Raised Garden Bed

Gardening is never really done. There is always something that has to be done to improve things or maybe it's just me wanting to play around in the garden. In the two pictures above, you will notice that the last terraced bed at the bottom of the garden has only 1 layer of hollow blocks. The top of this raised bed is lower by 6 inches from the surface of the walkway above it as shown in the picture above.  So what I did is to put another layer of hollow blocks on top of the original ones to make a two-layer hollow blocks in this raise this bed. This makes the height of this raised bed into 16 inches high from its original height of 8 inches only. It also means that I could plant some root crops such as Carrots in this raised bed when I do my crop rotation because it now has enough room for the roots to grow. The pictures below is the result of this latest work that I have done in the garden, that of increasing the height of the raised bed. You can see the difference of the older hollow blocks at the bottom of the bed as compared to the new addition on top of it.

Maybe I will start sowing my seeds by mid November so I will be able to put them out in the garden by December. Since it takes much longer for Celery seeds to germinate, I will have to start sowing my Celery seeds by October. I harvested a lot of Basil, Parsley and Celery in the garden today and fed these to the rabbits. Some are still in the garden but I will have to gather them all before the typhoons come and destroy the plants completely.  I also harvested the last tomatoes in the patio so that my work for tomorrow. I am thinking of transferring some of the Basil plants from the garden into these big tomato pots and put them under the awning so they will not become water logged if left alone in the garden beds. I'll see how the weather holds tomorrow because there is a storm coming although it is not expected to land in the Philippines but we still get a lot of rain as a result of this storm. 

Tomatoes in the patio

I planted some tomato seedlings in the garden and they were all growing so well with thick and robust stalks until they got attacked by some blight and everything had to be destroyed. Knowing that I would get the same result if I planted tomato seedling in the garden, so decided not to do it. Instead, I bought several big plastic pots at ACE hardware ( SM mall Baguio) and used these to plant the new tomato seedlings that I've sown from seeds. I had them growing in pots at the foot of the garden right in front of the rabbitry until I decided to transfer them to the patio. The sun hits the patio from 9 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon so the plants will get 8 hours of direct sunlight. I tried something different as well by using an old tea kettle with a long spout in watering the plants at the base without getting the leaves wet so they do not get diseased. I also pruned the bottom leaves so they are not touching the soil in the pot and the energy is concentrated in producing more fruits. It worked this time as the tomatoes grew well and were very productive! So from now on, I will plant my tomatoes  in the patio and I will buy more plastic pots for the next planting season.

 

Nothing really beats the taste of freshly picked vine-ripened organically grown tomatoes! Whenever I needed some tomatoes for my cooking or making sandwiches or pasta, I just go out and pick them right from the vine. My hubby and I enjoyed many a scrumptious meals with these tomatoes this summer. I had a good harvest of tomatoes this afternoon for making the sauce of my chicken creole recipe including a piece of bell pepper, some celery stalks and basil tops from the garden and all of these went into the pot together with my tomatoes. The result was wonderful according to my hubby who liked what I served for dinner tonight. There are still some unripened fruits in the vine but I will be gathering them soon before they get damaged by the rain. It is now the onset of the rainy season here in the Philippines so I will not be planting again until the next season. My plan is to start sowing my seeds sometime around the middle of October so I could transplant them in December. I don't have a green house yet so I could not raise tomatoes or other vegetables in the garden during the rainy season. We get a lot of rainfall here in Baguio City during the rainy season so it is best to just let the garden rest during this time. As the saying goes "time fly when you're having fun" and I did have a lot of fun with my gardening this summer.I hope you enjoy the pictures of my tomatoes.

Adding Another Raised Bed

I got so hooked up in my gardening that I wanted to add another raised bed where I could grow more vegetables.  It's just that we do not have too much space in our small backyard so this is how I managed to gain another space to make an additional raised bed. Just above the last raised bed in the garden is a 14-inch wide cemented walkway that leads to the outdoor aviary and right beside this walkway is a flat area as shown in the picture below. Next to this walkway is a 4 feet wide and 6 feet long space where I built a temporary chicken coop and chicken run for a hen and her chicks. This hen was too aggressive to live with the rest of the flock so she had to be separated and this temporary coop and run was built for that purpose. We later transferred the hen house in another area at the back of my brother's house where they get some protection from the elements specially during the rainy season. We then covered up this vacated area with some broken clay pots and gravel as you can see in the picture below.

This vacated area is about 12 feet wide from the edge of the cemented walkway to the wall of my brother's house and it is 10 feet in length. Leaning against the wall of my brother's house is a wooden stand that is 3-feet wide at the base and tapering to 1-feet wide at the top and it is 5 feet high. This wooden stand is where we store several containers of 5-galloon  drinking water and  some cooking gas tanks. Right in front of this wooden stand is a 5-feet wide gravel walkway as shown in the picture below. Next to this walkway where the chicken coop used to stand is where I planned on making another raised bed as a new addition to the garden. So I enclosed this area with 2 layers of hollow blocks, each block is 8 inches tall. I did not have to dig up the soil in this bed because I figured that with 2 layers of hollow blocks, that will give me 16 inches of height which should be sufficient for planting some vegetables. This new raised bed is 4 feet wide by 6 feet long and 16 inches high. So with a walkway on 3 sides, it would be easy for me to reach for the plants or to do some weeding. This raised bed is next to the outdoor aviary as seen in the picture below. 

 

It's a good thing that we have plenty of different varieties of plants around the property so I gathered some leaves and chopped them up and put them in the bottom of this new raised bed. My hubby trimmed the Gumamela shrubs that serves as a fence in front of our property and these were all thrown into the new raised bed. Another good thing we have going for us is that we have rabbits! The green gold is priceless and we get to have them for free. So every day when we clean out the rabbitry, we throw the wastes over the shredded leaves in the raised bed and cover them up with a thin layer of compost so the flies will not have a chance to land into the wastes. We did this layering of green leaves, rabbit poop and compost soil for awhile until the compost reached the top of the first layer of hollow blocks. Time is really slow for those who wait, like me! I could not wait any longer until the bed is full because I was too eager to plant so I threw in a layer of about 4 inches thick of compost and smoothed the top and started planting.

Home-Made Tomato Cages

When I removed the wire fencing on three sides of the backyard garden, I also removed several steel rebars that were used as stakes to hold the wire fence in place. The size of these corrugated rebars are 10 mm and these were cut into 5-feet tall each. I am going to transfer these wire fencing in the new hill garden to ward off the chickens and the dogs from that area. The backyard garden does not really need a fence now because the chickens are already fenced in and we don't have a dog or a cat ( except for the neighbor's cat) so if I should ever decide to make a fence in this backyard garden, I would like to use a picket fence someday.  Anyway, I thought about how best to use these old rebars that I took from the fence. So after my brother finished making the beans and peas trellis, I asked him if he could make me a tomato cage using these old rebars. Since these rebars were already cut at 5-feet tall, they're just the perfect height for a tomato cage. Besides, we have 2 extra pieces of 8 mm corrugated rebars that were not used when they made the outdoor aviary. So with these materials, my brother made 2 pieces of tomato cages that are 5-feet tall. I asked him to make the tomato cages into a triangle design with two sides having rebars going across them at a 1-foot distance from the top while one side is to be left open. I wanted this open side as my access to the plants and I can always use a string on this side to hold the plants as needed.

My DH used to tie the tomatoes on a stick that was placed near the plants using the green garden ties. Sometimes, he would used jute ropes to encircle the plants around the sticks so it looks like a round tomato cage. It's just that we have to take out the ropes once the tomatoes have been gathered and that's too laborious. So now that we have this two pieces of steel tomato cages, it should make the clean up much easier with no hassle. Just pull up the cages once the season is over and it can be stored inside for safe keeping until the next planting season is here.

   

Green Beans Trellis

I went through all the hardware and construction shops in town looking for a cattle panel or a hog panel that I could use for a trellis. Not one of the shops here in city carries this kind of panel. All they had are the 2-inch-hole welded concrete wire. I would have bought two of these to make a trellis but the cost was expensive at 1,500.00 pesos per piece so that would have cost me a total of 3K to make one trellis. One piece of this welded wire is only 4 feet wide and 8 feet long but what I did not like about it is the small holes, just 2 inches square. I could not find any cattle or hog panel so I asked my brother if he could make me one since we already have a welding machine. My DH bought a welding machine last year and this is what my brother and my carpenter used when they made the rabbitry. I asked my brother to make the hole dimensions to be 6 inches wide by 8 inches high. This size of the hole dimension will allow us to reach out for the plants during harvest time. So we bought 5 pieces of gauge # 10 wires and it only costs us 70.00 pesos per piece so that all came to 350.00 pesos all in all.

This summer, I was able to grow 2 crops of green beans in this wire trellis. The first batch of green beans were planted behind the outdoor aviary using the home-made welded wire trellis that my brother made for me. What I like about this trellis is that I could plant on both sides of it and I get to have more produce. This arched trellis is 4-feet wide and 6 feet high on its apex. Since I am short at only 5'2" tall, I could easily walk under the arch whenever I gather the green beans and it's easy to pick them as they would just be hanging over my head. Vertical gardening is really a good way to go in maximizing a small space.I placed both ends of the wire trellis in the center of a 2-feet wide raised bed which is in the corner of the garden where it doesn't make a shadow on the other plants. This corner gets the full afternoon sun from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. I made this raised bed only 2 feet wide because it is near the fence and this allows me to reach out at the back of the trellis to get the beans without stepping into the raised bed.

 

Overhauling the Backyard Garden

There is really nothing much that anyone could do as far as gardening is concerned during the rainy season here in Baguio City. The gardens gets flooded, the strong winds and rain damages the plants and worst, if there is a typhoon because everyone has to stay inside the house for safety purposes. Now that the rain has stopped today, I was able to transfer the worm bins to the back of the chicken run where it is shaded by the Cherry tree because the worms are not supposed to be exposed to direct sunlight which is why I had the worm bins under the shade of the tall ferns and flowers. Once the worm bins were out of the way, I set out to remove the wire mesh fencing material that enclosed the perimeter of the garden. I cut off all the ferns and the flowers that were growing in between the stone rip-rap that was behind the worm bins. Now I could clearly see what I have to work on with what I have. There is a 2 feet drop from the garden level above to the ground level from where the worm bins used to be so I had to lower this down to 1 foot high. The ground dirt is also filled with gravel and so I had to clear them out as well. I also had to factor in the walkways and I could only come up with an 16 inches wide walkway above this new raised bed. This is really just fine for me as I could still get around on both sides of this raised garden bed to do my work.

Salvia flowers at the edge of the garden with the stone rip-rap walls removed.

The worm bins under the shade of ferns and flowers.

 Then once everything was cleared out, using a garden fork, I dug up the dirt to about 8 inches low using the cut and back fill method. Then I enclosed this new raised bed with one layer of 4-inch wide concrete hollow blocks which is 8 inches tall. I then put some composted leaves at the bottom and then layered this with rabbit manure and covered it up with the top soil that was set aside when I dug up the bottom. I bought some Okra seeds and planted them directly in the ground. I sowed some seeds of tomatoes and peppers in a box and when these were ready to be transplanted in the ground, I planted them next to the Okra plants. I then thought of buying some flowers to brighten up the garden so I went to visit the Baguio City Orchidarium and bought some French Marigolds and Petunias. The pictures below will show you the outcome of my work in overhauling the entire garden. It's really just a small backyard garden but it took me a couple of months working intermittently to finish the work due to the rainy season at that time. I put in a lot of hard work in this garden but it was all worth, don't you think so?

The garden is partly in shade from the Cherry tree and the Rabbitry.

The trellis for the green beans is located at the far end of the garden.

The newly constructed raised bed at the foot of the garden.

Making a Swale/Berm

I was looking forward to working in the garden when I woke up this morning but it started raining again. Then our new friends who just got married a few days ago called us up and asked if we could meet them in town because they wanted to give us something and treat us for lunch. So we went out of the house and spent the morning with their company and that was very enjoyable.

It was still raining when we got back home so I ended up reading the Sunday newspaper of which I haven't had time to read since we bought the papers yesterday.

Around 3 in the afternoon, the rain stopped and I went out to the backyard garden. Instead of working on enclosing the other side of the raised bed in the middle of the garden, I worked on making a swale or berm for the rain water runoff. According to the news, we are going to get hit with another storm and the direction seems to be focused towards Northern and Central Luzon. The storm is expected to make a landfall here by tomorrow afternoon. So I decided to prioritize making the swale/berm for the water runoff before I get a flooded backyard garden. I just followed the natural slope of the land where the water usually goes down. I dug up this trench some more to make this deeper so it can accommodate more rain water runoff. Then I got some small stones from the 2-feet high retaining wall that I took off earlier and used this to line up the bottom of the swale/berm. This should reduce the flow of excess water runoff when it rains so it will not carry away the top soil from the garden. I already added some compost and rabbit manure into the raised bed at the bottom of the garden so this should help to control any water runoff from the rain. I'm thinking of putting a cover on this newly made raised bed at the bottom of the garden because I just dug it up yesterday so it is exposed to the rain. I am afraid that it might get washed out with this storm. I don't have any mulch available to cover this exposed soil but perhaps I'll find something tomorrow.

Planning the Backyard Garden

 We've been busy lately doing some shopping for a wedding gift for a friend who just got married today. So after we came home from the wedding, I took a short nap and when I woke up, my first thought was about expanding the backyard garden.  We only have 4 raised beds in the backyard garden. Two of these raised beds are short actually at just 6 feet long while the other two are 8 feet long. Two of the 6-feet long raised beds which is just behind the aviary gets the early morning sun.

The other two 8-feet long raised beds does not get the benefit of the morning sun because of the guava tree that is next to the outdoor aviary which is giving a shade to the garden. The entire garden gets the sun only from 11 in the morning until about 4 in the afternoon. The structure on the right side in the picture below is the outdoor aviary with the sun hitting the garden around mid day. I'm planning on trimming the branches of this guava tree so the sun can penetrate the garden at a much earlier time than at 11 a.m. It's just that I am hesitant to do this because this guava tree is the only one that is left after the other tree died. We don't know what caused its demise but we're guessing that perhaps the beetles must have something to do with it. When the tree died, there were a lot of beetles on the ground that fell down from the tree.

Anyway, the picture below is the end of the garden with the wire-fence concealed just behind the tall ferns and flowers. This is where I placed two of my worm bins and two extra blue pails for compost materials because it is shaded by the tall plants. This part is actually lower by 2 feet from the garden level. This 2-feet drop is held in place with a stone retaining wall which could not be seen in the picture because of the ferns and the flowers that grew in between the stone walls that is covering it. The space is about 3 feet wide with gravel over dirt and the rest is concrete. I am planning on converting this area into another raised bed to gain more space for planting vegetables. I was taking the measurements for this new expansion when the rains came so I had to go inside so it will have to wait until tomorrow.