Raised beds

[Timo]

 Getting serious now..Went and talked to my sawmill guy,and got me some lumber cost figured.Think I'm going with 2"x8" white oak for my bed frames.

Now....I have been told here lately that horse/mule manure is a great growing medium. (dry of course). One fella told me that he uses no dirt at all just mule poop.

What say you garden experts?

[mullet]

   My garden is too close to the kitchen window. My next door neighbor dumped cow crap in his and we could smell it for a week. I've heard Sheep manure is the way to go if you don't want to smell anything. I dump bags of Black Cow in mine every year and mulch with Spanish Moss.

[Pat B]

I put manure in all my beds last year that came from an old milking barn. It was hard and dry and had lost it's smell. I would not use fresh manure alone for garden soil. I good mixture of manure and soil will give you a good percentage of organic matter to make the soil more friable.  I turned one of last years beds yesterday and planted spinach and lettuces and the soil in the bed was full of earth worms. They, the earth worms, are what you want is your garden. They eat rotting organic matter and poop fertilizer in a form that plants can use, but also aerate the soil so roots can breath.
  I would compost any fresh manure or just use it as a top dressing after the plants have gotten established. Making manure tea with fresh  manure will give you a nutrient rich tea that benefits plants and is added directly at the root level where it is needed and is most effective.

[El Destructo]

Pat...my Grandpa used to have a Contraption that he made (old Blacksmith)...He used to fill this big Tank on Wheels  half full of Manure....half with ground Water....the Tank had a big shaft going into the side...and inside it had a big prop that He had gotten from the Shipyards in Marquette.... the tailshaft of this had a Pulley on it...and He run a Leather Belt from the Minneapolis Moline tractor's PTO to this Shaft...and fired up the Tractor....and made Moo Soup...as he called it...... ....and then We would go and spray it all over the Vegetable Garden....and I swear to God....you could almost sit and watch the Cukes and Squash grow on a nice warm day....after thsi Gruel was spread on them......

[Alpinbogen]

Cool thread.  My wife and I are are planning to build raised beds for veggies in the next couple of weeks.  I'm not too keen on manure, though, especially with these going in right behind the house.  I was thinking of getting some rich topsoil and black leaf compost instead.  I have several leftover bags of fertilizer that I was planning to use as well.  I forget which, but its the kind that makes the plant grow big as opposed to the roots.  I scoped out Lowe's and found 2x10 cedar lumber for the beds, which were priced reasonably.  How tall do you guys make them?

[Pat B]

The deeper(within reason) the better. The less work the roots have to do while they grow the better. Leaf mold is excellent soil additive. Leaves contain almost everything the tree need to grow. When they fall the worms take over, break down the leaves and make it possible for the tree to uptake and reuse the nutrients. I know folks that use only ground up leaves in their garden except for a few additives like lime and trace minerals that may not be available to the plants.
  A good source of info for a small raised bed garden is a book called The Square Foot Gardener, by Mel Bartholomew. Lots of good info for small spaces.

[Timo]

Still to danged wet around here to get anything done. can't get the truck anywhere close to get some bedding brought in. Probly go with some good dirt and then mix manure/straw in Pat.

I'll try to get some pics when I get started.

[Mechslasher]

i've always heard cow manure was the best.  don't know if i'd use mule buscuits.  been told it doesn't do well as a fertilizer.  hence the term, "ain't worth jack $hit." 

[Justin Snyder]

Horse manure works pretty well. One of the best things about horse manure is the heat it generates in composting. The heat generated kills all the weed seed in a couple of months. It does need some composting though because weed seed goes through pretty fast and isn't killed by the digestive track. Chicken or turkey poop is some of the best fertilizer you can find for greens because of the amount of nitrogen. If you use too much it will burn the plants though. It is hard to beat good old cow poop though.

[mullet]

 Chicken poop will grow some Okra and hot peppers real quick.

[Badger]

      I got lucky and found an old building comming down and they sold me all the old 2x12x12' timbers. Composting can be just as addcitive as bow making. I would drive around in my pick up and have gardeners dump all their lwan shavings. I found at the beach the tractors would rake up the sea weed couple times a week and it was easy to get a pick up load full of sea weed. Duck farm was near by and provided a great place for duck manure. Cedar shavings from a shudder factory near by and I had all I could handle. Gardening is really fun and rewarding, raised beds even make it more pleasurable. Steve

[Grunt]

I've got 150 lbs of composted turkey manure coming. Three 50 lb bags for $17 bucks each. Ought to keep my eight raised beds, sixty foot asparagus row, spice bed, blueberries, raspberries, and my other's assorted wild flowers happy. Rebuilt my two raised bed cold frame tops in the past two days. Our seed order came last week. Up here at 3500 ft in the NC mountains it's all about soil temperature. 

[mullet]

  Steve, I used to love using sea weed when I lived on the coast.

[Justin Snyder]

Up here at 3500 ft in the NC mountains it's all about soil temperature. 

That sounds funny to me. We consider anything under 6000 a low elevation.

Steve, you are right about gardening, it is therapy for me. Beside the therapy, I should have peppers and tomatoes to eat by mid April and squash by the end, I can hardly wait.

[Badger]

    The sea weed is good stuff, I would run it over with my lawn mower and chop it up pretty good then let it sit out for at least one day befor I mixed it in the compost. Has all kinds of trace meinerals and heavy in nitogen. Steve