Grow Your Own – The Thing In The Middle
Circular bed for vegetables and flowers.
by John Weckerle
Well, it wouldn’t be Spring here at New Mexico Central if we weren’t trying to come up with new and interesting ways to grow things that – we hope – will end up taking a trip through our digestive systems. This week, we began work on a new type of bed, this time one that we adapted from something we saw in Sunset Magazine. It’s a two-tiered, sort-of-circular bed that is intended not only to produce vegetables, but also to provide some ornamental value. In our version, we used 5.5-inch tall, wood-grained, plastic edging (the Sunset version used corrugated aluminum, which also looked good, but we saw the plastic first and thought it would look nice). There were other, somewhat less expensive edgings, but we liked this one because it was taller than most – also, it contains a good bit of recycled plastic.
Senior Gardening Correspondent Wilson and his crew waited until after lunch to get started. With the help of Assistant Editor Lucy, we did a “quick and dirty” (get it?) layout, and then your editor began digging. Using a turning fork, we loosened up the soil around the central feature to a diameter of about 9 feet and a depth of 8 inches to a foot, give or take a bit, breaking up dirt clods as we went along (we’ve got a bit of clay in the ol’ New Mexico Central soil). We then turned in two bales of peat moss and one bag each of steer manure and composted cotton burr, first turning in one bale of peat moss, and then doing another turn with the rest. Why the multiple turns? Well, for one thing, it helped further break up the clods. For another, this helped us achieve a nice, even mix of native and organic material.
Now, this wasn’t quite enough organic material, but we’re not exactly done yet. Our next step, just before laying out the soaker hose, will be to turn in the fruits of our composter’s Winter/Spring labors. Then we’ll start planting vegetables and flowers. Flowers like coreopsis, salvia, and others will help draw bees and hummingbirds, the former of which will be a great help in pollination. Things like kale, chard, red cabbage, lettuce, rhubarb and others will provide plenty of foliage, and some tomatoes toward the back will add to the vertical interest provided by the Thing In The Middle.
And what is the Thing In The Middle? It’s an old, long-dead juniper that was terminated as part of our defensible space thinning years ago. After it was fully and demonstrably deceased, it became a natural trellis for a trumpet vine which, assuming it survived the winter, will now rise up from a lush – and tasty – understory. We hope!
One Response “Grow Your Own – The Thing In The Middle”
Nifty, going to be lovely … always delighted to see the seasonal return of “Grow Your Own.” I’m sharing this with iCreate and the Mountainair Community Garden.