Finally the wicking bed construction!

This is the moment you have all been waiting for...how we built the wicking beds out of concrete!

Step #1: Offer to provide drinks and food to a great friend with strong arms, good endurance, and a great analytical mind in exchange for their help. Meet Pam!

When we were not digging, sifting, and hauling soil, we talked about those things and planned out the wicking beds. Here are Tim and Pam marking out the pond liner to line the 4 beds with:

We did not document the first 2 beds very well, but here you can see the pond liner, rocks and weeping tile filled with water. Because none of us thought ahead to how we could connect the 2 beds, we had to improvise a bit. I am digging the drainage swale at the end of the beds that connects with the garden.

Collectively, we decided that it would be best to not connect the 2 beds if we wanted to grow food in the beds this year. The growing season here is 100 days if we are lucky, so no more delays could happen! Here is what we came up with for drainage:

We wrapped a cinder block in landscape fabric to allow water to drain out of the first bed into the gravel drainage area between the 2 beds. If the overflow water gets too high, it will go over top of the vertical concrete piece that separates the gravel and garden swale. FYI: none of us are engineers, so this is our best guess at what will happen. Either way, the excess water will infiltrate back into the ground and not be lost to evaporation.

After lining the beds with landscape fabric and adding the beautiful soil--our first two beds were planted on June 12!

Only 2 more beds to go! Time for a food break first though :) (Refer to step #1)

Growing season of 2011 begins

In anxious anticipation of the 2011 growing season, we began by growing lettuce in our west facing window while there was still snow on the ground. Planted in an organic spinach container with holes poked in the bottom for drainage and using the lid as a drip tray we were harvesting our first crop within 3 weeks. After the ground thawed and warmed up a bit, the entire contents were planted outside and are still growing months later. We will DEFINITELY be doing this again next winter!

In early March, we started thinking about starting our other seeds under a grow light and heat mat in the basement. All of the containers that we used for planting were recycled or upcycled. Having never tried using newspaper cups for plants sensitive to transplanting shock (ie. squash, cucumbers, etc.), I decided it was time to try it out. Additionally, we had been saving toilet paper rolls to use for the same purpose. They all worked like a charm!