I'm keeping an eye out for a reply as I am starting a new veggie raised garden as well. I do know that even if you bring outside soil due to the rain your new soil will turn alkaline overtime so you might want to add some kind of acidic supplement. We used a non treated wood but decided not to paint it even though they say that you can paint the outside to preserve it without harming the plants. I do not know what type of wood we used but they say that cedar and redwood are the best because they contain natural oils that make them last longer in the rain. Unfortunately they are expensive. Also look up square foot gardening. Wish you success!

brian ,
your plan looks good.
In a 3' by 16' bed you can have limited amount of vegetables. The number will depen on the type of veggies.
For example, a tomato plant needs roughly 1.5 -2 sqr-ft.
any bush type squash, bean, cuke, ect will need about 2 sqr-ft. So depending on what you want to plan number of seeds can be different. Also, things like cukes, squash, cukes, beans,peas are normally direct sowed. So basically, I have only started from seeds ,inside, things like, tomatoes, eggplants,
basils,peppers. You will probably have more seedlings than you will need.
If the length of bed runs east-west, you can arrange a
trellis on the north side for climbers, to free ground space.
as far as the frame of the bed, you can use cypres, pine, cedar or bricks, landscape blocks, stone, ets.
Any lumber will deteriorate, especially if not treated, but stuf like concrete block (cinder or other) will last indefinitely. If you are not too fancy, I woulk recommend cinder blocks which are not very expensive and is easy to work with. If you amend the narive soil(after removing the grass) one cinder block high should be sufficient,otherwise
you may need higher walls.

BrianLanning

People will give you advice about various things, so I'll do some little ones.

Before you put your lights in place, you might consider suspending them high enough from the table-surface to accommodate relatively tall plants, maybe 18 inches. Then, instead of worrying about raising and lowering the light, get some stable materials (wooden blocks or old books etc.) that you can use initially to elevate your seedlings up toward the lights where they need to be. This also accommodates seedlings that grow at different rates and are different heights. As they grow, you can remove the supports in layers to lower the plants and still have the tops of the seedlings close to the light.

Don't worry about not saving those yoghurt cups! :-) Many of us use large and small plastic or styrofoam drink-cups (buy them in sleeves for $1 at dollar stores) to transfer seedlings into until they're ready to be set into the garden. Make sure you also have a way to mark your seedlings -- with 2-3 people working around a lot of seedlings, you need to know they won't get mixed up. We've had many cries of distress over the years from those who didn't mark their seedlings and somebody or something messed up the order! That's why I like the styrofoam cups. They're easy to write on with a ballpoint pen (pressing down so if the ink fades later you can still read the indentation). But the plastic cups work just as well for seedlings and you can put labels in the seedling soil for marking them.

As for where to buy seeds, you need to make your garden plan first, decide what you want to grow, how much for your large family, etc. I'd order the seeds right away as soon as that's done. Depending on what you want to grow, there are several seed companies that you may find please you more than the large ones that sell seeds in the big box stores. (Though most of us buy seeds whenever we see something we want.)

Some of the smaller reputable seed companies sell mainly one crop, like beans or tomatoes or potatoes or onions. Other reputable companies carry a variety of seeds, often very handy for gardeners just getting started, though the number of varieties of seeds is not as large as the "specialty" seed vendors. Just do a GardenWeb search for seed vendors that carry various seeds that you know you'll want. They all have on-line catalogs that you can access. And of course you can purchase whatever you see that you want in local stores.

By going to various GardenWeb forums, like Tomatoes, or Beans, etc., you can read what varieties of vegetables people like and where they buy the seeds. GW also has seed exchanges that you can access from each forum for open pollinated vegetables and herbs. To access the seed exchange forums, see this at the top of each forum page just above where the threads start:

Messages: On-Topic Discussions [Switch to: Exchanges : Gallery : Conversations]

Click on "Exchanges".

Hi Brian,

3x16 is a limited space but a good size for starting. To get the most out of it you might try seasonal gardening, square foot grdening and vertical gardening. Have you decided what you want to grow?
In spring as soon as the ground can be worked there are things you can plant. Peas, salad greens spinach, beets onions. These are things that you sow directly into the ground.
You can also get some extra space by container gardening. You can grow cherry tomatoes in hanging baskets.
I grow peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash vertically, so that fence might prove handy.
Just a few ideas for you.

Nes

A friend of mine makes raised garden beds out of Douglas fir (the main tree around here) 2x4s and lines them with flat roofing metal. She swears it keeps them from rotting out so fast. She went to a local company who supplies sheet roofing metal to the companies who actually install roofing, and asked them for 12"x10-ft strips of flat metal (they are capable of bending it for roofing, but she specified she wanted it flat). They cut it on their machines and coiled it up and taped it for her. Look in the phonebook under 'roofing materials'. Be sure to understand that you're buying it by the full width (42"). So, if it's $1.50/ft, that's $15 for the ten-foot length, divided into strips.

Sue

Rainwater tends to be acidic, so that wouldn't be a problem, and would actually be better for watering your veggies than your local water, which is probably alkaline, just like your soil.

Sue

Thanks for all the replies.

3'x16' was a guess. I have half an acre lot so I could probably easily double that. I'm a bit worried about the association complaining, but the previous owner committed some horrible sins, then went into foreclosure and our back yard is visible from the neighborhood entrance. So I think anything green and maintained will be welcomed. Everyone knows we have 9 kids also.

Maybe 4'x16' with a trellis down the middle and access to both sides would be a better design?

Someone has a strawberry pyramid also (stark i think), we're thinking of doing that also.

I didn't think about direct sowing. I guess we'll do that for those things.

My wife suggested the hanging baskets. Some other people in the neighborhood did that last year with great results.

We're planning to grow a little bit of everything except for things we know that are cheap and plentiful in the grocery store (potatoes for example).

Still don't know about the box material. Someone suggested painting which is a good idea, but a pain in the butt. I know the local HD has cedar, so maybe we'll go that route.

thanks.

brian

Chicken wire has holes that are too big. A gopher or a vole can get through easily. It's also very thin and won't last more than a couple of seasons.
In the same area of the hardware store you will find 1/4" screen or hardware cloth(?) that has much thicker wire. Even this eventually breaks down, but it lasted 8 years for me.
Believe me! You don't want to have to dig out that huge raised bed!

I like your enthusiasm - go for it! Experience IS the best teacher.

Only a few comments that I would differ - but optional. First - a 3 x 16 ft. planting area probably won't feed 9 kids, unless most of them eat only "Jack-in-the Box" stuff. I know!

I like the yogurt cups - cuz they last a long time - won't disintegrate in the sunlight, and I can easily slip my thin planting trowel in to extract seedlings many times before they "retire." Not necessary, but they have good "staying" power.

Great that you have a basement - very few people lucky enough in our part of the country - everybody stores their stuff in the "garage" - or putting stuff in outside storage and leaving their expensive cars outside!

Anyway - if I had a nice basement, I would skip the small table with hanging lights, and put up shelves, perhaps using styrofoam between the shelves and damp wall for protection. You're going to want to store some canned goods aren't you. (Why grow stuff if you're not going to make sauerkraut and jams, and stuff.)

So - those nice shelves could also be used to hang grow lights (shop lights, etc.), underneath - then put your potted seedlings underneath - stack some old telephone directories under the pots if they need to be lifted, but its better not to plant too early - anyway. (yes - I know how folks like to get "started early" even when the snow is still a foot or so deep outside).

About what to make the planter out of - mine are only 1 inch x 6 inch cedar boards, doubled to make 12 inches reinforced at the corners with 1 x 2 x 12 in. posts - plenty big enough. I just had to replace one after 10 years - not bad! Besides - why invest a lot - those kids might not be as helpful as you might think, and if your like me, some projects have a short life, especially if it requires physical labor. Oh yes - and I WOULD definitely put some hardware cloth screening on the bottom of that planter - that vole has LOTS of relatives.

Outside of that - I think your "good to go" and don't be discouraged, its just that a lot of us didn't have such nice folks to get us started in the beginning, and some of us probably are a little hard learned - and a bit set in our ways as to which gardening ideas work best.

Bejay

Hi Brian, I'm planning on starting from seed myself this year. Here's what I've figured out so far:

Garden Watch Dog has been a great resource for checking out company reputations. There are a lot of reviews there, and it's easy to get a feel for which companies are good. Take a look around the site - there's a ton of useful information

My state's cooperative extension has a great vegetable planting guide that consolidates information for a lot of crops - when to plant, planting distance, yield, number of plants or seed per person.
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/426/426-331/426-331.pdf

From what I know so far, it's far preferable to buy tomato plants and pepper plants.

Brian, first off, hats off to you for the fact that with 9 kids you're able to contemplate much of ANYTHING! LOL I have twin toddlers and I'm going gray just trying to keep up with the two of them.

Anyway--thinking through the replies you have gotten here, as well as your space and yield requirements, I wanted to reiterate the suggestion that someone else gave you, to look into Square Foot Gardening. You are already thinking along a lot of the author's concepts, such as easy reach into the beds (4' is a good max depth assuming you can reach from both sides), and the three part mix you mentioned is often called "Mel's mix" after Mel Bartholomew, the author of the SFG books.

The basic concept is that you break up whatever planting area you have into square feet, and each square foot is treated as its own little garden plot. Plant spacing within that SF is determined by the ultimate size of the plant, so radishes, for instance, can be spaced at 16 per SF while tomatoes (grown vertically/trellised) can be done as one plant per SF. I have found that gardening in an "intensive" manner like this does ultimately yield more produce per square foot than more traditional methods. When I started out gardening, it was at my Mom's knee, and she used French Intensive methods, which are not all that dissimilar to SFG, but much more laborious with all the double digging and stuff. I love the fact that SFG gives me more produce with a LOT less work.

The startup cost can be a bit high for a SFG but you're already budgeting for raised beds and soil, so you should be fine. In my personal opinion it's worth it to never have to till or heavily amend soil again, other than a couple shovelfuls of compost at harvest and planting times. I am all about streamlining the work and amping up the enjoyment!!

Just as a point of reference, by the way, my own SFG is 128 square feet (8 4x4 boxes) and yields far more than our family of 4-5 (my Dad is here part time) could ever eat. My seed starting is done the way you are thinking, with the cheapest shop lights from Home Depot, suspended from eye hooks/chains in my basement. I don't save the yogurt cups either, heh, but I should have. I use bottom-watering seed starting flats just for their convenience.

Last thought--for *some* people it's preferable to buy tomato plants and pepper plants, but in my personal experience tomatoes are as easy as anything else to start as long as you do it at the right time. I have had very mediocre luck with peppers since I'm too cheap to buy a seed starting mat and they really do require a lot of warmth to germinate and grow. They're sort of unusual in their heat requirements though, in my personal opinion. I'm in Zone 6 New York, by the way, so definitely familiar with the challenges of cold winters and wet springs!