In the Garden | Beginning a Square Foot Garden

On a recent trip to visit my inlaws, my husband borrowed a book that my mother-in-law had recently purchased at a garage sale: Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.  I was curious about this new gardening technique, so on the 45 minute ride home I read the first few chapters.  The introduction where Bartholomew described his experiences with community gardening had me hooked.  It reminded me so much of myself!

"The average gardener starts out each year with high hopes, great ambition and energy, and a desire for a really big, well-kept garden. But other warm weather activities seem to get in the way of the garden work, and soon it becomes neglected, overrun with weeds and pests. By the end of the season, there might be enough tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers to make the whole effort seem worthwhile, but all the other crops that couldn't survive the neglect will have been overrun by the weeds, or bolted to seed before they could be harvested."

My own gardening experience sounded remarkably similar - I started with great intentions only to become busy with summer activities.  The garden would sit untended and temporarily forgotten as the weeds started to take over.  The plants would all dry out in the heat and I just would not get the harvest I was hoping for.

I decided that it was time to try a new strategy.  On a trip to the hardware store my husband and I purchased the lumber to make 3 four foot square beds to give square foot gardening a test run.  Last weekend Jason built the boxes for me and I arranged them staggered in our backyard.

Three newly planted garden beds.

Then on the 4th of July we filled them with a special mix of soil and planted out seeds.  For the soil mix I did some research online and found a simplified mix (compared to the one in the book that I have) that Bartholomew recommends, referred to as "Mel's Mix."  The mix consisted of:

• 1/3 peat moss
• 1/3 compost
• 1/3 vermiculite

In the interest of saving some money we filled each box with half soil, and half Mel's mix - the compost was also "home-grown" so that helped with cost as well.  We mixed and leveled out the soil in each box. then using basic kitchen twine and a staple gun we made the grid (each section is 1 foot square) on the top of each box.

I planted seeds that I already had at home from previous gardening attempts:

• green beans
• yellow wax beans
• onions
• lettuce
• swiss chard
• kale
• cucumbers
• pickle cucumbers

Since we did not have any tomato seeds (or plants) I stopped at the local garden center to see if they had tomato plants left (being the beginning of July).  I was in luck!  I purchased four tomato plants for 50% off - currently the only life in the garden.

My four little tomato plants.

Actually, that is not entirely true.  Last night my husband checked the garden and told me that the onions were starting to come up - yea!  

And so begins a new adventure in gardening, hopefully this little garden will be both more successful, and easier to manage.  I will continue to provide updates on my gardening experiment with square foot gardening.

Next task: Build some kind of trellis system for the tomatoes and cucumbers so they do not overrun the onions and greens that are also planted in that bed.