Gardening season is now upon us. As you may know, our first garden last year was a little bit of a flop (and if you don’t know, here were our garden problems). Since Lara and I are both pretty stubborn individuals, we decided to try our garden again. However, as promised in my last garden post, this year our garden is going to blow last years garden out of the water. Why, you might ask? This year we are trying a whole new strategy. And it is called (drum drum drum drum drum…) ……………….Square Foot Gardening
If you have already heard of this before, you aren’t alone. After all, it is the self proclaimed best selling garden book of all time. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the process sounds legit to me and we are diving in head first to this new method.
If you have never heard of Square foot gardening before, I’ll sum up the gist here. In my own terms.
- Most of the soil in this world sucks for gardening and trying to amend soil takes a lot of work, time, and/or money. Let’s mix our own soil instead.
- The old gardening method of wide rows between plants is archaic. It is one of those things that most of us just always accept without asking, “Why in the world is gardening done that way?” There are tons of problems with that whole row philosophy. It wastes space, causes unnecessary tilling, encourages weed growth, etc, etc.
So, in one sentence, here is what we are going to do. Using self mixed soil in elevated beds, we are going to plant 5 times the amount of vegetables in the same exact space as last year. What the…? How is that possible?
As mentioned above, typical gardens have those wide aisles that you walk down to tend to the plants. But really, what purpose are the aisles serving? Here is what the aisles do:
- Aisles let us walk to get our plants. As we walk, we compact the soil.
- Aisles let many weeds grow.
- Because of the compaction and weeds, aisles need tilling
Do you see anywhere how aisles help the plants grow? Nope! By getting rid of the aisles, we can space plants much closer together. All in all, an aisleless garden requires only 20% of the space of the standard garden with aisles. I’ll get into some more details in a bit. But first, let’s build our new garden.
Mixing the new dirt
One of our biggest garden problems last year was our poor clay soil. This year, we aren’t even going to worry about that clay soil. We are are going to make our own instead. This soil will be fertile, light and airy, drain really well, but yet absorb and holds water like a sponge. What is the recipe? Pretty simple really. The ingredients should (cross your fingers), be available at nearby garden centers. These ingredients are: 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost.
Course agricultural vermiculite and peat moss make up 2/3 of the new soil
Here is 1/3 of the garden soil mix. Choose a few different types of compost the ensure a variety of nutrients
At least 4 different composts should be used to get the biggest variety of nutrients. I used a few different bags of manure compost, some potting soil, and leaf compost. Mix up the compost first and then add in the other two ingredients.
Hiding underneath is the different compost types all mixed up. Then I put the peat moss and vermuculite on top and mixed together.
Build the raised beds
These raised beds are cheap. Nothing fancy. Square foot gardening is based on 4 foot by 4 foot square beds that are 6 inches tall. Therefore, the only construction material needed are 2×6′s. Avoid treated lumber. Who wants chemicals in their garden?
A single 4x4 foot bed made from 2x6 untreated lumber. Landscaping fabric on bottom is a good idea to stop weeds from coming up from below.
Once the beds are built, we filled them up with our new dirt. They are automatically ready for planting. No waiting for lime or fertilizer to take effect. Yes! Instant gratification!
By building a grid of 1x1 foot square, we have a true "Square Foot Garden"
Ok. So now we get to the “square foot” part. Each 4×4 box is broken up into 16 squares, each being 1 square foot. How much can be planted in each square foot? The package of seeds has all the information we need. What is the seed spacing?
3 in = 16 / square foot
4 in = 9/ square foot
6 in = 4/square foot
12 in = 1/square foot
It sounds crazy, but here is what we are going to fit in a single 4×4 box (that’s only the box on the left in the pic above):
32 carrots (2 squares)
8 bunches of spinach (2 squares)
16 beets (1 square)
27 onions (3 squares)
8 heads of lettuce (2 squares)
3 tomato plants (3 squares)
1 cucumber plant (1 square)
1 zucchini plant (1 square)
Peas (1 square)
It sounds pretty amazing. Now we wait for everything to grow!
