So I did my research, made my raised garden bed, planted my seeds, waited for them to sprout, but now what do I do? Between planting and harvesting there’s a lot to do to maintain a raised garden bed. Gardening is an every day event filled with some work and lots and lots of waiting. If your day allows for a quick walk through your garden at some point then it will be a lot easier to maintain.
What types of things should I expect to do?
- Thinning out your sprouts
- Weeding
- Bug Control
- Watering
- Keeping tabs on the growing fruit/vegetables
Thinning those beautiful little sprouts
You mean I can’t keep them all? You go through all that hard work of planting your seeds, watering them, worrying over them, and then success they sprout! As nice as it would be to keep them all, you can’t if they’re too close together. The package your seeds came in tells you how close together they can be. For my green bean plants, pictured below, you need 2 inches of space between plants.
This is how my garden first looked after the seeds sprouted. You want to wait until the second set of leaves come up from your plant before thinning them out. Sometimes plants will die, get eaten, or have problems so you don’t want to thin them before you see that the plant is going to continue growing. If you thin your plants and then one dies you can always plant another seed if it’s not too late in the growing season.
So how did I do? I got lucky and most of mine were far enough apart.
Eventually these little sprouts become full sized plants like mine below.
If I had left all of them in the ground eventually they would be crowding each other and fighting for valuable nutrients and water. It’s better to thin out some plants and have a few successful plants than leave them and they end up choking each other out.
Most plants do not like having their roots messed with. So the best option with thinning plants is to take your scissors to them and cut the tops off the ones you don’t need. If you do try to move sprouts make sure to do it carefully and before the root base gets too big. Of the three I moved, only one of them survived.
I got very lucky with my corn plants and only had to thin one plant. Not all of ours came up so I actually ended up planting more seeds.
Weeding the never ending task
This is my garden after we added a tomato plant where one of the pepper transplants died. Regardless of whether your garden is in the middle of the woods like ours or a backyard in the suburbs you are going to have to contend with weeds.
If I had a large garden with multiple rows I would most likely do my weeding with a hoe. However we have two relatively small raised garden beds so I weed by hand. If you have time to walk through your garden daily it doesn’t have to be an labor intensive task. Catch the weeds small before they get large root bases and you pick and go. A hoe makes things go faster but you have to be careful not to damage your plants and their roots.
Watching out for bugs and other pests!
Bees, wasps, and other inspects that go from flower to flower I am good with. Move along my happy pollinators. Spiders are also welcome friends to eat pesky bugs in my garden. However caterpillars and other insects can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Daily inspecting your garden can keep a caterpillar from destroying your garden. If you start seeing round holes in the leaves on your plants then something has been eating them. Look under all the leaves and try to find the culprit before it does too much damage.
However insects are not the only critters you need to be on the watch for. Bunnies and deer will make quick work of your garden if you don’t keep them out. So far we have succeeded in keeping the multitude of deer that live in the woods out of my garden. Granted it’s late spring so there are lots of easier things for them to get to and eat. We had an extra poultry net and put it up around the garden. It runs off a solar panel and delivers a minor shock to anything that touches it. The deer can easily jump it but so far that has been enough of a deterrent for them to leave it alone.
Plants need a decent amount of water.
On average vegetable gardens need about 1 inch of water per week. Depending on your weather that means you may need to water your garden daily, a couple times a week, or once a week. Make sure to water the soil and not the plant. Water on leaves can cause some diseases and hurt plants on very hot days. The best time to water may be midmorning but not everyone has that option.
Growing fruit and vegetables
Finally we get to the entire reason we have a garden: the end product! Keep tabs on your garden once it starts producing fruit and vegetables. You want to make sure you get whatever it is your growing off the plant when it is ripe and ready. If you’re not sure when this is you can look online and find many resources to help you know when to leave it be and when to pick. The NC State Cooperative Extension has a bunch of gardening resources at your disposal to help you along the way. If you’re old school like me you can even buy their Extension Gardener Handbook to page through instead of reading online.
This is the fun part! Enjoy watching your garden grow! While you wait start thinking about what you’re going to do with your harvest. I have plans to can green beans, corn, and tomato puree. Plus eat lots of fresh vegetables I hope! I’ll post later this summer how to can your vegetables! Good luck!
