Time to plant those veggies
April 3, 2012
Minds battle over ‘useless’ knowledge
April 3, 2012
Not everyone is willing to accrue dirty knees and endure the labor of digging in soil that goes along with gardening, and apartment and condo dwellers don’t have the space to garden no matter their aspiration. There is a solution.
“You don’t need a shovel, you don’t need a hoe, you don’t need any of that stuff,” says Kathleen Cuneo, whose unturned yard serves as a base for her square foot gardens, handmade boxes in which she grows vegetables.
Cuneo, a Master Gardener since 2007, holds presentations on elevated horticulture. Seated on a bench next to a box of baby collard greens, the Houma resident offers several tips to beginning raised bed gardening.
The beds can be constructed with any untreated wood, she says. Six inches of depth is needed for most aboveground crops, but root crops should be planted in depths ranging from 8 to 10 inches.
Cuneo uses cinderblocks to support her beds, which can be elevated to the user’s need. In addition to the greens she attends to, her boxes contain Swiss chard, mustard greens, carrots and broccoli.
Length and width should be based on individual production desires, she adds, and it’s appropriate to use a square-foot grid to delineate planting zones. Some crops, such as broccoli, can only be planted one to a square, while smaller and medium crops can share zones.
“You don’t have to weed it because the vegetables grow so plentiful in them that the weeds don’t grow,” Cuneo says. “If one little weed grows, you just pick it up, so you don’t have to be on the ground with a hoe, with a shovel, with your knees all aching; you can just pluck it out.”
As Cuneo strips the excess from her baby collards, she suggests considering protection from wildlife. She peers around a dome shaped from PVC piping and says squirrels give her the most concern. Once she finishes, she pulls a net across the dome and collects her cushioned bench.
“It’s real comfortable,” Cuneo says. “I just move my little bench around and do my gardening.”
– editor@gumboguide.com
Kathleen Cuneo tends to her collard greens from a raised bed. Cuneo is one of the area’s experts on this gardening technique, which reduces potential horticulturalists’ need for grass.
