when I say that there must be about 100 worms per square foot of our property. So, to build a bed (which involves cutting through sod, then digging up clay to amend it with things that plants will like) I have to dig up or hurt dozens of worms per shovelful.
My friend Lucinda is giving me a truckload of plants that she is dividing out of her garden. This means a new bed for them. I decided to dig into the sod and make a more traditional bed (ie not 18" on top of the ground, which is what I did for the veggies) to house them. I have some peat moss and vermiculite already, so I picked up a couple of bags of compost and topsoil, and got to work digging out the lawn.
I am having a really hard time about the worms. I know it sounds crazy, but I don't really want to hurt them, especially when I know how beneficial they are to the garden. I'm not sure how to go about digging the next level up, without doing more damage. I'm almost inclined to just rip out the sod and lay in the other stuff on top without digging it in, hoping the worms that I've kept alive will do their job and work it all in as a thank you.

More about hardening off

I've been nurturing my tomato and pepper plants for about 8 weeks now, and when I say nurturing I mean that they have been influencing my lifestyle for almost 2 months. As an example, since I've been using the flourescent lights I've had to make sure I'm home to turn the lights off approximately 16 hours after I turn them on. This means that I haven't been able to spend nights away from home without relying on Max to flick the switch or add water. So I've been looking forward to hardening them off.
I moved the 1st batch out into the living room & dining room in front of south-facing windows about 3 weeks ago when the 2nd batch of seedlings needed the space under the flouros. I thought that this would also be a good introduction to the transition to outside - no more consistant, reliable light. One lesson I've learned though - DON'T LET YOUR PLANTS BECOME CROWDED. Since my space was limited, the plants were bunched together and so have grown a bit taller than I think they ideally should have.
Last week I started to introduce the 1st batch to the outdoors. I started in about 1 1 /2 hour increments, and tried to start them in a shady spot. Since I've started to harden them off, though, I've noticed that the taller plants have suffered more - some of them seem to be prone to wilting. I fed them some worm poo in an effort to boost their strength, and Max suggested I try to spray them with mist to help keep their moisture up. I transplanted some of the larger plants from the 4" pots to bigger 6" pots, in case they were too root bound to transition well. But they still seem to have been struggling.
Yesterday it was overcast and not overly windy, just a bit cool. I put them all outside, sheltered from the sun (when it managed to cut the cloud cover) and from the prevailing wind. I left them outside for about 2 hours. When I brought them in, some of the plants had leaves which seemed slightly crisp along the outer edge. This was generally confined to the bigger leaves - the newer leaves seemed to be alright. I misted them when I brought them back in, to replenish the moisture they might have lost in the cool wind.This morning they are still upright and dark green, but I can see that a few are going to lose some of the bigger leaves. The smaller plants seem to have dealt with the conditions better.
I'm not sure what is causing the distress (which seems a bit more obvious than I had expected) - perhaps I've been too diligent about watering them, not diligent enough about watering them, perhaps their pots are too small, or maybe this is just normal. I've been reading up on 'hardening off' and nowhere does anyone describe the process the plants go through while you're hardening off. They describe how to do it insofar as "put them in a sheltered spot and gradually introduce them to the sun", and they vary on how quickly or harshly to do it. But they don't mention water before or after their exposure, or what will happen to the plants as they acclimatize or what to do if they seem to be suffering.
Perhaps I'm just being an overprotective nurturer, after all these weeks of basking in the glow of my great plant growth. Likely I don't know enough. Most certainly I don't know enough. And I know that they are not dying and that I'm being far too dramatic about a few plants showing signs of struggle - even if a couple of them fail, there are plenty to take their place.
But I think that I should have started hardening off the bigger plants earlier. I will start to harden off batch 2 MUCH sooner. I also have noticed that of all the varieties that I've started, there are 3 that are now causing a bit of grief:
AMISH PASTE (of which I grew quite a few so we will be able to can lots) grew aggressively tall quickly, and now they are too tall for their pots and having a hard time with hardening off
OLPAKA - which I've struggled to even grow into healthy plants as it is and now they don't have the strength to harden off successfully
HILLBILLY - the plants that I kept in smaller pots seem to be doing alright, but the plants that I upgraded to yogurt containers (which grew faster than their counterparts) now have the same issue as the Amish Paste - while they are bigger they seem to be shocked more easily.

Perhaps that is the trick to hardening off (assuming you are raising your plants indoors full time) - don't let the plants get too big or tall (this would begin with not letting your plants get overcroweded to begin with or letting them get leggy from stretching to a window). I would have thought that a bigger plant would be stronger and therefore able to withstand the challenges of hardening off, but it almost seems they are bigger sucky babies.

I would be really interested (and comforted) in knowing if anyone else notices physical changes in their plants as they harden off, apart from the strengthening of the stem etc. Or advice! If anyone has some tips, or reassurances about the process, I'm eager to hear them!

How much food can you grow?

I wouldn't say that I go out and buy radishes on a regular basis. But I grew some radish sprouts and I can't even describe how TASTY they were - slightly spicy and so 'fresh' tasting. So when I decided to indescriminantly broadcast some radish seeds in a window box, I thought I'd see how microsprouts taste. As they've been growing, I snip off the top of one or the other to thin them, and then I eat those little leaves. They are YUMMY! I think I'm going to devote 2 pots on my deck just to radish sprouts - growing them only for the leaves. And I also bought a package of broccoli seeds for the same thing. I don't have the space (or the inclination) to grow my own broccoli this year, but I think that broccoli sprouts must taste great. So another 2 pots will go to sprouting broccoli.
You might give microsprouting a try - I just used those green plastic rectangular window boxes that you can pick up anywhere. Just plant the seeds, cover thinly with soil and water. Once they have grown to an inch or two high, snip some leaves off to the soil and try them. Add them to sandwiches or salads ( I haven't tried cooking them) or anywhere else you'd like a burst of flavour.
In the interest of companion planting, I'm going to grow some nasturtiums with my tomatoes. Nasturtium flowers are edible - peppery and interesting. Nasturtiums are also great to grow with tomatoes as companion plants.
If you've become confident with your tomato growing prowess, think about planting beans! Beans get planted around the same time as you put your tomatoes out, and they are direct seeded (which means that you can decide to do this now!). You can easily grow them in pots on your balcony or in your backyard, or you can grow them in the ground. There are some really interesting heirloom varieties available - as wax, pod or for drying. And most beans will keep producing until the frost if you keep harvesting them. With pole beans they grow UP as opposed to OUT, so you can save on space and still add some homegrown fresh vegetables to your dinner (or for snacking on when you are outside).
You might be able to successfully harvest more food from your available space than you thought was possible.

herbs

I also decided to get some seeds from Can Tire... I wanted to do some Basil, Oregano, Sage, and Rosemary, they are Mackenzie seeds and could be horribly wrong and full of crap but I didn't see anything bad on- line, so I decided to do some planting... i planted the whole lot in different big square pots outside, (a week and two days ago) I brought them in for the first time tonight because of the cold..

The basil is already growing strong.. the rest hasn't happened yet...

my guess..

I think because I grew up thinking plants will survive if you give them the basics, I still have that idea stuck in my head... I love how nurturing others have been with their plants..

I grew up on a farm so all these other blog ideas are great for my learning curve!!!!

Jiffy pots

my jiffy pots did little.. although I have never used them before, so I think I might have been too harsh with them, I have always just grown most things from seed in pots or germinated them wet in paper towel and transported them to pots when sprouted... so I probably didn't follow directions very carefully on the jiffy pots.. I wouldn't use them again personally....

Also, I have all my seedlings outside since the beginning of april, I think its very important to introduce them early to wind, rain and sun.. so they can become strong and healthy..

so far everything has been adjusting fine and getting big like weeds... (except my lipstick plants that never happened for me)

Can't wait to plant them in their forever homes!!!!

Its very well spring!!

Hi all!!!!

Since the middle of April I have had all my enviro-pots outside most days/nights as long as the temperature has been above 10 degrees.. my Red Kale is growing out of the pots and is itching to be planted, but tonight is going down to 2 degrees, so I am going to bring them in one last time...

and plant them this week permanently outside in my beds...

I have all my plants growing except the lipstick pepper, I just cannot seem to get it to grow..

has anyone had luck with the lipstick pepper????

Transplanting Cheat Sheet

For those of us who started our seeds in early April, it's getting close to the magical day of transplanting outside. The general rule of thumb for the 'safe' time to plant (ie all danger of frost has passed) is the May 2-4 weekend. With 2+ weeks to go, here are some last to-do's:
1) if your plant is in a small pot still, "From Seed to Table" recommends transplanting up to a 6" pot. To do this, water the seedling well and then tranplant it into a larger pot (it can have container soil in it, if you don't have any soilless mix left). Water well again, although don't drown them.
2) Prepare your final spot for your plants. If this is going to be a container, get it now. If you are using an unorthodox container (such as 5 gal bucket like a Home Depot bucket) instead of a purchased container, make sure that you drill plenty of drainage holes in the bottom so that the roots won't drown after a heavy rain or watering. Make sure your container is as big as you can find - the more soil the slower it dries out, and the stronger the root system is. Make sure the soil you use is designed for containers - regular garden soil is too compact and won't drain properly (plus it makes the roots work harder). You can get container soil anywhere. NOTE: I have read that it is ideal to have soilless container mix for vegetables because it keeps the soil light and well-drained. If you are planting in a garden bed, make sure you prepare the soil - dig in lots of compost (you can buy this by the bag) and add in some manure (horse, sheep or cow as long as the bag is listed 'weedless'... I used manure from a friend's farm and have lots of little weeds cropping up). If you have a composter, you can use any compost that is ready. You can also consider warming up your garden bed by covering the spot with some clear plastic or a cold frame to get the soil warmer quicker.
3) Get ready to support the vines. Except for those people growing "Brookpact" and "Whippersnapper", you should expect your plant to grow tall enought to need some support. The support keeps the tomatoes off the ground and easier to pick. I wouldn't rely on those metal cones that you can buy as some tomatoes do grow up to 6' (don't panic if you don't have that height, you can trim them down but that will be a future post). You can buy bamboo stakes at 6' tall for a couple of dollars, or use any kind of sturdy pipe or wood you have lying around. Make sure that the stake isn't going to fall over in a high wind, though. There are lots of pretty 'tomatoe stake' options in gardening centres if you are inclined to spend the money.
4) Start to harden them off. If you haven't been exposing your plants to the elements, you will want to start now. Take them outside when the weather is nice, but gradually expose them! So, start on Day 1 (warm and sunny day with little wind) in a lightly shaded area for a couple of hours. Then gradually move them out into the sun for longer periods of time. If you are working and can't accomplish it during the day, you might try to get them acclimatized on the weekends and perhaps put them out after work if it is still warm and sunny. DON'T LEAVE THEM OUT WHEN THE TEMPERATURE DROPS. They are still pretty fragile. I have been nervous even to let mine out on a sunny day when it is still cool... but I might be overprotective. Gradually you will be able to leave them out all day (bringing them in at night) but work up to this. You don't want to have worked this hard at nurturing your plants only to have them die from exposure. Tomatoes are heat lovers!

Next post will be all about feeding.

Hardening Off Part 1

Yesterday it was sunny and not too windy (which is unusual for our neck of the woods) so I put my first batch of tomatoes and peppers out for a little hardening off. I watered them first and then put them into a bit of shade alongside the deck lattice where they would be slightly protected. They seemed to tolerate the conditions well (I left them out for 1 1/2 hours) so today I'm going to put them out again for a longer period. I know it's a pretty bad picture ( I took it on my phone's camera) so apologies.

Since I've tried to incorporate a few 'methods' in my experiment, I have started to see some interesting results:
1) all my tomato seeds were started in Jiffy pellets, and sprouted using a heat mat. I had about 90% germination.
2) in the 1st batch (what I'm growing for our garden) I transplanted the seedlings after the 1st true set of leaves into small 2" jiffy pots. Then once they seemed to outgrow those pots I transplanted them upwards again. Some I planted into medium sized 4" plastic pots (recommended by my guy at Tregguna seeds - I posted about this a while ago) and some I planted into used plastic tubs (recycled rice pudding containers!!). The transplants into the tubs seem to be, overall, sturdier than the ones in the shorter, smaller pots. The idea behind the 4" pots was to keep the plants slightly rootbound so they wouldn't stretch too high (and therefore outgrow the light shelf) but it seems that they have grown taller anyway and yet don't have the root base to keep their stems strong. I could be wrong about it, but the plants in the yogurt /margarine tubs seem sturdier some how.
3) for my 2nd batch of tomatoes (one's I've grown to give away) I transplanted them right from the Jiffy pellet into 5" plastic pots that I salvaged from our local nursery (and when I say salvage I mean I took them from the garbage). I transplanted them right into 'container soil' that had sea compost as part of it. Those plants seem to be doing really well, also. They are only 2" high right now (so it will be interesting to see how their stems fare) but I wanted to bypass the intermediate transplant by putting them into their final containers right away. They started off looking pretty small in the big pots, but they've been growing quite rapidly.
I think that next year I will forget about the 4" pots and just plant them into 5" or 6" pots anyway. I ended up not having enough space under the lights anyway and so once the seedlings were about 3" tall they were moved and have been living in a south-facing window, hence keeping them root bound wasn't an issue after all. The only good thing about the stretching that the plants in the 4" pots have done is that there is a lot of stem to bury when I eventually do plant them out. Apparently if you plant the tomato plant deeply, burying the stem up to the 1st set of leaves, the part of the stem that is under ground will sprout roots and make the plant stronger for it.



To the left are the bigger tubs and to the right are the medium sized 4" plastic pots that are convenient but which I don't think support the plant stem as much.

Early Garden Progress

I spent the week away from home, working in the city. Before I left, my 'early' garden was still dark and free of any cheerful spots of green. I'm pretty sure that Max must have gotten tired of me asking about first about the tomato plants and then about the peas. I had planted the peas, beets, radishes,onions and salad on April 19, and had been expecting shoots at any moment.

By Wed the 29th (so 10 days later), the radishes and salad had sprouted. By Thurs the 30th the peas had barely started to poke through and as of yesterday the peas were looking promising. I haven't had 100% germination of the peas yet (I started with 32 seeds, following the 'Square Foot Gardening' spacing and so far have 22 sprouts) I'm hoping that some of the duds might be just 'slow starters'.

Inside the house, my 1st batch of peppers and tomatoes are almost big enough to go outside, but I'm still uncertain as to the weather. I'm going to start hardening them off, and then perhaps plant them next weekend (May 9, which might seem early to Toronto, but out here our last frost date is earlier). The Square Foot Gardening book has some suggestions for protection, should they be in the ground and a frost expected.

I don't know if I mentioned that last weekend we went to a friend's farm and got about 1 1/2 yards of horse manure (we transported it all in IKEA bags, which goes to show how useful those big blue bags can be) and yesterday we bought 3 yards of garden soil to finish the raised beds. That might seem like a lot of soil, but we are building 5 beds at 4'x8', and 2 beds at 2' x 16'. A lot of soil is required. We picked it up on the trailer in these pre-filled

bags - each bag is 1 yard. You might wonder how the soil gets

from the bag on the trailer to the raised bed? IKEA BAGS! We don't have a bobcat or anything so useful as that, and the wheel barrow is too short for just dumping the load into the bed, so I resorted to filling up the 'manure' bags and carting it over to the bed. I'm not sure that the 3 yards will be enough, but it is certainly an ambitious start. If you are planning a bed of any considerable size, I would highly recommend the bulk option. Each yard (which fills 100 sq ft at 1") cost us $49.99. If we had bought it loose (which requires a pickup truck or enclosed trailer) it would have been about $30. Still, 15L ( or one little bag) of the same soil can be between $2 and $5 (depending on whether you buy organic or not). Once I calculated in the cost of my beds, I've really only spent $250 for it all... I had to spend about $100 to build my 'early garden bed' because I hadn't gotten to our friends farm and the bulk soil wasn't available yet so commercial bags it was. But the final 3 yards came to $150, and if I don't include the gas we used up getting to Lindsay, that was all we have had to buy so far. Once we build our compost boxes, we shouldn't have to buy soil ever again.

Final note - the garden soil came with peat moss in it, and I have yet to find any commercial soil that is peat moss free. Has anyone come across any mixes that don't have it?

Have fun getting your containers and beds read for planting!