Category: Gardening

Building stone beds

Heat retaining stone beds for heat-loving plants

We hat a job working in someone’s garden where we should remove larger and smaller boulders. Of course we took these boulders home with us and made 2 beautiful plant beds with these stones. We used our wheel loader to position the larger boulders. Other than that it is manual work. A plant bed out of boulders is heavy and exhausting, but the result is worth the effort.

To start with my husband positioned the larger stones, after that we filled out the spaces in between with the smaller stones. Than what’s left is filling up the bed with soil, spreading out the soil and finished is the plant bed.

We had a lot of smaller boulders left, so we build another smaller plant bed. To get a curtain height it needs a broad base and then all that is left to do is stack the stones until all have been used. Again fill up with soil, spreading out the soil and finished is the plant bed.

The stones retain the heat of the sun and keep the temperature at night a little higher. I hope to have better results with tomatoes and eggplants in the larger stone bed compared to the normal beds with wood around them. First I am going to use the stone bed for early sowing under cover. Tomatoes and eggplants can’t be planted outside until the middle of Mai any how.

Starting plantlets from seed in doors

I started sowing

It is still a bit early for our region, but I have sowed the first vegetables and herbs inside the house. When the wetter is getting better I find it difficult to wait. I have a small indoor greenhouse and had seen by some one else who used empty milk cartons to sow in. I have used a few of those as well. They fit wonderfully on my small windowsills. I don’t have any seed soil, so I used regular plant soil.

Divide a good layer of soil in the trays, sow and cover with a thin or a thicker layer of soil depending on what was sown. Don’t forget to water carefully and mark what was sown where.

I have sown following:

  • Paprika Kapiya Vertus
  • Eggplant Violetta Lunga
  • Flat leaf Parsley
  • Tomato Gardeners Delight
  • Celery Porthos
  • Celery root Wiener Riesen
  • Real Chamomile
  • Chili De Cayenne
  • Pick lettuce
  • Romaine lettuce
  • Tomato Marmande
  • Wilde Rocket
  • Bush Basil
  • Sage

I have sown ratter dense, so that will be tricky to transplant. Unfortunately I do not have the space to do it differently. I hope the wetter will be useful soon, so I can transplant some of the plants outdoors under a cover, but first we will wait and see if anything germinates, which can take up to 3 weeks for some plants. Mean while it is important to make sure the soil will not dry out.

After 3 days the lettuce and the bush basil already have germinated. I took the milk cartons from the window sills to the table beside the small indoor greenhouse, because I think it is to cold at the window. A window is a cold bridge and it is still very cold outside.

We bought some fruit trees

But we where not finished with the preparations for planting jet

Beside fruit trees we also bought 50 pcs of Lavender plants (Lavandula angustifolia) and 50 pcs of ivy (Hedera helix). The Lavender is not only decorative; in future I also want to harvest them. Lavender is not only beautiful in a dry bouquet, but we also want to have the essential oil. In the future I hope to make my own soap again and I would need the essential oil for that. The Ivy is ideal for covering the soil lively to prevent it from drying out and prevent erosion. Also we used to wash our clothing with ivy leaves and we want to go back to that again. Now we wash with wash nuts, but the ivy leaves will be free, after the plants settle and grow, and you can’t get it more regional than from your own garden.

Other than that we bought 10 pcs of raspberry bushes. Some raspberry bushes we already have and the kids loved snacking them directly of the bush. We just had so little harvest that I had to see that every child would get one. That problem should be solved now. Currant bushes we also have a few and where loved to snack from. We will plant all the berry bushes we have in our new plant beds, because we will put a fens around them to keep the dogs out. The dogs destroy everything and pee over everything. We have all male dogs.

We bought 15 pcs apple trees, 15 pcs pear trees and 15 pcs plum trees. We had not finished the preparations on time, but we planted fruit trees in the finished plant beds right away. So put aside the straw, make a hole put in the tree and put a part of the soil back. Than we watered, so the soil would run in every corner and space around the roots. Than fill up the soil around the tree completely and put in a post to secure the tree so the wind will not rock the tree. Only thing left is to divide the straw back. My husband had prepared a lot of posts with a point for all the trees.

We could only plant 12 fruit trees, so we planted all the other once close to each other in 2 plant beds to wait for them to be planted on there final spot. We had built some more plant beds and could only fill 2, because we did not have anymore soil. The trees are in these 2 beds. Hopefully we will get new soil delivered soon and we will go on with this topic a different time.