Boy have we been blown away by how well they’ve done too!!
To be quite honest it really hasn’t taken a whole lot of effort on our part either.
First of all we have of course had a lot of help from above when it came to the watering this year. That helps a lot! At last count we had to water a total of two times.
We also have had basically no bug or disease problems, and we suspect that’s to do with a combination of healthy plants and companion planting, as well as the right soil and fertilizer mix.
nice big veggie plants
What we mean by companion planting is placing plants together that provide a little extra “growing assistance”. A good example of this would be the nasturtiums we have planted at the front of the bed. These help to keep Aphids away.
Perhaps in a future newsletter we’ll write a little more detail about companion planting.
Now as far as the soil goes, here’s our secret……the majority of it (about 98% if I were to guess) is soil conditioner! We just love this stuff for planting anything in a raised bed.
Of course soil conditioner has absolutely no nutritional value for the plants, so we striped the top of the bed with Plantone, and then raked it in. Voila! The perfect concoction for growing big, beautiful veggies.
The biggest problem we’re facing, in fact, is that the plants are getting way bigger then we expected them to, so the area is a little overplanted. One of our poor Blueberries has all but disappeared amongst the mass that is a cucumber plant.