Welcome to Our Garden
Shades of Green has our own vegetable garden where we grow fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. The design is based on the principles of Square Foot Gardening as created by Mel Bartholomew. Square Foot Gardening is one of the easiest and most productive gardening systems ever invented, requiring a fraction of the time, space, and water of a traditional, in-ground row garden. If you want to learn the system, along with everything you need to know in order to be a successful vegetable gardener, start with All New Square Foot Gardening, 3rd Edition. It’s a great, easy-to-read book that will answer all of your questions. If, after reading it, you’re hungry for more, check out these other great resources from the Square Foot Gardening Foundation.
This garden is actually version 3.0. Our first efforts had several design flaws which were discussed in a previous post. Since relocating the gardens here (and getting 3 cats to keep the rabbits and rodents in check) we’ve had much better success.
If you’re looking for other source books on growing vegetables in Texas, we recommend:
Texas Fruit & Vegetable Gardening: Plant, Grow, and Eat the Best Edibles for Texas Gardens by Greg Grant
Grow Great Vegetables in Texas by Trisha Shirey
Why Raised Beds?
Gardening in the heavy clay soil of North Texas is hard work, so why do it? It’s much easier to grow flowers and vegetables above our soil than in it. All you need is the right container. Flower pots will work, but if you want lots of plants you’ll need more space. One of the more popular solutions is a wooden raised bed. They look good, work great, and last for years if they’re built properly.
Our garden has 5 raised beds:
The medium bed (far left if you’re facing the creek) is 4 feet wide by 10 feet long and 2 feet high.
There are 2 short beds. One is 3 feet wide by 10 feet long and 1 foot high. The other is 3 feet wide by 8 feet long and 1 foot high.
The square bed is 3 feet by 3 feet.
The tall bed is 4 feet wide by 10 feet long and 28 inches high. The higher raised bed solves several issues faced by many would-be gardeners including:
Rabbits – Rabbits can’t climb, so they’re not going to eat the veggies before we do.
Dogs – Many people don’t even attempt to grow vegetables because they have large dogs that would trample the crops. Making a bed over 3 feet tall should solve this problem.
Small Children – Much like the dog issue above, small kids can “accidentally” play in the garden and do more harm than good.
Older Gardeners – A tall raised bed is a good option for older gardeners who can’t (or would rather not) bend over to tend a lower or ground-level garden.
Building Materials
When it comes to wood, you have many choices. There are tons of videos on YouTube showing how to build a raised bed out of everything from wooden pallets to cedar posts. Pallets are a mixed bag as you seldom know what type of wood they are made of or what that wood has been treated with. Cedar is a solid choice because it looks really good and is naturally resistant to rot and decay. The downside is that cedar can be expensive – especially if you’re building multiple beds.
For its combination of price and longevity, pressure treated lumber is the go-to option for many gardeners. It will last for 10-15 years or more, is readily available, and is affordable. If you’re concerned about the safety of pressure treated lumber, read this excellent article from Iowa State University. The bottom line is that today’s pressure treated wood is safe for use in growing food crops. If you’re still wary, use cedar or consider cinder blocks or galvanized steel.
If you want the bare minimum of construction, you can buy raised bed kits online that are easy to assemble. For durability and ease of assembly, it’s hard to beat coated steel.
Vego Garden – Based in Houston, Vego makes a line of modular raised bed kits based that are easy to assemble and now sold at Shades of Green. The come in 4 colors, two heights, and dozens of configurations.
DO NOT use railroad ties! They are treated with creosote. As per the Iowa State article referenced above, creosote is a restricted use pesticide / preservative containing a mixture of 200-400 different compounds. It should never be used if it will contact food or drinking water!
Soil
A common question is, “Are the beds completely filled with soil?” Yes, they are. The beds are cross-braced to compensate for the outward pressure of the soil (especially when it’s wet). That much soil can be expensive no matter what you use. We have plenty of quality soil available and the equipment with which to move it, so it wasn’t a deal breaker for us. You could fill the lower half of a taller bed with fill dirt. Contact a local swimming pool builder. They often have dirt they’ve dug up for the new pools they’re installing.
Another option is to place cut up logs in the bottom. This idea is based on the centuries-old German practice of hugelkultur. As the logs rot, they’ll act as sponges to absorb and hold water. Your plants will appreciate this in the middle of a Texas summer. If you want to know more, here’s an excellent blog / infographic from Vego Garden or watch the video below.
What about the grass?
If you simply place a raised bed on top of existing turfgrass, you’ll soon have a bed full of grass instead of vegetables. Most yards in our area have either Saint Augustine or Bermuda grass. Both spread readily and will quickly invade and take over a raised bed. We killed the grass under our beds with horticultural grade vinegar. We then scraped the dead grass down to the roots with a shovel. This also allowed us to level out the area where the raised beds were going to be. We then put down two layers of cardboard and put our soil on top. In time, the cardboard will rot and become compost. It will also help smother any bits of grass we missed.
To reiterate, you need to get rid of the grass before putting your raised bed in place. You have 3 options:
1: REMOVE IT – Use a shovel or rent a sod cutter and remove the grass completely.
2: CUT IT & COVER IT – Cut it. Once the grass has died, scrape it down to the roots with a shovel or use a weed-eater. Cover it. Lay down cardboard or newspaper to smother any bits you may have missed that might re-sprout.
3: KILL IT – Kill the grass with an herbicide (organic is preferable since you’ll be growing food).
What do you plant and when?
Knowing what to plant when is important. Cool season crops like spinach and lettuce won’t survive the summer heat, and warm weather crops like tomatoes don’t like cold at all. Typically, planting times are calculated based on first and last frost dates. Those are the dates that, historically, an area experiences its first frost of the year (November 15 for Collin County) and the last frost of the year (March 15 for Collin County). Knowing these two dates will allow you to determine when to plant any crop that you might be interested in.
First Frost in Collin County, Texas – November 15
Last Frost in Collin Count, Texas – March 15
Understand that these dates are NOT set in stone. They are guidelines only based on historical data our USDA Climate Zone (8a). It’s possible that we could see a frost before Nov. 15 in a given year, and we’ve certainly had frost after March 15 in recent years.
If you’d like some more specific dates and/or time-frames, here’s some good resources that will help you determine what to plant when:
Shades of Green’s Vegetable Gardening Guide – A downloadable PDF compiled a few years back, this covers most of the cool & warm season crops.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Vegetable Garden Planting Guide – A downloadable PDF from the experts at Texas A&M, courtesy of the Collin County Master Gardeners Association.
Fall Vegetable Gardening Guide for Texas – Vegetables aren’t just a Spring & Summer thing in North Texas. You can also plant a fall crop. This resource from the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension will tell you how.
Vegetable Garden Basics for North Texas (recorded March 2021)
Garden Clinic on Cool Season Vegetables (recorded September 2020)
Click here to download our Cool Season Vegetable Gardening Clinic PDF – Updated September 8, 2023
Okay, now what?
Like anything in life, there’s a learning curve when it comes to vegetable gardening. You will make mistakes. Things will go awry. Even if you do everything right, bugs and plant disease may come along and ruin your crops. But stick with it, learn from your mistakes and mishaps, and you’ll have more success with each passing season.
Raised beds do make a difference. They can make vegetable gardening so much easier than planting in our heavy clay soil. The information above should help you get off to a good start, as will this article on 7 Common Mistakes in Raised Bed Gardening. We recommend starting small with a single 6 foot by 3 foot bed or a 8 foot by 4 foot bed. As you learn more and get better at gardening, you can add more beds to grow more crops.
If you have questions about gardening in a raised bed, post them below and we’ll try to help.
Tim Wardell is a Texas Certified Nursery Professional and a Certified Square Foot Gardening Instructor who’s been gardening for most of his life.
