Our soil is crap: mostly red clay with a light skin of what could pass for dirt. We used a ton of big box store (also crap) dirt in these raised beds and have supplemented with a ton of composted horse manure. Due to the extreme (incipient drought) lack of rain I’ve kept adding a ton of old horse hay mulch and watered as needed. Plants have filled in the bed and are around 4 feet tall.
Illustrious_Bunch_62
Looking fantastic and huge for the time they’ve been going! I started mine mid march and the tallest isn’t half the size
Numerous-Stranger-81
“Do you stake or cage your plants?”
Yes.
gunk_plunk
How do you keep up with pests, rodents, and birds?
toolsavvy
Awesome. Hope you get a bountiful harvest.
We are having a drought too for 2 months and temps in the 90s consistently (not normal for my area). The temps seem to be dropping into 80 now, but still hardly any rain. Well get a quarter inch or less but then nothing for weeks.
Lots of blossom drop, especially on hot peppers.
Add to that the late spring temps consistently under 55F, so plants suffer from the start, then from there straight to scorching heat with no rain, no transition really.
Planted about 40% more plants this year so hopefully can get similar total harvest as prior years.
5 Comments
Our soil is crap: mostly red clay with a light skin of what could pass for dirt. We used a ton of big box store (also crap) dirt in these raised beds and have supplemented with a ton of composted horse manure. Due to the extreme (incipient drought) lack of rain I’ve kept adding a ton of old horse hay mulch and watered as needed. Plants have filled in the bed and are around 4 feet tall.
Looking fantastic and huge for the time they’ve been going! I started mine mid march and the tallest isn’t half the size
“Do you stake or cage your plants?”
Yes.
How do you keep up with pests, rodents, and birds?
Awesome. Hope you get a bountiful harvest.
We are having a drought too for 2 months and temps in the 90s consistently (not normal for my area). The temps seem to be dropping into 80 now, but still hardly any rain. Well get a quarter inch or less but then nothing for weeks.
Lots of blossom drop, especially on hot peppers.
Add to that the late spring temps consistently under 55F, so plants suffer from the start, then from there straight to scorching heat with no rain, no transition really.
Planted about 40% more plants this year so hopefully can get similar total harvest as prior years.
good luck.