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I have three ‘regular’ garden beds, each 10×4. I created two of them last year, and the third earlier this year. My first bed just did not do well this year at all. I planted bok choy, two types of onions, dill, cilantro, parsley, peas and cucumbers in mid-Spring. The bok choy and onions sprouted and then mostly died away. The cilantro was super stringy, the cucumbers only grew about 3” and stopped. The peas did ok, but not great. The parsley didn’t even germinate at all, and the dill was a dud until I noticed this weekend that it had suddenly appeared out of no where and was a foot tall.

I didn’t know much about gardening when I started the bed last year. Well.. I still don’t know much, but I knew less then. I can’t remember what I filled the bed with, but whatever it was is super dry every time I go out to check the beds. Even though I have an automated irrigation system, I still don’t water all that often. Once a week during our normal weather (meaning when its in the 70s, low 80s) and only more frequently when the weather is hotter. I have a moisture meter and at 8” depth in my other two beds it is a nice 80% moisture level a day before watering.. but this bed is always around 65%. So whatever I made this bed out of it is certainly not a water-retaining substance.

I thought about amending it with some peat moss or something else to retain water. I thought about just getting rid of the bed altogether and setting up another one somewhere else in the yard (more on that later).

However, I’m going to try an experiment. Reading through ‘Gardening West of the Cascades’ in the winter gardening section Steve talks about using coldframes and hoophouses in the winter, not for cold protection but for rain protection. Any good soil will get waterlogged and the plants will drown. So.. I have a bed that drains too fast for summer, and weather that provides too much water in winter. Maybe my little bed here is just made for winter gardening. I planted winter broccoli and cauliflower in it this weekend (might be too late, but I had the seeds so why not try), along with peas and favas.

I’m also in the process of watching different sections of my yard during sunny days to track the shade patterns. I don’t really care for the beds just being shoved out in the yard.. I’d like to have them cordoned off somehow. Maybe a little 3’ tall cedar fence around it with some mulch all around them. That is a big project and before I do something like that I want to make sure I have the optimum location. I’ve already watched the shade pattern this summer in my current location. As you can see in the photo above, my neighbors row of Arbor Vitae cast a long narrow shade down the fence line in the late afternoon.

I was going to ditch this whole area and move all of the garden somewhere else, but the more I watch, the more I see this is a good spot, it just needs to be shifted out some. The shade pattern changes based on the time of year, and so far the sun is already setting between the tree line across the street (which shades my entire property) before it hits the neighbors Arbor Vitae.. so, for winter gardening it doesn’t really matter, because the shade pattern is different.

I also planted my chard, winter napa cabbage and an Arctic butter lettuce in my stone bed this weekend.

	The volunteer tomato is growing stronger and bigger by the day. He has 4 tomatoes on now and lots more blooms. The one tomato is getting bigger pretty rapidly.. it just might make it. The Flashy Oak Butter lettuce surrounding it is in need of picking.. and eating.
	My Paris White romaine is heading out nicely too.

I may be a 6’5 210lb motorcycle ridin man, but I love me some lolcats. I’m not gonna lie. We have a boy and a girl cat and they are hilarious. Other people’s cats with funny captions are hilarious. Cats have little to do with gardening.. but, the ‘Cheezburger network’ (the people that run lolcats) have a new(ish) blog up called ThereIFixedIt.com, and it is –awesome-. It is a tribute to the worst (best?) kludges from around the world. The site mostly pokes fun at the crazy things people do to get around a problem.. but this one is just.. just.. brilliant!

Back on July 13th I posted about a volunteer tomato plant that was apparently from a commercial seed in my compost from a tomato I bought in the super market. I said back then that I didn’t have much hope in it maturing much less producing anything in time before frost. Well check this out.

	It might be difficult to tell in the photo, but the plant is actually pretty tall. The flashy oak butter lettuce on the left, and the paris white romaine lettuce on the right are both pretty mature. I need to eat more salads.
	Look at that little guy. Who knows what variety it is, and who knows if it has even the slightest chance to ripen before frost. I certainly don’t know.. but I’m pulling for the little guy. Apologies for the blurriness of the shot. The iphone isn’t exactly a high end camera.
	Here is the spot I ripped the rutabagas out of on Sunday. By the fence is the tomato plant I’m experimenting with this year. It is an Oregon Spring, planted the same time as my others in my other bed. This bed doesn’t get as much sun as the other bed, so it was an experiment to see how an early variety of tomato would do. Answer: not very well. It does have a few tiny little tomatoes on it, but the other plants in the main garden have all pretty much finished up already. The light green at the end is another butter lettuce.. can’t recall the variety off hand. It’s a winter variety. The darker green in the middle is the Fizz Kale.

I went to the “Seattle Area Gardeners Bloggers MeetUp To Talk (SAGBUTT) on Saturday. I’ve been following many of the Seattle area bloggers to see what works well here and what I should avoid. Getting to meet many of them on Saturday was a lot of fun. We met at Molly’s place. The Weed Whackin’ Wenches did a great post about it so I won’t try to replicate it here.

I haven’t been out in my garden too much lately. We are currently tracking the shade patterns in the yard for the location of next years garden. It has to move.. where it is now isn’t ideal. We think we found a good spot, but are tracking the shade at each hour of the day to make sure it gets all day sun. With all of the really giant trees around the neighborhood, they cast long shadows at random times.

I did get out to the garden a little on Sunday. I pulled out all of the rutabagas. Not really because they are ready, but because I’m tired of rutabagas! We don’t really like them all that much to begin with, and I won’t be planting them again next year. The main reason though is they were shading out my kale and butter lettuce, two crops we do like.

This was the haul. Pretty massive. Out of all of that greenery we have probably 1 lb total of rutabaga roots. We like the greens in our stir frys so I gave them a quick blanching and put them into individual serving sized freezer bags and into the freezer they went. It made 5, 2-serving bags. So even in our failures to grow what we set out to grow, we learn… and sometimes we get to eat the greens.

This is a great time of year for the garden. Everything is big and lush and green. Things are either already producing or loading up to produce soon. Either way it’s a fun time in the garden.

	The Flashy Oak Butter Lettuce is prime right now. We’ve been  eating a lot of salads with it and the Paris White lately. It’s super tasty.
	Here is a broader shot of the Flashy Oak and Paris White together.
	My tomato and squash bed is a mat of green with tons of winter squash blooms.
	The winter squash has a lot of little fruit on it already too. You can see two in this photo. They are growing an inch a day right now it seems.

Well, at least hardware-wise. I’m most certainly still enjoying our Seattle summer. Enjoying it immensely. As I write I am smoking an Indian Tabac Maduro and enjoying a fruit and spirits beverage. What I mean by ‘winter ready’ is that my coldframes are finished.

Last weekend my friend Chris came over and helped me with the first round of construction. This weekend I was flying solo and got them finished up. I made two, both 8’x3’ and 12” at the front and 20” at the back in height. I think I’m borderline on the height.. being at the taller end, but my greens are all pretty large, so I think it will work out.

As with most of my garden projects, the driving factor is cost. My cost for the two beds were just for the 2x2s and for the plastic sheeting. It took a total of 24 2x2s and 1 roll of 3’x50’ plastic sheeting. All total the cost was around $65, or $32 each. I might not make that back this year in veggies, but I should in a couple of years.

	We start off with the building the main portion of the frame. The frame is basically just a box with the back side taller than the front side. This makes the top slope to the front, to shed rain and light snow. We have: (4) 2x2s at the standard 8 feet length. (4) 2x2s at 3’ (2) 2x2s at 12” (2) 2x2s at 20” We’ll assembled them next.
	Take (2) of the 8’s and space them 3’ apart and take (2) of the 3’s and make a rectangle. Screw them together with the 3’s spanning the outsides of the 8’s.. so the overall dimensions stay at 3’.. not 3’ 3”
	Now take your (2) 12” and attach them both to the same side, and your (2) 20” and attach to the other side. (So in the photos, i had both sides the same length, and I had planned to add a slope to my lid.. this turned out to be a bad idea, so I went back and changed my design to have the slope be part of the frame. That’s why in this photo, and the next one, the box is square, not slopped. The photos after these two show the new, and correct, design.)
	Next we build the same box again that we built earlier.. (2) 8’ lengths connected to (2) 3’ lengths. Then attach this box to the top of the one you built in the last step, so you end up with this box.
	Once we get our skeleton built, it’s time to put on the skin. The sheet plastic I bought is 3’ wide and 50’ long. Which turned out to be exactly what I needed, and that was just dumb luck (on the length I mean). Apply the plastic to all four sides of the frame. Don’t plastic the top or bottom, obviously. I used my industrial stapler to secure the plastic. One thought I had is that if the wind really picks up (unlikely here) the plastic might rip out of the staples. You could take a 1×2 ‘furring strip’ and screw down over the plastic, sandwiching the plastic to the 2x2s, in addition to the staples. . I don’t think I’ll need to do this though.
	I just realized that I didn’t take any photos of the lid construction. Enjoy the fine artwork I created to recreate it. The lid is constructed exactly like the frame with the addition of two middle supports. (2) 8’s connected to (2) 3’s on the ends. The two middle supports are 33” long each, and secured on the inside of the frames, always keeping the overall size to 3’. Once you get the lid built, secure the plastic over the top of the lid. You want the wood to be under the plastic so rain runs off, without hitting the wood. You can see this in the pictures coming next.
	Once we get the separate pieces assembled, it’s time to put it all together. You can go to the store and buy hinges for this, but why not get creative? You need something flexible enough to bend when you lift the lid, but firm enough to hold the lid in place.
	I had a length of reinforced PVC hose (used for food disposals) laying around and made a trial run and it worked great! I cut them to 3′” lengths and screwed it into both the lid and the frame. Works like a charm.
	Since the lid and the frame are exactly the same size, there isn’t an easy way to lift the lid. I had some left over PVC elbows and pipe from my earlier project, In-ground Irrigation. They made for a nice little handle. I drilled a hole through the PVC on either side and secured it with a screw on either end. Solid and looks great.
	The final step is to add a way to hold the lip open for those hotter than normal days at the beginning and end of the coldframe season. Nothing really creative here. I put a bolt through the frame at the bottom so the wooden slat could swivel. On the lid I put a lag bolt, with a large head, and then cut a few notches into the slat to slip over the lag bolt.
	And here it is, all finished! This is one of two I’ll be using this winter. We’ll see how it works. I have high expectations.