Nothing Better Than a Freshly Made Bed...

I love the thought of a brand new flower bed in the spring. There's nothing better than a freshly made bed...

But when the harsh, hot reality of mid-July summer sun and the work that's required really sets in, I, well, truthfully, I have my regrets. Just like the five-year old in the cafeteria line, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. To save yourself from this kind of rueful awakening, I suggest you ask yourself these questions:

"What do I want to grow?"
Research the requirements of the plants you want to put in your garden. Will they grow in your Hardiness Zone? (Don't know your zone? Here's a link to the USDA online map, with instructions on how to use it: http:www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/.) Personally, I love cherries, and would love to grow the trees in my Zone 9 garden. Unfortunately, they hate our hot, humid weather - we don't have enough cold days to entice them from dormancy in the spring - so they are, in effect, permanently dormant (i.e., dead.) Once you know what you want to grow, and have done your research, go on to the next question.

"Where do I want to grow it?"
In the summer of 2005, my Louisiana garden had ten billion trees in it. It was a beautiful, tree-shaded lot full of pines, water oaks, black gum, swamp maples, and understory trees like star magnolias, bay magnolias, grancy greybeard, and azaleas out the wazoo. I could not grow a vegetable garden in that thicket to save my life. It was so shady that even the magnolias and azaleas were struggling to find enough sunlight to bloom sparsely and sporadically.

Hurricane Katrina did what I didn't have the courage to do: it edited my landscape, and opened up my yard to the sun. OK - it's not exactly bright in there, but there is enough light now for a small patch of grass (aka "the bocce court"), and the magnolias and azaleas have sprung back to life, putting on brand new leaves, and blooming happily. Why this long diatribe? Because you need to be realistic about what you can grow on your site, and put in the kind of plants that will be successful under your conditions. Roses need eight or more hours of FULL SUN - not half-sun, or a little sun, or patchy sun. No matter what else you provide for them, they won't be happy if they are not getting the sunlight they need.

On a bright, sunny day, take a piece of white paper out into your yard and put it on the spot where you want your garden to go. Put it on the ground and hold your hand about four inches above it. The shadow your hand makes should be dark, and have a clear outline. Now, go back out there every couple of hours, and test it again. Write down the hours that your hand produces that dark shadow. That's the number of hours you have of sunlight. Now that you know that, go on to the next question.

"How hard do I want to work at this?"
You can grow ANYTHING - ANYWHERE - as long as you are willing to work at it. So, how hard do you want to work? I'm a lazy gardener, and so are most of my Master Gardener friends. We don't want to spend so much time working in our gardens that we don't have time to enjoy them. So make this easy on yourself! Most soil types in the south east part of the United States will need amendments of some kind, and the heavy, clay-based "gumbo" soils of Louisiana and Texas will require you to build raised beds. Part of the reason for this is to provide drainage to a depth that will allow deep roots to develop, and some of this is because it's so much easier on your back!

There are many books that provide information about building raised beds, and there are several kits available (Through The Gardener's Catalogue, for example, or on their web site at Gardener's Supply Company: http://www.gardeners.com/Hexagonal+Raised+Bed+Corners/VegetableGardening_RaisedBeds,35-910,default,cp.html

If you want to do it yourself, here are some helpful hints:

1) Plan on your beds being 12 inches high, at a minimum, and if you want to grow large carrots, horseradish, parsnips, or other large root crops, 18 inches minimum.

2) Don't make your beds wider than about 3.5 to 4 feet, so that you can reach in and weed them (and pick your flowers or vegetables) from either side.

3) Design a watering system for those hot days of July - either ground-level sprinkling or drip hoses, or raised sprinklers. The former are relatively unobtrusive, but less effective. The latter are downright ugly, but cover the acreage better. Run your water access out to the garden now, while the weather's cool.

4) Like the five-year-old with the big appetite, gardeners tend to want it all. Start small. Really - I'm not kidding. Professionals plan for one full-time worker for every quarter acre, more or less. That's one 8-hour-a-day person, five to six days a week to keep one quarter acre of planting bed weeded, hoed, fertilized and mulched. If you're like me, that full-time person is me, and I don't want to work that hard. About 6 feet of new, raised, 4-ft. wide bed is about all you will want to take care of. If you find you want more, there's plenty of time to build another bed in the fall.

Fill your bed with your very own, amended soil, designed precisely for the plants that you want to grow. A general purpose vegetable garden would be about 1/3 sand, 1/3 high quality soil, and 1/3 organics such as composted manure and soil amendments. If you want to grow plants that love water, add some perlite to the mix - about 1 small bag per foot of bed. Mix this up well, and fill the beds - the mix will settle by about a third by the end of summer, so be prepared to add compost, or other organics, as you re-plant the beds.

Increase the amount of sand in this mix to about half, if you want to grow Mediterranean herbs. Throw in a good wheelbarrow full of small pea gravel as well, to improve drainage for rosemary, lavenders, and other heat lovers. You will have to water them, just make sure the water flows right through, and the plants don't sit in the beds with their feet wet.

Some bulbs, like bulbing irises, love this kind of drainage, too, especially when they are bedded in for the fall, and our hurricane season starts. Be sure and mulch them well when you see the first signs of growth in the spring - then keep cutting!

Always top your new beds off off with a good, light mulch. Just like a nice blanket, it finishes off the neat appearance of the bed, but it also helps to hold in moisture, and keep the roots cool during the long, hot summer. Mulch also retards the germination and growth of weed seedlings, so be sure to replenish it each time you replant.

When your plants are safely in the ground, sit back and enjoy. All your hard work will pay off down the road, when you don't have to spend your July out in the sun, bending over the weed patch growing where your tomatoes used to be. So pour that big glass of sweet tea, and have a great day, ya'll.