Monday, April 4, 2011

The Beginnings of our Square Foot Garden

All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space!, Mel Bartholomew, Paperback
Last year, Stan and I decided we wanted to start a vegetable garden. After some research, we decided on Square Foot Gardening. It uses raised beds with a special soil mix of 1/3 Peat Moss, 1/3 Vermiculite, and 1/3 compost (from at least 5 different sources). You never use your own ground soil for a Square Foot Garden. Another feature of this gardening method is that you plant in squares instead of rows. This conserves space and time. Each 4x4 raised bed has a grid that shows you where to plant. We did not have time to accomplish the garden last year, so we are hitting the ground running this time around.
Phase One
Constructing the Boxes
Laying out Pathways
The box construction was very simple and not very time consuming. I am glad Stan is just as motivated as I am for this project. But, I am confident I could have easily built these boxes as well (and so could you!)
We used outdoor carpet (the same that we used under the playset) for the pathways. This provides for excellent drainage and weed control. I DO NOT like weeds creeping up where they dont belong so the paths are worth the time and money. We will cover the paths with mulch when we are finished. The back two boxes already have the grids built. We ran out of screws for the other two grids so we will do that tonight. We will also atttach weed cloth to the bottom of each box so you will not see any grass when we finish that.
PHASE 2
Soil
Building Vine Trellis for the back two Boxes
PHASE 3
Build Fence Around Garden to Keep Critters Out
Lay out Mulch on pathways
PHASE 4
Plant!

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