Blog
This April Bohemian Bounty was happy to work with an experienced gardener in Northwest Austin who had outgrown her current garden space. The garden was 20 feet by 10 feet and held in place by rotting railroad ties. Whenever we see railroad ties we strongly recommend removing them. Creosote, used to preserve the logs, is not approved for use in the landscape. It has a number of cancer causing chemical compounds and not what you want in contact with your veggies.
Bohemian Bounty designed a 2 bed garden, each 4 feet by 20 feet with a comfortable path between and around the beds. The narrow beds meant the gardener no longer had to walk in her bed while working the garden. To reduce materials, labor and cost, the gardens were built in-ground, but raised bed, with the beds being 6 or 7 inches higher than the pathways and border. The raised bed edges are supported by the walkway’s cedar and the beds have 12 inches or more of fluffy, rich soil for plant roots and improved drainage. Cottonseed meal, slow release fertilizer and compost were added to the soil to make up the previous gardening nutrient take and to loosen up the clay soil.
It looks like Bohemian Bounty had its 5 minutes of fame in a weekend article in the Austin American Statesman. You can read the full article here. We are happy to see there is enough demand for multiple businesses in the Austin area and have even referred work to the raised bed garden company the article mentioned. And we know of at least two other companies in Austin doing this or a similar model. Most focus on square foot raised beds. We think that is an awesome way to get started.
We’ve been happy that Bohemian Bounty has had the opportunity to work on some unique garden projects such as reusing landscaped areas, such as the pool install they mentioned (you can see that time lapse video below). See Our Customer’s Gardens for list of many of our installs.
We have had a lot of fun watching gardens grow over winter. One of the biggest questions is how do we know if our carrots are ready. If you have one of the Rainbow Carrot or Babette Carrot Mixes, you can harvest them once they look finger-sized. Below is our harvest of a Rainbow Carrot. We grow several species of carrots and we usually check and pull several sample carrots before we use a garden fork to pull out our whole crop. Our harvest time is usually mid to late April. Soak carrots in an ice-bath for 10 minutes to increase their storage life. Place dried carrots in a ziploc bag and enjoy!