The refresh looks great! I especially appreciate the new raised bed design and construction! As a partially disabled person, that is a bed even I could put together. That might just be a game changer for a lot of folks!
Speaking from experience, if you don't put something down under that new raised bed the roots will actually grow up into the bed and you will be having the same problem all over again. Ask me how I know
Lots of hard work there Jacques! I really like the new style raised beds but I'm partial to wooden raised beds =). I'll also add the only mulch I like more than fresh straw is 1 year old composted straw from straw bale gardens. We do 40-50 bales a year so all that organic matter gets added back in. Thanks for taking us along on the garden reset!
When i lived in a townhouse/row house i was planting in these plastic milk crates that I lined the fence with. Well I had a spruce tree in the yard and when i moved and went to load up the milk crate the roots from the spruce tree started to grow up and in the crates!!! I couldnt believe it! i had a hard time pulling up the crates and that was only from 2 years of being there. tree roots are crazy! Lol. Garden is looking great! Hopefully all that work will help you for the next couple of years!
That's a good point. Tree roots will grow in every direction, including up, if given the opportunity. If you're installing raised beds over existing tree roots, there's a chance the roots will find their way into the raised beds unless the bottoms are completely blocked off.
@@jacquesinthegarden I've used a battery powered reciprocating saw equipped with a long "pruning blade" to cut down below & along a single shovel blade depth narrow trench, to "prune" the tree roots heading into my raised beds.
I have a maple tree on the boulevard a couple feet downhill and across a sidewalk from some raised beds. Within two years of install, the nearest raised bed was about a third maple tree root by volume. Top to bottom on a 1.5 foot tall raised bed you can't dig more than a few inches because the tree roots have bound all the soil together. Trees are gonna get what they want!
The cedar bed looks fantastic! I have a dozen birdies beds and I love them. I've had to move them 3 times and it's just so simple. But man I like the cedar look 😃
Jacques, Definitely liking the wood chips over the straw in the pathways. Have to admit, though, I'm biased--I use wood chips for my pathways, too. Couldn't beat the cost--got a truck load for free when a neighborhood took down some very old oaks. 😁
Wooden beds looks fantastic and easy to put together. Somehow ironic that you guys got excited about and picked up the Birdies design from Australia, but then made a version with American wood which I find really exciting and want as an Australian.
I know how you feel. Most of my in grown garden have so many roots from a pecan tree and vines weeds. I use a broad fork to break and pull up as many roots as I can. However, I just ordered 8 more Birdies beds. Up to 17 beds with the great buy 3 get one free.
Ever thought about installing root barriers along the perimeter to prevent the intrusion of the tree / hedge roots into the garden? Would be a one a done type of job rather than having to periodically trench and prune out the invasive roots.
@@jacquesinthegarden I’m sure you have a different idea but stone pavers can help and typically people have old ones lying around that don’t match anything new
I’ve had a great bean year so far! I picked 3 lbs yesterday. I grew several varieties but the haricot verts I planted are the most prolific I’ve ever seen!
Great job, I’m very interested in which plants you use in your native pollinator patch. I’m trying to establish one by my vegetable garden here in the SF East Bay Area.
Oh, my goodness! I just had to pause when you started showing those roots! We had areas of our garden last year, including grow bags, where things just did not do well, even though things grown in the same places previously did fine. In the fall, when clearing out grow bags, I found they were filled with tiny roots that had grown up from below. This spring, I reworked what had been a squash hill that failed, and it was full of roots, including large ones. The nearest tree is some 15-20 ft away. Currently, I'm reworking low raised beds into what will be their permanent positions and, at one end of all the beds, I'm finding more and more roots. They are all from some Chinese elms that had self seeded, along with some maples, in a raspberry patch. The raspberries were transplanted long before we moved out here, but the saplings were allowed to stay to form a (not needed) wind break (I roughly measured and calculated out that these trees lost about 1200 sq ft of garden space!). The maples are not doing this but as we have been reclaiming and amending the old garden area for the past 5 years, these Chinese Elm roots have been working their way into the softer, improved soil and stunting the things we plant! I never imagined that this would become a problem in the garden!
Jacques, you will still have root problems with the raised bed. I have raised beds because of mesquite and fig tree roots. I actually put pavers down under the raised beds and I STILL get roots growing up in the beds. The garden redo looks great!
Would it make a difference to put a piece of metal to block the roots or would the roots just go over under and around it?(For the citrus tree, not the hedge. The hedge looks intimidating.)
Great example to the root of the problem. Many years ago I relocated a grape plant closer to 4 others. It had 2 long, 6ft, roots down in a crease through fairly clayish soil. It lived after the move, but probably should have put the new grapes around the old. Learned a ton about the ground, though.
You need a trench digger to better them N doing it by hand and much faster. Will shred the roots deep down. a wide one or narrow one? Wider, the better, I guess, though. And diug a trench around the perimeter of the garden.
Slugs are why I started doing cabbage in containers instead of my raised beds. It’s been good so far. Problem is containers get hotter than in-ground. Looks like I can only do cabbage in the fall here in E TN.
trust me .. .slugs WILL find the cabbages and any other food for them in containers as well .... lol .... i got 96 containers in total (all between 45ltrs - 120ltrs) ... and slugs have been spotted ...everywhere ;) muhahahaha .... funny parts is (for the slugs) ... even my 3 ft high raised beds i got ... still are a hurdle slugs still can cross ;)
@@roelven1282 - yah the raised bed slugs had to cross rough concrete blocks to get to my cabbages and they still did it anyway. Crazy. Also, I noticed little tiny baby slugs in the grow bag cabbages so it does look like they will find a way lol. XD
Nothing personal Jacque, but the 1st thing that came to mind regarding this wayward garden area was Rod Serling's voice saying, "You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!" lol 😲 tyfs
I have had to build platforms for my raised beds. Every 2 years I was having tree roots invade the beds and having to dig and cut them out. Now they can't grow into them.
Good video 👍 I have a passion vine and a chiltipin pepper plant in my 3 ft by 8ft raised bed which gets full unstructured sunlight the passion vine is in the middle of the bed and my idea was to try to create a canopy with the passion vine, but was just wondering what might be some good crops to inter crop with those that could grow great under the passion vine? 🤔
Why didn't you insert a root-barrier when you had already dug up the whole path? In case it's just missing knowledge: there are barriers especially for that purpose. They are normally used to stop plants from spreading, like bamboo or peppermint, and taking over parts of the garden they're not wanted in. You could use that to limit your citrus tree.
Does correctly composting scraps and old plants get rid of the risk of former plants germinating and popping up in a later season, or will you always run the risk of a tomato or tomatillo growing at some point?
When you dug your trench to cut the roots off, did you put some kind of barrier underground? Because I have the same problem, but with my cedar hedge and I don't know if I should put an underground barrier or something so that it won't invade my garden again later...
This season I've notice a lot of my drippiness stopped dripping. One line works while orders drip lines, only 1 or 2 drip hole is working. I do have filters on every drip irrigation. So any tips on how to clean the drip lines?
Jacques, do you treat all the beds with neem cake? Can you, as a preventative? I, too, struggle with nematodes. I’ve used it for the first time from your suggestion, last year. Thank you!
Hi Jacques, I have been unsuccessful at making enough compost of my own and was wondering if there is a place you trust here in San Diego to get compost? Have you tried City Farmers?
Have you ever had any issues with herbicides in your manure compost? It’s something I just found out that I’m dealing with it and I have no idea what to do aside from wait 3 years
A friend had this issue with compost she had brought in! It killed her dahlias before she realized the problem. I've heard it's less of an issue with chicken manure, but it's one of the reasons I'm trying to find organic alfalfa as an alternative. I'm curious to hear if there's anything to be done besides wait it out
I love my woodchip mulch but i also wish i could comfortably walk around barefoot. I still walk barefoot but i have to walk slowly so i dont skewer my feet lol
It is all preference really. The ground beds are harder to maintain and work on since they are so low. Wood looks great for some metal looks great for others. Metal will last longer than wood, by at least double, but it comes down to preferences here!