Gardening by Headlight

  The Dirty Rascals really did it this time.  They got down and dirty all for some savory rewards later.  This month the club's meeting centered around building a raised bed garden.  That's right, they built in just under an hour with the help of club leaders a 4x10 raised bed garden.  As the volunteers started cutting lumber the members laid out newspaper as weed control under their bed.  The news paper will help kill the grass and weeds where the bed will sit, and will allow drainage for what is eventually planted in the garden.  Newspaper is also biodegradable, so they members are recycling while being considerate of the environment.
  After the paper was laid down it was time to learn how to use power tools. That's right power tools.  The members took turns attaching the bracing for the garden with screws and then helped attached the boards together making the rectangular walls of their raised bed.  Then it was time for some serious maneuvering as we laid out edging, flat, to make a grass and weed barrier around the outside edge of the garden, and to help protect it from lawn mowers and weed eaters.
  Once the volunteers determined it was a square (or lined up) as it could be it was time for the hard dirty work.  We emptied lots of bags to top soil, potting soil, and cow manure with compost, into the frame.  We wanted to make sure we have a mixture of soil that is fertile, but not too dense since it is essentially in a container.  The sun was setting quickly so one of our volunteers turned his truck around so we could garden by headlight.  The members worked hard at mixing all the different soil types together and layering it out to settle.  When we got down we had just the right amount of soil for our garden.
  Putting down our outside tools it was time to go inside and get the seeds started so we would have something to plant in our garden in April.  After going over our plans we realized our popcorn and radishes would be planted in the ground.  Our cucumbers won't take long to come up so we decided to wait on planting those seeds.  So that left our tomatoes and green bell peppers.  We started sowing our seeds in the Aero Garden seed starters.  This is our hydroponic garden that we have at the office that lets us start seeds in a safe nurturing environment then we can transplant into our raised bed garden outside.  We planted green peppers, mortgage lifter tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and big boy tomatoes.  We can't wait to see which ones work best.
   We do want to give a big shout out thank you to the Robeson County Master Gardeners' Association.  They helped fund our raised bed garden which will be used as a teaching garden at the Cooperative Extension Office.  We also want to say thank you to Lowe's Home Improvement that gave us a discount on the items we needed to build this garden and we will be back for the rest of the items we will need soon.
  At our April meeting we plan to start our seed and transplant our tomatoes and green peppers.  We may have extra, if you are interested in buying one of our starter plants for $2 please let Mack Johnson (Mack_Johnson@ncsu.edu) know and your money will go to our club efforts.  If you would like more information about this club please contact Wendy Maynor, 4-H Program Assistant, at Wendy_Maynor@ncsu.edu or (910) 671-3276.