White Mold or Fungus Growing in My Raised Bed

I noticed that there is a white fungus or mold that is growing the Raised Bed that I had fertilized with manure and Soybean meal a few weeks ago (see this blog entry).

From using google on the Internet, I found that this is fungus is not harmful but is a result of having a lot of organic matter decaying in the soil.

I'll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't spread.

End of Tomato Season

Well, this is the end of my Cherry Tomato growing season. My Cherry Tomato plants have withered and I have picked all of the edible fruit from the plants.

It is now time to clean-up and prepare for next year.

One of the best decisions I made this season was to buy a set of 6 Texas Tomato Cages (see this blog entry). Not only have they supported my Cherry Tomato plants well, but they are a snap to take apart and break down. The picture above shows all 6 of the Texas Tomato Cages laying flat.

This makes storage very easy!

The picture above shows my Raised Bed after I had cut away all of the Tomato Plants and took down the Texas Tomato Cages. See all of the weeds that have popped up. Also, the soil level has dropped about 4 to 5 inches in the past 8 months.

I put a layer of newspapers over the soil to kill the weeds and prevent any new weeds from sprouting. The layer of newspapers is thin, only about 3 to 4 pages thick, but this is sufficient to prevent any weeds from poking through.

Next, I put a layer of Soybean Meal over the newspapers. Soybean Meal is a good well balanced natural fertilizer , with a N-P-K ratio of 7-2-1.

This is one of the few times that I need to fertilize my Raised Bed. The only other time is when I plant the Cherry Tomato seedlings. At that time, I put a scoop of Fishbone Meal (see this blog entry) in the planting hole. The Fishbone Meal compensates for the low Phosphorous (P) in Soybean Meal. Phosphorous does not move in the soil, so it works best to put it right where the roots of the Cherry Tomato plants are growing.

This is all of the fertilizer that I use.

My Cherry Tomato Plants grow well over 8 feet tall (see this blog entry) and I have tons of Cherry Tomatoes (see this blog entry).

On top of the Soybean Meal, I put a thick layer of composted Steer Manure that I bought from my local Home Depot. The composted Steer Manure does 2 things. First, it adds organic matter to the soil. Second, it masks the smell of the Soybean Meal, so that animals don't try to dig up the Raised Bed in search of food.

Over the next four months, the Soybean Meal and the Steer Manure will compost. By February, when I am ready to plant my first Cherry Tomato seedlings, the soil will be rich in nutrients.

I did the same thing with my other Raised Bed. You can see the final result in the picture below.

Second Crop of Tomatoes

I have start a second crop of Cherry Tomatoes. This is to replace plants that have either been killed by diseased or were no longer producing much fruit.

The picture below shows the Cherry Tomatoes that I am now growing in my 2 primary Raised Beds. There are 7 Cherry Tomatoes in these Raised Beds.

The three Cherry Tomatoes labeled Mystery come from the mystery seedlings that I discovered growing in my garden a month ago (see this blog entry).

The Clone Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant is the cloned seedling that I transplanted two weeks ago (see this blog entry). It has tripled in size in the last 2 weeks.

The Clone Sweet Baby Girl is another cloned seedling that I started roughly at the same time as the Clone Sun Gold Cherry Tomato.

The Pruned Cherry Tomato is a Sun Cherry Extra Sweet that is still producing and is still in good shape. I pruned back some of the branches.

The Cut Back Cherry Tomato is the Sun Gold Cherry Tomato that has produced the most fruit this season (see this blog entry). It is still growing, but I have picked almost all of the fruit from the plant. It is also too tall for me to pick easily, so I decided to remove the branches above 4 feet. Hopefully, the Cherry Tomato plant will grow back quickly and start producing fruit.

I also have 4 other Cherry Tomato plants (2 Sweet Baby Girls, 1 Sugar Snack and 1 Super Sweet 100) that are growing in another Raised Bed. These Cherry Tomato plants are still producing abundant fruit.

Hopefully, they will continue to produce fruit until the new Cherry Tomato plants start producing fruit.

Building a Raised Bed Part 1

I wanted to add another Raised Bed to my garden before the season starts.

I was not happy with the look of the Plastic Raised Bed that I bought from Gardener's Supply Company.

The area that I want to put the raised bed is small (2 feet x 4 feet), so using Cement Garden Blocks would take too much room. So, that left wood as the medium for building the Raised Bed.

I did some research on the Internet and Cedar looked like the preferred wood to use. It is naturally water resistant and would last many years.

I thought about going to my local Big Box hardware store and buying Cedar 2 x 4s. However, I don't have a tools to properly cut the wood and from what I read, creating corners that line up and stay lined up over time is difficult.

I looked on the Internet for prefabricated Cedar Raised Beds that I could just assemble. The best deal that I could find was from Natural Yards.com. They had a nice sale when I bought the Raised Bed Kit in December and since they are located in Oregon, the shipping wasn't too bad.

Even though Cedar is water resistant, the wood will turn a dull gray if left untreated in just a few months. One of the reasons I chose wood was because of how it looks, so I had to find a way to treat the wood. Since, I will be using this Raised Bed to grow Cherry Tomatoes, I wanted to treat the wood with something safe and non toxic. I don't want any harmful chemicals to leach into the soil. Unfortunately, that eliminated all of the wood finishes and stains at the local Big Box store.

I looked at the Internet and there were several natural finishes available. I chose to use Bioshield Aqua Resin. I bought a 0.75 liter of Cedar Stain. Hopefully it will last several years before I have to restain.

The Raised Bed kit arrived in early January, but the Cedar stain was out of stock, so I had to wait until February before I could assemble the Raised Bed.

For part 2 see this blog entry.

Raised Beds

I use Raised Beds extensively in my vegetable garden.  Last year, I used 2 raised beds and several containers.  I found that the plants were healthier and more productive in the Raised Beds than in the containers.  This year, I have going to use Raised Beds exclusively.

The picture on the right shows my largest Raised Bed in terms of cubic feet.  I built this Raised Bed out of cement garden blocks.  It is shaped like an inverted T and takes up a 10 feet x 5 feet area.  I created a T shaped so that I can have access to back of the plants.  There are 2 feet x 3 feet wedges on each side of the bottom of the T.  The Raised Bed has a depth of 1 feet and holds a 44 cubic feet of soil.

Last year, I made the mistake of putting 13 cherry tomato plants in this Raised Ged.  This was way too many plants.  The plants ended up competing with each other for sunlight.  It became a tangled mess as plants were threading through each other for sun. Plus, actually picking the tomatoes was difficult, as I had to hunt for the fruit.

The picture to the left shows what the Raised Ged looked like in June of last year.  It looked much worse in August. I actually had to pull plants out in order to create space for the other plants.

This year, I plan to only put 5 cherry tomatoes in this Raised Bed.  I think this will provide me with more tomatoes than I got last year in the same area.

The other Raised Ged that I used last year was fairly shallow. It is L shaped with a base of 5 feet, a length of 18 feet, and a depth of 4 feet.

In the picture to the left, you can see the trellis system I built out of steel rods to support the Winter Melon vines.  I tied the rods together using nylon rope.

The picture below is from last year and shows the Winter Melon vines growing in the trellis network.  The trellis worked very well, as the rods were strong enough to support the weight of the fruit.  

I plan to extend the trellis network to cover more of my garden.

I have added two near raised beds this Winter.

  The circular raised bed  to the right is 3 feet in diameter. I plan to grow sweet potatoes in this raised bed.

My fourth raised bed is a prefabricated plastic raised bed that I bought from Gardener's Supply Company. Below is a picture of the raised bed.  I am not too happy with the way it looks.  I may take it apart after the growing season and replace it with something else.