Any seasoned gardener makes maximum use of their gardens throughout the year. This means planting some cold weather crops in the early spring while the warm weather crops are still seedlings. When the cold weather crops are almost done it'll be time for the warm weather crops. They'll make their run through the summer as we make our way through to the fall by getting a 2nd round of cool weather crops in the works. Once fall is coming around and the warm weather crops are pretty much done, the 2nd wave of cold weather crops go in the dirt. These crops will conclude the year, making its run through until the first frosts come around. After I threw together a number of raised bed gardens using everything from old washer drums all the way to fabricated frameworks using buckets as planters, I figured that I have to adopt this same principle if I want to get the maximum use out of these gardens. I ended up pulling a lot of the old plants from many of the drum style planters while getting the latest raised bucket bed done. The first thing I did was plant seeds for the types of greens I normally make use of in these beds to see how many I can get to sprout and start growing. I also put some seeds in the smaller hydroponic garden to see what I can get to come up from that unit as well. Sometime later I was able to get some seedlings of the common salad greens and other greens I would typically put to use. Also I was able to get three viable lettuce plants from the hydroponic garden. At this rate the first thing I did was take one of the drum raised beds and transferred the three plants from the hydroponic garden over to it. There were some seedlings that appeared to have sprouted as well. I made sure to plant the three plants at one end where they were away from the sprouts After removing the old cucumber and tomato plants from the two washer/dryer drum planters, I planted several lettuce seedlings I picked up from Lowe's. Leaving the micro irrigation system in place, all of these planters will get proper watering. Along with periodic sprinkling of dry slow release organic fertilizer, hopefully I'll be getting some thick greens for the fall into the winter. As for the new bucket raised bed, I had to plant eight plants since I have eight buckets in place. The planter flats from Lowe's have six plants in them so I had to find something to put in the other two buckets. I wanted to plant collard greens for our iguana lizard but couldn't find a flat of seedlings, only kale. I ended up getting a flat of kale to plant in the six buckets then took some collard seeds and sowed them in the other two buckets. The current micro irrigation system has not been expanded to incorporate this raised bed but another project I'm going to be working on will be running an above ground water line along the fence line that will have taps along the line to feed micro irrigation hoses for future raised beds. This water line would be fed from a sprinkler valve so it wouldn't have constant water pressure on it. There wouldn't be any threat of damage from freezing in the winter at this rate. When the water line is done, I'll be able to water multiple planters and raised beds to the degree I should have production numbers that rival anything I had when I planted crops in the ground directly.
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