Grow Your Own – The Things Around The Middle
by John Weckerle
In our previous article, Grow Your Own – The Thing In The Middle, we showed the initial construction of the two-level, circular bed for vegetables and flowers, now designated as Bed 4. Since then, we’ve completed the setup and planted the bed.
Round bed showing soaker hose
Our first photo this morning serves the purpose of illustrating the soaker hose placement. The upper layer has a single circle of hose, while the lower – which is wider and supporting more plants – has two. A couple of tips for working with soaker hose: 1) leave it out in the sun for a bit to soften it up before placement, which makes it easier to work with; and 2) use some inexpensive landscape staples to hold it in place as you work your way around/through your project. In this photo (taken May 7), a few of the colder-weather varieties are already in the ground and awaiting mulch. Now that things have warmed up, we’ve added some of the other veggies, as shown in the second photo, taken this morning.
Bed 4, mulched and planted
The bed now contains the following:
- Red cabbage
- Bell peppers
- Eggplant
- Cauliflower
- Zucchini
- String beans (Blue Lake bush variety)
- Kale
- Chard
- Letuce
- Snow peas
- Coreopsis
- Penstemon
- Trumpet vine
Once things fill in a bit, we anticipate a lush view of foliage, flowers, and food from the deck.
Still alive and awaiting planting are tomatoes, dill, basil, yellow squash, more zucchini, cucumbers, more bell peppers, oregano, rosemary, spearmint, Brussels sprouts, string beans (Blue Lake and Maxibel). Where will they go? Well, if we can get it done in the next week or two, they’ll go into Bed 5. But that’s another story…