ELLIE'S BLOG on Living Well with Disability

Having multiple sclerosis and limited physical ability has limited one of my favorite activities namely gardening.  I've used  garden pots on our deck and window boxes around our front porch.  We also have raised beds where you can sit on the edge to garden.  Last year I also had my family add a window box on our bridge-ramp. I was very successful in raising lettuce and herbs in it.  So this year I was inspired to have a raised bed devoted totally to salad greens.  And to use my ramp- bridge window box strictly for herbs.  When I asked my two sons if they could make one for me per usual they did a bang up job. Below is my sons description and pictures of the process.

There were several sources for raised table beds on the internet, which started us in the right direction. The main consideration with this project was accessibility. The lettuce and greens had to be reachable when standing or sitting. For planting, weeding, and most importantly, picking.

                                                                                                              We determined the usual three foot width could be stretched to four foot to accommodate a large 4 foot by 8 foot bed. This was just about right for a family that typically consumes a head or two of lettuce every day! Since I had a pair of leftover 2x6 by 10 foot lengths laying around, we decided to supersize the experiment and go with a 5x10 foot ?lettuce farm.? Probably overkill for anyone growing for less than 6 (or 4 salad lovers). The five foot width proved completely workable for my Mom, but she is also very tall with a long reach. We measured her in her wheelchair, and then standing and reaching to come up with what we figured was a good working height, that allowed room under the large sides of the bed for her wheelchair.

Next set of considerations were wood stock. We had some pressure treated 4x4's around to serve as our legs. We decided not to use pressure treated for the bed itself due to sketchy reports that the chemicals are not the safest for growing consumables in. Flowers and ornamentals would probably be okay, and they would probably last longer than untreated. However, we put 4 layers of exterior (latex) paint on primed wood and this should give us some several years of use, at least. This is a working (and this year flourishing!) experiment, so we're making it up as we go to some degree.

Legs. Four in the corners, and two in the middle of five cross support pieces we put under a bottom made from galvanized wire mesh. We could get 1/2? holes for the length we wanted, though I thought 1/4? grid could have held in more dirt. This would give us plenty of drainage, and we added gravel and leaves to the bottom before we added the dirt. So far, perfect drainage and nothing major has dropped though the holes.

  .

Filling a box this large (when we upgraded from 4x8 to 5x10 we upped our square footage from 32 to 50!) is going to require a lot of top soil and organic matter (kitchen compost and composted manure for ours) We had a raised bed we were taking down filled with good composted top soil, so we made a ramp out of a 40' ladder (20 feet x double thickness) and some planks and used a wheelbarrel to move the ton or so of topsoil from the ground up three feet into the lettuce bed some twenty feet away. Probably saved an hour or two of time and extra shoveling (we did more than enough as it was!) this way. Not that we didn't have to stay in synch as two of us each pushed a handle up the ladder from opposite sides of the ladder. But then we dropped down a smaller plank over the edge of the bed and dumped load after load from one end until we filled her up.

A smaller bed wouldn't need this extra step, but depending on where the topsoil is coming from, would probably help out anything over a 3x3 foot area. Even several boxes to step up the wheelbarrow could also be a way to make things easier and faster. Our last step was shoveling on a bunch of compost from our compost bin and spreading several bags of composted manure and working it into the soil with shovels.

Then came planting and like magic we've been amazed at the growth of lettuce and have eaten fresh delicious salads (and in wrap sandwiches) non-stop for the last month and a half. And this first planting is still going strong, and we'll be doing fall crops right up until the snows fall. And it has been super easy for my Mom to work with. And I will never do a salad bed at ground level ? ever again! Picking lettuce this way cannot be beat. Plus it seemed to keep the garden riff raff like slugs, bugs, and rabbits out of it. All in all, under my Mom's diligent care, this project has been a rip-roaring success. You just cannot beat a fresh picked salad, and the satisfaction of growing it yourself. Try one! And I'll try to answer any questions if I can. You can do it, too!

Feel inspired? It's well worth it to have the ability to garden at the right accessible level for you. Hope's this info helps!                                              ellie