There are a lot of good reasons for box gardening.
1. Bad soil ! This was a biggie for me. For years, we put tons of additives into our garden, new top soil, peat humus, perlite, manure, - only to find that no matter what we did, a month into the growing season, after intense sun and rain, the soil had once again turned into the same concrete that we started with. And while we are on this subject,
do not add sand ! This, I have since learned, simply fills in the holes and cracks in the clay and forms an even harder more compact soil. A couple of good sites to visit here are,
http://www.theinformedgardener.com and
http://www. improve-your-garden-soil.com/index. html.
2. Limited Space Even if you don't have the space for a big tilled garden, or you don't want to sacrifice a hunk of your yard, most of us can find a spot for a box garden or two. And, the good news is, if you decide you don't want it anymore or you move, you can turn the soil back into grass and take the box with you.
3. Economics Gardening can be very expensive. With a box garden, you can avoid the expense of buying a tiller. With a tilled garden, you end up adding additives to the rows between the actual plants (where only the weeds benefit). When gardening inside the box, you can control where y0u put your new amended soil, fertilizer, pesticides ect. You can also plant your veggies closer together, since you don't need to leave that area between the rows.
4. Maintenance I keep my garden boxes all about 4x8 so that I can reach across them to weed and pick produce. It is much easier to circle the box once a week and pull out a few weeds than to hoe those long endless rows. Since I have enough to trim around in my yard, I mulch around the boxes with wood chips (many times you can actually get these free from downed trees in you community). This keeps things looking neat, and keeps your feet clean when picking or weeding. Do not put these chips around the actual plants. New wood chips still contain sap that can harm the plants, so they say, and besides, you don't want wood chips in your new soil. You can put black cloth landscaping mulch under the chips, but I'm cheap and usually use newspapers which work pretty well.
5. Keeping plants separated There are instances where certain plants need special care in the way of soil additives, fertilizers, watering ect. Since, for the most part, your veggies are separated, they can receive individual care. And, in the event of bug attack, they can be quarantined.
Getting Started Building the Boxes
When my son and I started box gardening, I was concerned with finding the inexpensive route when it came to supplies. He was more concerned with the materials we bought. We were both on the same track. Try and find inexpensive, non pressure treated fence boards for the sides of your box. Years ago the pressure treated boards were treated with arsenic to make them more weather-resistant. They did away with the arsenic a few years ago, but pressure treated boards still contain chemicals that can actually leach into
the soil. They are perfectly harmless when used for decks ect., but the verdict is still out on whether they are harmful to soil used for growing food. The good news is, the less treated the wood, the cheaper it should be. We make our boxes about 4x8, so there will be some cutting to do for the end pieces.
In the corners, we used wooden stakes, (the ones with pointed ends that you can purchase in a bundle) and nailed the side boards to them so the pointed end is under the box frame pointing down at the corners. This is something to nail too, and when pounded down, each corner stake anchors your box to the ground. The boards can be painted to help preserve the wood, but I wouldn't use any other wood preservative.
Digging In
Before you put your garden box in place, you need to edge out the perimeter of the interior dimensions of the box, spade it up, and get rid of the sod on top that has all the grass growing in it. This is much easier to do before you put the box in place.
Once this is done, you need to go back to the garden center, and, if you don't already have good soil, buy some. I started out with several bags of top soil, peat humus, and cow manure. (Don't worry, it doesn't smell). None of these are expensive, unless you opt to go for the higher end, fertilizer added, soil. I don't, because I usually use a liquid spray fertilizer several times a month anyway.
Once you work this new mix into your box, you are pretty much ready to grow. You may have to add more of these each year for awhile, since it tends to settle, but after awhile, you will have the soil you want. I take a lesson from the farmers around here and rotate my crops each year.
PL ANTING
The fun comes in when you get to decide what to plant. Of course, when you plant depends on the zone you are in, or the way the season unfolds in your area. There are times in Ohio when you could safely plant in March, and other times when you should wait until the middle of May. If you are unsure of your area, go to the National Gardening Association homepage Hardiness Zone Finder at
http://www.garden.org/zipzone/.
Obviously, you won't get a winter's worth of potatoes from a box garden, or a bumper crop of sweet corn, but I have grown both.
Personally, my favorite potatoes to grow are Kennebec or Kathadin, which seem to keep better.
If you are unfamiliar with planting seed potatoes, you just cut them into pieces, each containing an eye, plant them about six inches deep, and about eight inches apart in little mounds. Later, when they start to grow, you mound more soil up around each plant to keep your new potatoes from peeping through the surface and becoming sunburned.
Veggies like potatoes, lettuce, onions and peas can be planted very early, usually in March around here, unless you have a late snow).
Our person favorites are lettuce, onions, (white and yellow), tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green peppers, green beans, and squash. I also have one box devoted to strawberries.
Half of a box garden planted with lettuce will keep you in salad for quite awhile. Lettuce loves cool weather, grows fast, and, will keep right on growing after you cut off what you need. I plant the Burpee Looseleaf Blend, which is a mixture of Black Seeded Simpson, Red Salad Bowl, Royal Oak Leaf, Lolla Rossa and Salad Bowl. This makes a beautiful, colorful salad. The fresh
young leaves are best, and will go on for a long time. As the summer heats up, the larger leaves become tougher and more bitter, but a second crop can be planted in early fall.
If you like zucchini and haven't grown it before, be aware that a little goes a long way. The first year I grew it, I planted about fifteen plants, and had enough to feed an entire town. A couple of plants will keep most families in plenty of zucchini. While it's fun to see if you can get a zucchini the size of a baseball bat, (and you can), they are best used when smaller. The older ones tend to be tough and too seedy. These vines like to travel, so as they start to grow, I try to move them around a little to keep them contained in their boxes.
Unless you want to put up stakes or wire for your beans to climb on, I recommend the bush variety green beans, which are compact and can be grown close together. I usually go with Kentucky Wonder or Tenderpod.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are some of our favorites since we got interested in all the heirloom varieties. Heirlooms are the old varieties that have survived through the years by being passed down through families and groups who try to maintain a pure, old time, tomato. The school of thought for heirloom seed fans of any veggie group is that they taste better. I personally think they do.
While hybrids were developed to produce disease and drought resistance primarily, we have never had any trouble with the heirlooms.
There are virtually hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of tomatoes, and, it's not uncommon for us to have ten or fifteen different ones growing in one season. The colors and shape of these range from the small paste to the huge slicing tomato, and from bright red to pink, purple and even striped. The beauty here is that when you run out of your box garden area tomatos can be grown easily in large plastic or clay pots.
My favorite has to be Brandywine. There are dozens of varieties of Brandywine tomatoes, most of which are prolific growers and will give you tomatoes the size of softballs. These are wonderful for sandwiches, or just plain eating, or making juice and sauces.
Through the years, we have grown other heirlooms such as Hillbilly, Mr. Stripey, Mortgage Lifter and a few of the black, or purple varieties such as Cherokee Purple.
Tomatoes need a lot of sun, and support. You will need to put them inside cages, or stake and tie them since they will be tall and heavy.
