My daughter is 6 and really enjoys gardening with me. We are planning a large raised bed vegetable garden. I am wondering if any of you have any suggestions. I have designed it with wide openings and three foot wide beds. That way, from one side or the other everything can be reached.
This is going to be a very permanent structure and not cheap.. I don't want to be looking back on it next year thinking "I should have thought about that." Or wishing i would have done things differently!
Any and all input would be very welcome.
Melissa
Planning a Wheelchair Garden
Melissa: What height must your beds be to be accessible? We built 6 raised beds but they are only a foot high. It still takes a lot of bending to tend...it has not really saved my back much at all. The reason for our raised beds was poor soil.
I envy you because I have a 7 year old daughter who could not care less about gardening. She loves flowers, but only if she can pick them and bring them inside for her "arrangements". Soil, seedlings, digging...well, WORK, I guess, does not interest her.
Our beds will be at least 2' high. It is nice to have a shared interest. Our younger daughter shows promise as well. Of course the planting and eating are fun, as is watering, but everyone is very busy if there is weeding to be done. LOL
Melissa: I have raised beds in my veggie garden - done 3 years ago. They are made from 8" wide spruce boards and although the beds around the outside which are mostly flowers are only 1 board high the others are 2 and 3 boards high so 16 and 24 inches high. The walkways are 24 inches wide - I planned them for 24x30" patio blocks - not too expensive - but the guys doing the work asked to put in cobblestone - at their expense - and it looks great. If you are looking at the need to use a walker or a wheelchair then the walks certainly need to be wide. I designed mine after seeing one for a senior who used a walker - the beds were just wide enough for his sit on walker so he could work either side without having to shift it.
The only thing I would suggest is dont make the beds too long. Mine are 8 and 12 feet long and we had to add 'come alongs' to the 12 foot beds because the weight of the dirt was bowing out the boards.
You could also add a board on the top edge of the bed that was wide enough to sit comfortably or something that would clip to the side to sit on and then be moved. I have a cedar lattice structure at the yard end so there is an entrance between every bed and then I can grow things up the lattice - clematice or morning glories or such. I've also got a little shady seating area in one corner where it would have been difficult to grow anything. It is my favorite spot on a hot summer day!
There are some pics of the garden in my garden diary - not many as I had them taken before i had a digital camera .
Thanks for the picture! Our beds will be 12' long. I'll have to take that into consideration...
12' sounds like a luxurious amount of space, but yeah, too long for something to support all that heavy, wet dirt. And literally measure how far you can reach when you're deciding how wide to make it. My "wall garden" is frustrating because I can only reach the first 12" or 18" and it's probably 3' deep. It's built into the side of the terraced hill with our next door neighbor. So even if I dared drive my wheelchair on to his $20,000,000,000,000 lawn, I'd have to lean way down and over, which is how to fall out of a wheelchair. Instead I get one of the kids or my DH and gesticulate (how do you explain 'shear off that outside layer of dead flowers') and end up frustrated anyway.
On my patio, which is my wonderful containers garden, I always pull up to the table and get out the watering pot and end up with wet feet! Maybe next year I'll learn.
xxxx, Carrie
You are here too! Our raised beds will be accessible from both sides, and our yard is flat as a pancake. I mentioned it to my husband yesterday, and he said in that matter of fact way, "We'll yeah, we have to put braces inside the bed every four feet." I designed the aesthetic part of the garden, he is my structural engineer. LOL He is great!
I think wet feet is one of the very reasons my kids like gardening with me. Well, with Sydney it is more the mud.
:)
Mel Bartholomew's book 'Square Foot Gardening' is one of the best. Not only does it show how to grow more in less space (less weeding, watering, yahoo!) but it also has a section devoted to 'Special Gardens', among them ones for children and ones for wheelchair access.
Mel used to have the series on PBS of the same name. I've had my book for ages, but I bet it's still out there somewhere!
Hope this helps...
Thanks, i'll check the library.
Melissa, try these links. Mel Bartholomew's link is at the bottom there. Also, there is some seeds and another thing coming out to you; as of tomorrow.
Thanks for being nice and waiting!!
Building a square foot garden http://journeytoforever.org/garden_sqft.html
Enabled Gardeners Links http://www.gardenscape.on.ca/pages/linksenable.htm
Sitemap of Journey to Forever website http://journeytoforever.org/sitemap.html
Susan Tomlin's Disabled Web Page
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Flats/1391/disabled.html
The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author
Mel's Columns http://www.squarefootgardening.com/html/body_mel_s_column.html
Mel's Latest Improvements http://www.squarefootgardening.com/html/body_what_s_new4.html
Wheelchair Gardener http://www.squarefootgardening.com/WheelchairGardening.htm
Vegetable Gardening: Square Foot Gardening http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/487630/
Vegetable Gardening: Square Foot Gardening Part II http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/519068/
HTH
~* Robin
Wow!
Robin, thank you so much!!! I have a lot of reading to do...
Melissa
Melissa - another option would be to make them a separate garden. I purchased 3 from a catalogue a couple of years ago and they are wonderful. They are tall enough for the wheelchair to fit under, so there is no back strain. The ones I got are about 19"Wx42"L. At the Adult Day Care Program we grow everything in the. One is an herb garden, one starts with radishes then grows our eggplant and peppers, and another one is a Memorial Garden where we grow wildflowers as a Memorial to our members who have pased.
LMK if you want further info.
Under? Huh? I've been to Chuck E. Cheese today with the kids. My mind isn't wrapping around the concept. Tell me more.
Like a table? It's up on legs high enough so you can get your knees underneath and reach across.
Couple other ideas...
An arbor (made any size) with shelves around the perimeter and hanging plants that can be raised and lowered by pulleys, and watered by a wand?
Anything that can be espaliered...miniature fruit trees, roses(?). They need to be pruned and trained, almost like bonsai.
ANYTHING in a container can be raised to a workable height by putting it up on something. Raise lettuce in a bird bath?
Just need your engineer to make sure everything is fastened down.
Thanks for all the great ideas!
We have fruit trees which i am keeping small. We have thought about the table type raised beds, but because we are a desert, the smaller quantity of soil would dry out really quick. Containers are problematic too for the same reason. We are planning some though. She has a really cool wheelchair that actually raises the seat up and then extends it out and lowers it to the ground. Unfortunately she can't move around down low like that so it is time consuming to work more than a small area.
She certainly had her struggles. I'm sure she will enjoy every second of it though. I just packed up a bunch of seeds for ya'll - hope the kids enjoys their. I tried to pick out some fun stuff!
Happy gardening!
Sorry. Didn't notice the Nevada part or I may have had better sense. I recently noticed while browsing Dave's that someone posted a picture of container gardening done in HUGE containers, like galvanized trash cans and tubs. Big enough to not dry out but still great looking. Brand new, they are sort of industrial funk, but I don't know if you'd like the look or not. Wish I could just remember which forum...
I have very dry conditions here (12 inches a year average). The raised beds I set up with automatic drip watering systems have been very easy to tend and the plants do great because they get just the right amount of water. The most expensive part of that is the timer. I outfitted three 4 x 25 raised beds for water for under $85. Not bad when you consider how often we in the dry climates have to tow a hose around.
Oh yes those drip systems are fairly easy to find and aren't hard to figure out how to hook them up.
Now I need to get out there and do a drip system for my own place. I need raised beds too and have definately decided that the drip system is the way to go on them. Good luck.
Lani