Why raised beds? While there are many reasons to plant in raised beds, mine were pretty simple. First of all, my soil is clay. Now I don’t mean clay as in, yeah, it’s kind of hard. I mean clay as in, you could dig it out, form it into cakes, bake it, and create your own bricks that way. It’s the kind of clay that stays cold for a long time, drains very poorly, turns into solid concrete when there is a few warm days, and that would stop pretty much any delicate root. It’s the kind of clay that sticks to your shovel and any rototiller you would try to use on it. So the better solution is to pile the dirt I want to use on top of the existing grade and go from there. As the garden breaks down, it can only improve the soil below it and make future plantings better. (Eventually, the bales themselves will break down enough that I can plant directly into them!) Second, this is a new house, and I don’t really know what is down there, so I feel better building on top than digging into the ground. Third, raised beds can warm faster than gardens planted in the ground, which may prove to be a lifesaver when I try my hand at winter gardening at the end of this summer season. Last but not least, it gives the garden a defined space and looks pretty cool in the process.
After deciding on what type of garden I wanted to go with, the most important decision I made was the site selection. I had to consider light, the movement of the sun, wind, temperature, ease of access, flow of the yard, and drainage issues. I spent quite a lot of time in the yard during the past 4 months, tracking the movement of the sunlight overhead and wind through the yard for both the raised beds and the container garden. I had a mental picture of where I wanted the gardens, but I am not the kind of person who writes these things down or maps them out. After cutting back the overgrown lawn, this is the area that I had to work with (dogs not included):
It is near a water source, which will be important during the summer here in Eugene (at least until I start thinking about rain barrels and water storage), and it does have both a nice breeze and late-day partial shading to keep the plants healthy and happy. It is also far enough away from all the trees so that they will not interfere with the growing vegetables or acidify the soil with their leaves/needles.
I started making the raised beds by dragging the straw bales to their desired location. If you don’t want to have to keep moving them around, I’d suggest measuring and marking out the area before you start moving them. I really don’t have that kind of planning capability in me (and apparently I needed the exercise), so I did place half of them once, try a slightly different location with the second half, and then shifted the first batch to match the second. If you are the planning type, do be aware of this one catch: unlike beds made from wood or other materials, straw bales are not an exact science. Any amount of water during the storage process will cause the bales to bend (as you can see in the pictures of the beds), and no two bales will ever be the exact same size and shape. If you are the kind of person who is into exact dimensions or perfect corners, straw bales are probably not the best building material for you. My final beds have one side wall that is shorter than the other due to some bales being rounded, so it lacks square corners on one side.
Once I had my general shape and location finalized, I took an extra bale (i bought 4 extras as they have many uses including mulching and cold weather protection), broke it apart, and laid down a layer of straw mulch on top of the grass. This is not an exact measurement—just spread out the straw in a layer to form the bottom of your beds. I have also seen people use a layer of a grass-suppressing mix of cardboard and newspaper, but straw was what I had so straw is what I went with.
Once the floor was in place, it was time to add in the compost. I picked up a trailer load of goat manure compost from a farmer in Cottage Grove (really nice stuff, aged about 4 years and full of red wigglers), which I had dumped into a pile into my driveway for a lack of a better place to put it when I had to unload the trailer for other things. This had to be wheeled back to the bed a wheelbarrow load at a time, dumped on to the top of the straw, and then pushed around to make a somewhat even layer.
Again, this is not an exact science for me, so I can’t really tell you how many inches of compost you need on top of whatever inches of straw. Just get it in there, using your best judgement, and it should all be fine. I will probably be shooting for alternating layers of clean dirt and manure compost, which is easier than premixing it all before adding it to the beds. I am generally trying to shoot for the most organic matter I can get into the beds while not losing the texture and airspace the plant roots need to grow.
In previous years, I would have worked hard to get the perfect mix of soils, following Steve Solomon’s exact advice and avoiding straw mulch because Oregon hay/straw is not good. (According to him, it is good for grass seed but not for anything else because it’s not balanced enough.) This year, I am working on the principle that if you provide plants with the basics, the exact measurements won’t matter and the plants will do fine. Plants are programmed, by nature, to grow and thrive in whatever conditions they are handed. So if making Napa’s grape vines suffer a bit produces the finest quality of fruit, I will not stress about the exact chemical composition of my soil and will learn to enjoy gardening more instead. If I started worrying about finding "well-drained soil" in this area, I would be starting out the season with a sense of doom that wasn’t warranted. Oregon may not have California’s sandy, fertile soils, but you can still grow a whole lot here in the Willamette Valley and there are many things that I can grow here that did not do well in California’s heat.
This is the bed as of the end of the day yesterday, with the straw layer and the compost layer. This week I will be adding additional compost and dirt to fill the beds before putting my plants in.
