Starting the Garden

This is my garden, prepped for the year with lots of manure incorporated into the soil and a fence surrounding it. It was a good garden last year, but it took quite a bit of time to move the hoses around to water it, and by late summer the weeds had taken over. So this year I was trying to figure out what to do to make my life easier when I heard about square foot gardening. The part I liked about it most was that you plant the seeds very close together so that you don't have to water as much and weed as much.

The new square foot gardening calls for building boxes 4 foot by 4 foot x 6 inches and filling them with 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 peat moss. Since my husband had already gone to so much work preparing the garden soil and I have very limited construction skills, I made a few changes. I found an old window frame that would make a 4 foot by 3 foot frame, pounded a few nails into it and tied baling twine across it. Having those 1 foot by 1 foot grids really helps visualize everything. I could only find small bags of vermiculite, so I got a couple to start my first square, but I'm hoping I'll be able to locate bigger bags, 4 cubic feet. I found some peat moss, then learned that peat moss is not considered environmentally friendly because it comes from the wetlands in Canada and takes thousands of years to form. Apparently a good substitute is coir, made of coconut husks, so I'll have to look for that.

I stirred the vermiculite and peat moss into the soil on my 4 x 3 plot. I also put down some weed guard as part of my path in the garden. By planting seeds so closely together, I suddenly have a lot more garden to make use of! I may be able to get enough tomatoes to can and corn to freeze. But fortunately those are warm weather crops, and I still have time to plan!

My first square is mostly for cool weather plants, my spinach, carrots, onions, peas, lettuce, beets. I'll also give some wildflowers a try, wildflowers that I'll harvest just like my veggies, but instead of eating them, I'll bring them into my kitchen to give it a splash of color.

We only got the carrots and spinach planted on the first day, sixteen carrots spaced two inches apart in a 4 x 4 grid and four spinach (I could have done nine spinach, but four is plenty). That's enough for a first crop of those two veggies.

Desert Boy's job was to water. He still needs a few pointers, but he seems willing to practice!

We didn't get around to planting more due to naps and other activities, but that was okay, it gave me time to plan. I got some more information about companion planting, or which plants grow best next to each other on a different square gardening page. Emily advocated drawing out your garden plan, so I did, and I have to admit it was really fun. So this is what our first box will look like. I'll have to wait to put in the beans and pumpkin, but figured that with the fence already behind the frame, I should use it to its greatest advantage.

So today, more planting and putting some mulch on top of the weed guard to make a nice path. Soon I'll go on a scavenger hunt to look for more old window and door frames to make some additional "boxes." This is turning into a really fun project! And I'll probably know what I'm growing. In the past I planted seeds in rows and then forgot what I planted and the weeds came up first, which made it a little challenging sometimes to figure out what were the weeds and what were the plants.

How is your garden doing? Do you have any special tips or tricks to make the garden work easier and more productive?