Although popularized for the American home gardener in the 1970′s, raised bed gardening is not a new concept at all. Prior to the most recent potato famine (1845-1849), raised beds were practically the only way an Irishman could get his potatoes planted, the soil there being generally very shallow. It is also a central component in what is known as “French Intensive” cultivation. In fact, the technique goes back to at least 300 BC with the waru-warn of the pre-Incan Quechua peoples. Recently, though, the technique has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as people the world over realize the danger of allowing factory farms to produce all their food and embrace the organic methods abandoned in the 1920′s.

The essence of raised bed gardening is contained in its name: it is based on deliberately elevated beds under cultivation on the gardening (as opposed to farming) scale. A raised bed cannot be said to have a primary function. The design is used to aid drainage, to aid aeration, to promote early warming of the soil in the spring, to promote late cooling of the soil in the fall, to reduce irrigation needs by keeping water off pathways, to keep the roots away from the compaction zone of foot paths and to raise the garden to an easier height for cultivation.

With the price of lumber being a factor, raised bed gardening can be capital intensive at the start. There are, however, other ways to build a raised bed.

The simplest is just to pile soil on top of soil. This works really well if your field is naturally somewhat high. In this case you can simply take soil from the pathways and pile it between them. Make your pathways at least two shovelfuls wide and put one shovelful on the bed to the left and the other on the bed to the right. Dig until you reach the end of the first path, then loop around – continuing with the digging pattern of “ one left, one right”. Rake it slightly concave at the top and you are well on your way.

The drawback here is something known as “the angle of repose”, that is, the angle at which loose soil naturally lays. This will vary, depending on the makeup of your soil. In every case, this will mean that you have to reach past an angled, un-planted, area. This loss of planting area can be made up by using narrower paths and beds, such that the beds can be straddled to work in them and the paths do not take more room than the beds. This also means that the beds will have to be somewhat lower and that the paths will benefit from a shallow trench dug alongside the raised bed to drain water away from the top of the path. If you have bark or other coarse mulch, you can use it to raise the surface of the paths. Planks are recommended against because they serve to harbor slugs and snails.

The second way to make up for this angle of repose is to plant small crops, such as lettuce, on the angled slopes. If you are not going to replant, harvest by cutting – not pulling – so as to leave the root system behind to anchor and enrich the soil and so as to leave the soil itself undisturbed. Bush beans are especially useful in this situation as they fix nitrogen in the soil, provide a plant canopy against rain erosion and have a good root system for anchoring the soil. Pick them continuously until they stop bearing in the fall and then cut at the soil surface to leave the nitrogen nodules behind for next year

Another way to get around this loss of planting area is to erect vertical walls, using whatever material might be at hand. I  know that the purists will scream bloody murder, but this material can include pressure-treated lumber such as landscape timbers and railroad ties. Yes, they have been treated with poison … that’s why they last so long … but the poison that leaches out each year (after the first) is trivial and its lateral travel is negligible. It is carried by water in a nearly straight downward direction. That, coupled with its minimal amount of leaching means that the chemicals used in such timbers should not stop most gardeners from using it in the garden. What WILL stop most gardeners from using these materials is price. A garden really needs to show a profit in its first or, at the very latest, second year. If you buy an acre of land for $3,000 (the current price in Detroit) and garden it intelligently, you’ll show a very generous profit the very first year. But, if you buy that land and then a tractor or large rototiller and several thousand dollars worth of lumber, a watering system and a couple hoop houses and hire a couple people to help you from time to time … well, your chance of making an immediate profit is slim, indeed.

There is not much you could put into that soil to turn a profit the first year and I doubt if any of it is legal locally.

However, most crumbling city interiors have a LOT of used cinder blocks and bricks laying around basically for the taking. These are environmentally friendly, durable and, depending on how you stack them, may not even need mortar between them. Hit the cinder blocks with an exterior paint from an hvlp sprayer and they even look nice. I think that the bricks look good as they are, but that’s a personal choice. As you dig up the ground you are likely going to encounter rocks large enough to incorporate into your retaining walls. They might need a bit of mortar to set in place but scattered here and they, will lend an artistic touch.

Both of the methods I’ve talked about so far require some digging to establish (although Wheel Horse tillers have an attachment to mound the soil, they don’t leave much path) but there are as many ways to create a raised bed for gardening as there are gardeners. One popular version is called “layered gardening” and relies on piling material, which is allowed to decompose in situ, and planting through it in holes poked for the purpose. Any weeds that manage to find their way sun-ward are simply pulled and left to dry right where they were found.

Layered gardening has the advantage of providing a ready-made mulch and a progressively higher planting bed that has loose, undisturbed soil at its foundation. Plants like that. A lot.

Another useful variation is to pile the decomposable material (paper, straw, cardboard, tree leaves, grass clippings, household food scraps and manures) on the planting bed first, then piling soil on top of it, followed by another layer of straw, leaves or, if the bed is made in the fall, annual rye grass or buckwheat to retain the soil through the winter. The buckwheat has the advantage of nitrogen fixing and very deep roots, up to 10’. As they decompose, roots that deep leave behind channels for air and water to penetrate the soil and the crops that follow will follow those channels rather than make their own. This results in deeper roots for your tomatoes and so on. More than that, these deep roots bring up minerals from below the usual root zone. If the tops of the deep-rooted plants are then incorporated into the first 6 inches of soil via cultivation or being used in compost and then worked into the soil, these minerals become available at the root zone for your ‘money’ crops.

The lower level of material provides :

• drainage for the soil
• aeration for the soil
• nutrients for the microbiota such as soil bacteria
• nutrients for the macrobiota such as beetles and earthworms
• nutrition for the plants.

While the upper level provides:

• protection from wind and water erosion
• a buffer against freeze-thaw cycles
• nitrogen fixation if a green manure crop is used
• habitat for some of the unseen life in your garden
• although we may consider some things as only useful for prey, they are useful as prey. Unless we plan to hand-feed the beneficial insects in the garden, we need to leave some other food where they can find it. Providing a modest amount of cover means that a modest amount of food will be available for predators in spring.

I haven’t mentioned this before, but my Dad is dying. It’s pretty certain now.

I am not the one in the hospital bed, but I feel like large chunks of me are falling off and dying too. I am weak and helpless in the face of what is happening to him.

Dad made it to age 83, but probably won’t last out the week. To be honest, I think I can handle everything else, but I don’t think I can handle tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday and my friends are sure to ask how he’s doing. He’s not doing well … he’s dying … and it’s not a simple matter and no, I don’t want to discuss it with anyone.

Things are so hard on him right now that I’m not asking for God to let him live; I am asking God for mercy and love.

Since I can’t talk about it with friends (not now, anyway … not until it’s over … not until the last tears have fallen and I can talk of it like other distant hurts), I’m sharing it with you.

It’s easier to talk about some things to strangers than with the people you know. I don’t want anything from anybody. I don’t want insincere well-wishes or half-hearted offers of help. I don’t need any help. I just feel a need to tell the world that a swell man is about to pass away … one they barely knew.

Previous challenges met head-on

He served in the Army and the Air Force of the nation he loved. Upon discharge, he married Mom and he went to work in a coal mine. Later he worked as a fireman for the Virginian (yup, shoveling coal!) and then moved to Detroit, where he worked for Briggs Manufacturing and the post office before finally coming to rest working for the railroad. He fathered four children and kept us all fed and clothed and cared for; even when it was hard to do – even when he was fighting his own demons. He planted gardens when things got tight and anytime he could get his hands on some level land even when money stopped being tight. He stopped smoking back when Lucky Strikes (no filter) were still popular and he stopped drinking alcohol over 35 years ago. He was crushed at work, rolled between a railway car and a steel post in the winter. He’d been laying in the snow with one lung collapsed and the other punctured by one of the six broken ribs for over 30 minutes when his co-workers found him and radioed for an ambulance.

It was years later that he coughed up the final chunk of dried blood.

Later on, when I needed to face my own demons of drink and tobacco, he was my role model. “If Dad could do it”, I reasoned, “it’s in my genes to do it, too.” And I did.

The five stages of grief begin with denial and end in acceptance. I’ve already accepted that my father is about to die; but have not yet had to face the reality of his death.

So where does that place me on that grief scale?

Matthew 5:4 “Happy are those who mourn, since they will be comforted.”

I’m not happy right now and the only comfort I want from mankind is for there to be a good turn-out for his funeral. To my way of seeing things, he has earned this much at least.

The skinny

Dad has been in incredible pain for the past two weeks. He had a heart attack, fell down and broke his hip. He already had bronchitis and a high fever – that may be why he fell down originally – bad news for a guy with only one-half of a lung.

Then his liver began to fail.

There was a blizzard in Georgia the night he fell. It was roughly four hours between the time he fell and the time he arrived at the hospital. It took nearly two hours before anyone in his apartment complex heard him hammering on the floor and then another two hours for the ambulance to get him to the emergency room.

Since then, the pain from that broken hip has been unrelenting. As he slipped into delirium, hospital staff made things worse by approaching him silently on his blind side and, without announcing themselves, jabbing him with needles or brushing against the broken leg. The twilight of his sanity was filled with people attacking his blind side. And he began to slip into that world where fact and fiction mix freely and each wears the clothes of the other.

While I am quite confident that they have done everything needed to keep a lawsuit from prevailing, I have never seen worse care given to a patient.

I know of worse care, but I wasn’t witness to it.

The worse care that I know about happened to my Dad in the rehab center.

We got him away from the bumblers in the hospital and into a decent looking nursing home. On Thursday he was doing better … speaking (mostly) cogently and even eating some after my sister pointed out that since he didn’t have any dentures in his mouth he wasn’t going to be able to eat the dried up hamburger they had served him. He handled the replacement mashed potatoes pretty well. On Friday, they adjusted his position with a roughness worthy of the Marquis de Sade.

Today, he’s back in the hospital, fully out of his mind, hollering for help.

My sister and I agreed to go against his will for one week to give him time to come out of the delirium. During that week he will be constantly sedated and a machine will do his breathing for him. His blood pressure will be propped up with an IV and attempts will be made to help his failing liver. In that week, there will be nothing to torment his mind, no awareness of clumsy nurses bumping his leg.

At the end of the week he will be allowed to wake up. If his physical and mental condition have not improved, we will do as he asked us to do. He will be given medication for the pain and allowed to die.

A tough call

Just twenty years ago my Dad would already be dead from his injuries and afflictions. Instead, medical technology has been able to preserve him alive. He’s in excruciating pain – in his delirium, the pain is his only certain contact with reality – but alive (in a mostly technical sense). And that means that his children have to decide when he dies. Twenty years ago, that just wasn’t part of the deal.

It is a horrible thing to have a child die. It is a heavy weight to have to decide when a parent ends their life. After Dad, my wife and I still have two more parents, one for each of us. It’s all too likely that this decision will have to be played out two more times. After that, there should be an interval and then my sons will have to face the same choices I and my sisters are facing today.

When we nod our heads solemnly and agree not to prolong a life unreasonably it is with the idea that the person will be unconscious when the decision has to be made and that the body will be clearly beyond repair. My Dad wasn’t unconscious until we instructed the Doctor to make him so. His body is not beyond repair. He needs a heart catheterization and his leg set and then time for those to heal. That’s it. The liver had been steadily improving until he got to the nursing home. He needs idiots to stay away from his leg. I’m hoping that being sedated will effectively take the idiots out of his life long enough for his mind to return.

Shake hands with Dad

This is the guy who gave me wheel-barrow rides as a kid and brought a black and white speckled puppy home one afternoon. He was mine to name and I named him Pal, because I sure needed a friend.

I spent a lot of time with my Dad through my early teen years, cleaning out boxcars to help pay for the nursing home care that my brother needed. There were a lot of hot and heavy days together that left me tough as iron. Then, too, there was the day I got a bumble-bee up my pants leg and ran screaming for him to help me. He started to chase and then realized that his short legs could never keep up with mine. I remember looking over my shoulder at him with his hands on his knees, bent over and laughing his head off at the sight of me running down the lane that ran alongside the tracks. Somehow I must have stunned the bee, because I didn’t get stung after all. Another hot summers day, we were cleaning out a car of caustic soda when the dust mixed with my perspiration and began to burn my skin … and not just the exposed parts, either. We ended up with me stripped to my underwear standing above the overpass for Eureka road in Wyandotte as he drenched me with water from the hose used to water the locomotives. My boots ended up with pock marks in the leather where perspiration mixed with the dust. That stuff is nasty.

When I hit a rough patch of road, he loaned me his travel trailer to live in and I found a trailer park that would let me park it there for a few months.

We had our fights and our family was a textbook model of dysfunctionality, but I’d rather recall (and relate) the good times. And yes, working 16-18 hour days during the summer and on weekends during the winter were good times. I was working with my Dad (starting at age 12) and I was helping my family. Good times. Not many guys my age had that opportunity.

At age 14, I got to drive our dump truck from Wyandotte (Michigan) to the dump at Sumpter. Dad drove along behind in the pickup truck in case a cop noticed and pulled me over … I was in the cab of that truck alone, though. That’s what I learned to drive in … a 2 and 1/2 ton dump truck with a split rear axle and twin hydraulic hoists to do the dumping. I had ten forward speeds to play with and I used them all at any opportunity. By age 16 I was driving our sanding truck, delivering sand to locomotives. And I was no longer tagging along as a worker bee, I was supervising our ‘helpers’ … working alongside them, but making decisions when Dad was away. It felt odd to be 16 years old and giving instructions to men in their 40’s.

The role of faith

It is not until faith comes up against practical matters that its depth can ever be truly known and thus it is times like these when faith is tested. If we have faith, a few words can be immensely comforting. If we do not have that faith, there is no consolation to be found anywhere. Does having faith in a resurrection mean that I am eager for my father to die or even comfortable with the idea? No, nothing of the sort. I’d rather that my father would “live on for times indefinite”, as the Bible salutation goes. But I know that there will come a day when death will be no more and when these tears that I have been shedding will at last come to their end. Forever.

(Revelation 21:3-4) . . .With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. 4 And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”

—————————————-

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, these are the five stages of grief. They may not happen in order and they are not all required – any two will suffice. They may occur in a back and forth fashion such as denial-anger-denial.

1. Denial—”I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me.”
   Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of positions and individuals that will be left behind after death.
2. Anger—”Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; “Who is to blame?”
   Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.
3. Bargaining—”Just let me live to see my children graduate.”; “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”; “I will give my life savings if…”
   The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, “I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time…”
4. Depression—”I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”; “I’m going to die… What’s the point?”; “I miss my loved one, why go on?”
   During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.
5. Acceptance—”It’s going to be okay.”; “I can’t fight it, I may as well prepare for it.”
   In this last stage, the individual begins to come to terms with his mortality or that of his loved one.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model )

This is not part of a university course on plant pathology – it’s just a simple look at some of the simple techniques that an average organic gardener can use to improve the odds of having a high-yield garden every time out. Nothing is guaranteed, but you can tip the scales in your favor and the idea here is to take a positive outlook about the pro-active things that can help all of us achieve our garden goals.

For an organic gardener, the most vital part of battling plant disease is avoidance. Although modern hybrid varieties offer considerable disease resistance, the organic gardener, more so than most, is likely to have planted a number of heirloom, non-patented, non-hybridized and non genetically-engineered varieties. These will often have less natural resistance to specific diseases and thus techniques of avoidance come to the fore.

The organic gardener has also voluntarily agreed not to pick up the ‘big guns’ of modern chemistry, although copper and lime are permitted to deal with fungus infections. This, also, puts prevention front and center.

Diseases come to your plants through a variety of mechanisms:

• Insects serve as vectors and, in the process of cutting and puncturing leaves, stems and roots, introduce viral, bacterial and fungal infections.
• spores lay dormant from season to season in the soil and are splashed onto plant surfaces by rain or irrigation, finding entrance in the tiny pores plants use for transpiration.
• wind-blown spores are ever-present and unavoidable

The principle defenses are to practice exemplary garden hygiene, nurture strong plant growth at a healthy rate, keep soils covered in clean mulch (clean mulch is here defined as mulch that does not include diseased plant parts), and proper irrigation.

Garden Hygiene

Exemplary garden hygiene includes eliminating plants showing signs of sickness at the first sign of infection. Such plants act as a beacon to insects who arrive to cull the weakling. Don’t wait for that … you cull it. The insects won’t stop with just the sick plant, but will move over to nearby healthy plants, taking the disease with them. Do not compost this material with the rest of your compost pile. It is better to simply discard the plant material altogether or, if that is not possible, create a separate compost pile for the purpose of dealing with diseased vegetation and use that compost outside of your food garden.

It also involves sterilizing shears, knives, etc. before each use. When you cut into a sick plant, the pathogen will be transported to the tool. If you then use it to cut into a healthy plant, you will have carried the pathogen to the healthy plant yourself. It is simple to make up a weak bleach solution to dip tools in before moving from one plant to another. You can also use full strength hydrogen peroxide, or a slow pass over a direct flame.

Exemplary hygiene also means to eliminate hiding places for insects. While the very nature of a garden demands that insects have access to it, destroy nearby tall grasses and clear the ground of such shelter as old planks or other debris. Keep firewood well away from the garden, too, as the space between the wood and the drying bark can easily provide refuge.

Do NOT touch tomato or potato plants after handling tobacco (including plants kept for decoration) until you have thoroughly washed your hands. Better yet, quit using the evil weed altogether. Tobacco is often infected with tobacco mosaic virus. This is deadly in the garden and nicotine is your body. In fact, nicotine is known as a highly effective insecticide. Go ahead, smoke another.

Nurturing Strong Growth

Nurture strong plants by choosing varieties known to grow well locally or in a similar area of the country. Make certain that nutrient and pH needs are met by testing the soil using either a kit designed for that purpose or by submitting samples to a local university offering such services. Where possible, request that the soil also be tested for pathogens, microbiota and organic content. If pH or other soil amendments are indicated, apply them after the previous crop has been harvested in order to give them time to stabilize and take effect. Don’t just simply add nutrients, not even rock powders, willy-nilly. Know exactly why you are adding what, and exactly how much of it to add. In particular, avoid high levels of available nitrogen as this promotes vegetation that is both soft and high in sugars; making it especially susceptible to insect and direct pathogen attack. Provide adequate ventilation, sunlight and moisture. After the final crop of the season has been harvested and the remaining stalks, etc., cleaned away, work locally available organic material into the soil and, where winters are harsh, cover the soil with another layer of organic material at least 4 to 6 inches thick. This can be pulled away in the spring to allow the soil to warm up quicker and then reapplied after planting as the initial layer of mulch.

Mulching Properly

ALWAYS mulch with a coarse organic material. This will allow water to flow downward through it while gasses are permitted to move upwards. It will also prevent splashing of infected soil onto the lower leaves of plants. Material such as straw and tree leaves can safely sit on top of the soil at any time of year without fear of nitrogen depletion. As the bottom layer of these materials is kept moist by contact with the soil they will begin to decay. Earthworms will eat this decaying layer. As earthworms travel through the soil, they collect nitrogen from the soil (called “biological magnification”), which is expelled as ‘castings’ at the surface of the soil. These castings are three times richer in nitrogen than the soil the earthworm passed through. This nitrogen will then begin the journey back down through the soil, slowly percolating past the plant roots. In any otherwise healthy soil, this is all the nitrogen needed. Earthworms also dig channels for air and water to enter the soil as well as drain from it. Earthworms are important and they can’t eat plastic mulch.

Watering Technique and Timing

Proper irrigation means to provide the proper amount of water at the proper time and in the proper fashion. Gently water the roots. Avoid splashing the soil onto the plant. Keep the soil moist to a depth of about 3-6 inches. Poke in the soil with a trowel until you become familiar with how much water your soil needs. If you have soil with either a high amount of clay or a high percentage of sand, proper soil moisture levels will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The fix, in either case, is to apply generous amounts of organic mulch to the soil surface and keep it moist. This will encourage earthworms to aerate clay soils and to carry organic materials down into both sorts. Dig in copious quantities of organic materials (fresh or composted but not, in any case, from diseased plants) before planting in that location again. The preferred time for watering is as early in the day as you can decently manage … I recommend doing it two or three times a week while drinking your morning cup of coffee. At that time of day the plants are still wet with dew anyways, so a minor mis-direction of the spray isn’t a grave sin. You will notice that many of the leaves are either drooping downward to shed the dew toward the roots or held high to direct it to run down the stem toward the roots.

The plants are giving you a hint: water the roots.

Another hint: just outside the drip line coming off the leaves is a good place to apply hand irrigation … don’t water too close to the main stem – the microscopic roots and associated root fungi that do the actual feeding are well away from it.

If you notice wilting anytime except during the extreme heat of a hot day (generally around 3 p.m.), you aren’t watering enough to maintain healthy growth. An actively growing healthy plant doesn’t wilt. Not even in the desert. A plant that is stressed for lack of water is a beacon for insect attack and too weak to fight off attack by outgrowing it. If the wilting only occurs during the hottest part of the day, you are probably doing all that you can and the plant just isn’t able to pull enough moisture through its roots to make up for the moisture lost through the stomata. At the end of the season, dig the soil deeply, adding generous amounts of organic material (on the order of 50% of the soil mass, or higher). This will serve to loosen the soil as the organic material is consumed, making it easier for the plant to develop a larger root system and also directly increasing nutrient availability in the root zone. Since you are already destroying the soil horizon, you might as well remove the soil from the planting bed, replace it with as much or more organic material, add the soil back on top and then rototill like crazy. Top this off with another thick layer of organic matter (leaves, grass clippings and so on) before the ground freezes and that soil may remain biologically active all through the winter. Come spring, it will look as if you had good dirt delivered.

Watering early means that any mis-directed spray will be dried off at the same time as the dew. This results in the minimum ‘wet time’ for the leaves. Fungi and mildews require moisture to get into full swing and they require an entrance point past the plants defenses to do any damage. In the early part of the day the stomata (microscopic openings in the leaves somewhat analogous to your lungs) are mostly closed since they are not being heavily used. If there is adequate ventilation, the plant will dry off before they need to get down to business. (Yup, this is WAY over-simplified to the point of being somewhat misleading. But, like I noted in the introduction, this isn’t a college botany class.) So, while the fungi and mildew were mobile in the water, they lacked an entrance point. By the time the entrance point opened they lacked mobility. If, however, you water later in the day, the stomata are open and any overspray allows the fungi and mildew to find their way into the inside of the plant, gaining access to the sugars, etc. in the leaves. If one leaf becomes infected, the fungi and mildew mature and prepare to attack the rest of the plant at the first opportunity.

In Conclusion

Proper irrigation and proper mulch, like seeing to nutrient levels, are obviously just aspects of nurturing strong plants. And that, really, is the key to avoiding plant diseases. Having strong plants is your finest defense against avoiding infection because the plants in your garden evolved a fairly complex set of mechanisms for defending themselves … the ones that didn’t, didn’t survive. Some leaves have waxy surfaces. Some plants taste bad. Some only open their stomata when it is safest to do so. Some have antiseptic sap. The list goes on. What is important to know is that a healthy plant can probably remain that way, while a sick plant is usually doomed. So be alert to those things that cause your plants to be healthy and provide them continuously throughout the season and be just as quick to eliminate those plants which become infected. The loss of one or a few plants is certainly preferable to the loss of all.

Like most gardeners, I’ve learned a few tricks over the years that make gardening easier. For me, the best, like these, are nearly free and all are easy to make and use.

1. Tomato ties: Nothing you can buy in the store will work as well for tying tomatoes to their stakes as legs cut from discarded panty hose. Their neutral colors blend in. They stretch when the wind blows or the vines grow heavy. Their open weave allows air to get in and moisture to get out. They don’t support bacteria or bugs. They don’t chafe or cut the vine. They are recycled, and that means that they are both environmentally sound and free.

I especially like that last part.

Used panty hose are an ideal tie for tomatoes

2. When you run out of panty hose, you can substitute lengths of NM electrical cabling. Cut it into 12-18” lengths and loop around the tomato and its support post. It’s strong, it’s wide, it won’t support bugs and its reusable.

3. To mark a straight row, use 2×2 lumber roughly 8ft long. After the planting bed is prepared, mark the end points of where you want the first row. Now, lay the 2×2 on its edge in the dirt and align it with the marks. Press it firmly down into the soil and shove it along in a straight line toward the far stake.

4. Seed packets give one measurement for the distance between the plants in the rows and another for the distance between rows. That larger measurement is to allow standing between the rows to hoe them. Bad idea.

Get a three foot long piece of heavy metal strap from the hardware store. You’ll want the kind with holes punched in it. You will cut this into 3 equal-length pieces and then smooth the sharp edges. Get 3 bolts to fit those holes and 6 nuts and 6 flat washers to fit those bolts. Lightly run one nut all the way to the head of each bolt. Find the ‘in row’ spacing on the seed packet or plant tag and find two holes on one strap that come close to that number. Drop bolts through them. Attach the other two straps loosely to those bolts using one nut each. Now cross the open ends to complete the triangle, making every bolt the same distance apart.

Mark the first row with the stick. Then set two bolts of the gauge into the trough formed by the stick. The third bolt will mark the next row. Then shift sideways in the first row by one hole and repeat the process.

A few straps and a few minutes = one great spacing tool

This manner of marking puts plants the closest they can be and still have room to grow. As the plants come up, mulch them heavily. This, combined with the close spacing, will dramatically reduce the amount of weeding and greatly conserve water in the soil.

Well, last night, here in Detroit, we got our first snow of the season. That’s November 9th and it came at around 9:00 PM.
It was a light dusting of large flakes, but they certainly didn’t last very long. listen

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