With Christmas not far off, here are some gift ideas for the gardeners in your life. I hope you enjoy reading about (and seeing the results of) my 2020 test of three fine products generously sent to me by Gardeners Supply for rigorous testing.
Building a garden (and first, a garden strategy) from scratch is challenging, interesting, and if done well, rewarding. My long experience with Raleigh weather (Zone 8), and driveway-mandated (due to sun exposure) gardening was swapped for a very different set of conditions (Zone 7a) and garden space possibilities. Our first growing season here was such fun, and largely very successful (many of you watched it all happen on my weekly Instagram Live shows).
When taking first views of the yard, watching the pattern of the sun, and matching it with my garden goals, a few things came to mind. First, the presence of a fence next to a garden suitable area brought the possibility of climbing crops to mind, as the fence provides a perfect backbone for a trellis system.
The fact that a septic tank and leach field takes up much of our back yard means that a big, hang dug or tilled garden is out of the question. Raised beds, straw bales, and containers were the solution to that challenge.
Our first Hendersonville garden was significant enhanced by three wonderful products sent to me for a real world, hands-on test by the Gardeners Supply company.
I tested the following (sincere thanks to Gardeners Supply for the opportunity to test each of these useful, attractive products)
Vertex Wall Trellis on an existing fence for a brand new gardening area. My plan was to start early and grow flowering sweet peas, and follow them up with scarlet runner bean painted lady.
Copper Capped Cedar Raised Bed. I wanted to use this for a spring through winter rotation of crops, including bush green beans, lettuce, beets, watermelon, Swiss chard, Kale, Collards and Garlic.
Elevated Cedar Planter. My plants for this convenient, attractive planting bed were spinach, Swiss chard, and carrots, followed by kale, collards, lettuce and garlic.
I am going to take these one at a time and include pictures of their use throughout the season
Copper Capped Cedar Raised Bed
Assembly was straightforward, with clear directions. Materials are high quality. I positioned the raised bed on a flat surface, directly on the lawn, in an area that I estimated would receive direct sun for about 6 hours by the middle of summer.
Raised bed positioned after assembly, March 2020
I filled the raised bed with a locally produced natural material consisting of composted leaves and grass clippings, augmented with some bagged commercial soil less mix, filling to within about 3 inches of the top of the bed. After a light watering, I planted various seedlings of greens and lettuce that accompanied us on our move from Raleigh to Hendersonville, NC.
Raised bed, filled with planting mix and then lettuces and greens, early April 2020
Regular feeding and watering led to a nice harvest. These plants were then removed, making room for beet, lettuce and some rare bush green bean seedlings.
Beets (front), lettuce (middle rows), bush beans (rear), mid May
Harvests of all three crops were outstanding. The ease of planting, harvest and care were notable, plants were healthy and grew quickly, and quality of the produce was superb.
Beets harvested in July
Here are in November and the raised bed now contains garlic, lettuce, kale and collards. I plan on growing these over the winter for spring 2021 harvests.
Garlic (front), lettuce (center left), and collards and kale (center to the right edge) happily growing in November.
Elevated Cedar Planter
I was sent this kit to test in 2019, but realizing we would be moving, I elected to not assemble it until we were in our new home. Again, as with the Cedar capped raised bed, directions were clear and assembly was straightforward, with clearly high quality materials.
Just after assembly, positioning and filling with planting mix. Spinach seedlings and carrot seeds, March.
I used the same combination of locally produced composted organic materials and commercial, bagged soil less mix. Into the lightly watered planter went spinach seedlings and carrot seeds.
May, showing vigorous growth of the carrots (front), with frequently picked spinach in the rear.
I loved the convenience of working with plantings at waist level. The spinach was outstanding, and the carrots germinated well and filled in thickly.
June harvest, a rainbow of carrot colors
After the spinach was finished, I worked Swiss chard seedlings into the planter, which grew well as the carrots matured. I was delighted with a very heavy harvest of straight, perfect carrots. Those finished, I worked in more chard, and some compact hot pepper plants.
The view in November, echoing the mix of plants that are in the copper capped raised bed - garlic, lettuce, collards and kale.
With the peppers and chard done, I planted the same sort of mix in the raised planter for growing fall, over winter, and into spring 2021 - garlic, lettuce, collards and kale. As you can see from my pictures, both raised beds provided great flexibility, production and value, as I moved different plant types in and out throughout the season.
Vertex Wall Trellis
I had high hopes for this easy to assemble, interesting looking trellis. I noted a perfect location for installation, on to an existing fence, at the bottom of which I created a new garden.
Trellis installed onto a tall fence, with a new garden at the bottom
My plan for the trellis was to start with colorful vining Sweet Peas, then switching to equally colorful scarlet runner beans in the summer. The picture shows shorter growing bush type snap peas already germinated, with the sweet peas too short at this point to see.
Finally, a few blossoms!
Alas, the sweet peas grew too slowly and once the days warmed, the plants did not thrive to the level that was hoped for. The picture above shows a few blossoms, but the plants never reached more than a few feet tall, which didn’t give a very good test for the trellis. Next year I plan to grow vining type sugar snap peas on the trellis as a first crop.
Scarlet runner beans were a more successful crop on the trellis
I was much more pleased with the scarlet runner bean outcome, shown above. I didn’t plant them thickly enough to provide full coverage of the trellis, but as a first test, it went well. Next year I will plant a wax pole bean, focusing on use of the trellis as more of a means to produce something we really love to eat.
In summary, I highly recommend all three of these fine products. Each enhanced my gardening enjoyment and success, looked great, and helped me to create a more flexible set of options for my garden.