Square Foot Gardening – Take 1: 2013
Well. It has been a LONG time since I’ve posted anything on this blog; a lot of things happening, and sometimes, one just… lets things drop. Mea Culpa.
Okay; now that that is taken care of; let me get to the good part. Last year Rich found a book entitled, “All New Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew. It was pretty remarkable, talking about how you can build a garden nearly anywhere, and in small areas, using his simple methods. It seemed like a pretty neat idea; and I desperately wanted to start my own garden. We had been tossing around different ideas – hire someone to till the land? Rent a rotor-tiller and do it ourselves (read: Rich do it HIMself)? Put it in the middle of the yard? Cut down some trees and do it at the back of the yard? So many ideas, and all of them sounded way too much like REALLY HARD WORK. (I have a thought about REALLY HARD WORK. Don’t. Yeah, I know… it won’t kill me; it will just feel like it will.)
So, in reading this new book by Bartholomew, it was like the light bulb went off! It seemed a perfect idea. Just build a box that is 4′ x 4′ x 6″. Fill it with “Mel’s Mix”, plant your seeds or seedlings and then sit back and watch it grow.
Okay, maybe it entailed a TINY bit more work than that. First, we dug out the area where we wanted to put the boxes. We didn’t have to, but we wanted a level area that we could put the boxes in. Our yard has NO level areas. Not even one small one! We live on a ridge, so our land is kind of… ridgy. Thus, we dug. And dug. And dug. We only wanted to go down about 6″ total; and not even that far down on part of it (the leveling thing, you see). Another thing about where we live. In the south. With red clay. LOTS of red clay. TONS of red clay. And rocks. All kinds of rocks. Especially the kind where you step on the shovel steppy part, and the shovel sinks into the soil-cum-clay, only to come to a hip-jarring halt against ANOTHER rock. Needless to say, it made that small digging out job a long, tiresome chore. But we did it!
Next step; build the boxes. That part was easy. I sat on the pile of compost bags and mostly watched Rich build them. I did hold the wood when asked to. That was about it for my part, though.
Our dug out spot with the four boxes “we” built. you can see the red clay. Also, some of the piles of compost bags in the foreground
Next, we placed the four boxes into the leveled out area on top of gardening fabric we had placed. Then, Rich (because I just wasn’t physically able to) opened twenty bags (50# each) of sand, which we raked and smoothed all around the four boxes.
The four boxes with the sand added.
The next step was to take a large tarp. Then on this tarp we added 1 bag of compost; to which we added a bag of vermiculite. Rake together. Add another kind of compost and mix well. Add a huge bag of mulch and mix. Add another bag of vermiculite and mix. Blend in one last different type of compost and then rake all of this together and blend well. This totaled 8 cubic feet of soil mixture. (which, in case you’re curious, is a POT load of dirt!) Then, we kind of rolled the dirt along the tarp until we hauled it into the box. Repeat this process three more times. By the time we finished the last box, we had developed a pretty good system; but I was exhausted!! But, by golly, we DID IT!! Hooray for us!
Our boxes filled with our “Mel’s Mix”. You can see some of the rocks we dealt with in the foreground.
Now. Rich put in screws and ran string to divide each box into four rows of four 1 square foot boxes. Then, I planted my seeds; making note of what was in each box. I planted the seeds on April 16, 2013. We also built one big box; 12″ deep. In this box, on April 22, I planted potatoes, beets and carrots. By May 2, everything had sprouted except for one yellow squash, two cantaloupe plants, 2 spinach, 2 bell pepper and one watermelon. So, I replanted those. Following are pics of my garden as it looks today; May 21, 2013. I’m very excited by how beautifully my little garden is growing. Would you believe that in my four regular boxes, I am growing:
Box 1:
4 Cherry tomato plants
3 English cucumber plants
5 Broccoli plants
4 Cauliflower plants
Box 2:
16 Green bean plants
16 Sugar snap pea plants
16 Sweet corn plants
1 Watermelon plant
1 Butternut squash plant
Box 3:
3 Zucchini plants
3 Yellow squash plants
2 Cantaloupe plants
Box 4:
8 Bibb lettuce plants
8 Large leaf lettuce plants
8 Great Lakes lettuce plants
64 Green onions
2 Spinach plants
2 Bell pepper plants
3 Cabbage plants
BIG Box:
28 Potato plants
32 Beet plants
64 Carrot plants
Not too shabby, eh? I will add more pictures of this wonderful little garden as time goes on. Check back to see what’s happening!!
Box 1; tomatoes, cukes, broccoli, cauliflower
Box 2: Green beans, peas, corn, watermelon, butternut squash
Box 3; zucchini, yellow squash, cantaloupe
Box 4; lettuce, spinach, green onions, bell peppers, cabbage
BIG box; potatoes, beets and carrots
