Laying Out the Details

My Section
Today, I thought I would focus on how I plan to use my 4' x 4' section of the family garden bed. In Square Foot Gardening, you space your plants based on the recommended spacing for the plant type, only in a grid pattern instead of a single row. So, for instance, if the planting instructions say to thin to 6 inches apart in rows that are 3-4 feet apart, you ignore the part about the row spacing, and plant in a grid, where the plants are six inches apart laterally and six inches apart front-to-back. Also, to do things the true SFG way, you would set up a physical grid as a guide. (It's also ornamental.)

Garden Plan

The Layout

I thought that today I would discuss the plans we have for our garden, this year. Our square-foot garden plan calls for each of our six family members to have their own 4’ x 4’ garden plot. The layout will be as follows:

Each box will be approximately twelve feet in length, separated into three approximately-four-foot sections. The beauty of working with plants is that we aren’t all that concerned with precision. We will put a parent in each middle section, with a child on either side. That way, if someone needs help, we’re right there. Also, it will help to prevent quarrelling. Of course, you can never completely prevent it, but we do what we can to maintain harmony in the home. By making each section four feet square, you never have to reach farther than two feet to get to any part of your garden. Thus, you avoid compacting and disturbing the soil unnecessarily, thus helping it to remain aerated and healthy. I found a great resource for anyone looking to start a garden of your own, even a small one. The website is Garden Girl TV.com, by Patti Moreno. In particular she has a video explaining how to build a raised-bed garden. I also like the fact that she also raises small livestock and rotates the raised beds between using them for vegetables and using them for animals. This allows the soil to be continually fertilized (she still composts, though) and tilled. Talk about using nature to fullest! She has many other great tips on gardening and related topics. I highly recommend you check out her website!

The Soil

I’ve been refreshing myself on Mel Bartholomew’s techniques for Square Foot Gardening. Previously, here’s what my mind understood: You mix equal parts of Compost, Peat Moss, and Vermiculite to make the soil. I didn’t even know what the peat moss and vermiculite were for, but I was trying to follow instructions. Unfortunately, my efforts were a dismal failure, because I FAILED TO READ FULLY! There are quite a few details that I just plain missed. For example, it wasn’t until years later that I learned the peat moss and vermiculite are not for nutrition or fertilization, but for water retention. Also, I when I mixed my soil, I just did my best to mix it all up and then dump it evenly in my frame. I had read that with SFG, you don’t have to water as much. What I failed to read was that you DO have to water a lot at the very first, in order to saturate the vermiculite and peat moss!

Another important detail I missed was about the compost. When I read “equal parts” of the three ingredients, I went down to the store, and bought some of each and mixed them up, in roughly equal amounts. What I failed to pay attention to was the fact that one single type of compost is not sufficient. Mel advocates mixing compost from at least five different sources, including mushrooms, animal manures (from animals that do not have meat diets), and other sources. So, needless to say, this year will be a bit different.

The Seeds

We sat down as a family a few weeks ago to decide what we wanted to plant this year. Each of us picked at least one thing in particular to grow in our own section. My second daughter, Faith, decided she wants to grow pumpkins. Why? She’ll only have one plant to take care of. Yeah, we’ll just have to see about that. I mean she’s going to have sixteen square feet to work with. Pumpkins are typically thought of as sprawling plants, but they can actually be grown as a climbing plant, just like any other vine. You just need a frame that is strong enough to handle the heavy fruit. Here is a great video I found that discusses this, as well as some other great ideas. The best part (in my opinion) of the two videos that I have linked in this post is that they both show people growing very successful gardens in urban areas, with small amounts of space to work with. Also, while they use brand new materials that they have purchased at their local hardware store, you do not have to buy everything new. Many things you see can be made with substitute, scrap materials that you find. Use your imagination, but remember to match what you’re building to the size of the plant you will be growing on it. Also, if you use wood, be absolutely sure that you follow their counsel NOT to use treated wood. Treated wood will leach chemicals into your soil and by extension your vegetables. Untreated wood does not have this problem.

Ok, I kind of got away from seeds, there. Sorry about the digression, but I think it’s okay. Another aspect of gardening that I want to work with is companion planting. This is an aspect I have read and heard a lot about, and I have talked with people who have used it. I don’t know enough about it to comment at this time, but I will be spending some time educating myself. The one thing I do know is that my carrots and radishes will be planted together, mostly because my wife says so, LOL. So the plants we have decided on are:

·         Tomatoes (just can’t have a garden without these babies! Sam will be growing these)

·         Pumpkins (mostly for Faith)

·         Watermelons (Alexandria)

·         Carrots (Me)

·         Radishes (Also me, although Heather is the one who insists on them)

·         Eggplants (Billy, although we may decide not to do these)

·         Corn

·         Green Beans

·         Peas

·         Spinach

·         Cucumbers

·         Onions

We may choose some others, but that’s the list we have so far.

One Final Note

Well, that about wraps it up for this post. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. I may not be a complete newbie at gardening, but I still have a lot to learn. Any help, advice, personal stories, etc. are most welcome. Thanks for reading!

Planning Time

Another resolution down the tubes!

I tell ya, it just seems to be hard to stick with anything on a regular basis! In my last post, I said my goal for 2012 was to "Blog weekly (beginning this Saturday, January 7th)." Here we are at the 16th, more than two Saturdays later, and I am finally getting the next post written. Ok, to be fair, I actually did start writing Saturday evening (the 14th), but I didn't get it finished, and I didn't remember to backup what I had. So, when we lost power for a second, I lost it all. That's okay, because I think I needed to start over, anyway. This time, though, I'm a little smarter about it. Instead of using the web interface to write this post I've switched to using my word processor, using its blogging feature. It also has Autosave!

I decided years ago that "New Year's Resolutions" were a dumb idea. I mean, why should we wait until the New Year to set goals and plans and try to better ourselves? Shouldn't that be something we do occasionally all year long? Well, this year, I found myself doing it without actually realizing that I was essentially setting "New Years" resolutions until it was too late. I guess, I was looking back at 2011 and realized that I didn't make as much personal progress as I had hoped for, so I naturally started setting a few goals. I do that from time to time, so maybe it "just happened" to coincide with the beginning of the year this time. Who knows?

The Garden Plan

My wife and I went to The Home Depot today (for something unrelated to gardening), and while we were there we decided to walk through the garden center and start planning. We moved from Idaho to Alabama five years ago, and I still can't get used to the idea of Home Depot, Lowe's, Wal-Mart, and all the others stocking their garden centers in the middle of January! I really got excited looking at all the plants and supplies that have already been set out. I hope we are able to stick with it.

Later, we sat down at home with the whole family and did some more planning. We have decided to do a square-foot garden, and have chosen some plants we want to grow. Some of the details need to be fleshed out a bit, but at least we are getting started earlier! I'm looking forward to harvest time and actually doing some canning this year. It has been years since we have had a large enough harvest to can some food.

Follow Up

In my last post I promised that I would do some thinking about how I can avoid life distracting me from the garden. So far, I've only come up with two items:

• Make the garden a priority. When the plants need attention, give it to them. Don't put the garden on the back burner. Have a regular time for checking up on it. Be sure to harvest as food becomes ready. This will help them to keep producing, and will supplement our diet with fresh home-grown vegetables. Yum!
  
• Enlist the help of my family. Usually, the garden is a family project, so this one isn't really an issue. However, last year we decided that we weren't going to have a garden. Later in the year, I decided to do a little bit without the family's help. Enough said about that! Also, doing it this way, it becomes part of the children's chores, so we are more apt to make sure they do it (meaning we do it as well).
  

I think that's about it for this post. As I said, we have some more details to iron out and then we need to start collecting the materials we don't yet have. More to come later. Ciao!

Seeds Have Sprouted

Hello, once again! Thank you for reading. Another week has gone by (and a hectic one it was for our family, I might add), and my starts have progressed rather well. You may recall that at the time of my last entry nothing had yet broken the surface. Well, two days later here is what I found!

Gentlemen! Start your seeds!

Hello, there! A week has passed since I started my blog. Because I am experimenting this year, and because of my late start, I chose to start my plants from seeds, rather than purchasing plants that were already established.
I planted them in some starter pellets I had left over from previous years. (Truth be told, I still have a bunch more unused!) For anyone who has never used these pellets, they are a great way to start seeds, as they are small, portable, and individual. They are usually sold as part of a "mini greenhouse" kit in the garden section of most Wal-Mart stores as well as home improvement stores like Lowe's or The Home Depot. These came from a package of 25 pellets, with no greenhouse included. Much cheaper that way. I think I got them last year. I like them because once the plants are ready to "transplant" to their more permanent home, no actual transplanting is necessary. You just dig a hole where you want the plant to go and move it from the greenhouse to the hole. The pellets are a dried potting soil packaged in a thin, biodegradable netting that the roots can easily poke their way through as the plant grows.
When you first get the pellets, they are hard and dry. To use them, you simply put them in the container where you wish to start the seeds and add enough water for the pellets to absorb and grow to full size. Full size is about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm). Once the pellets have absorbed the water, which usually takes about 15 minutes, you are ready to plant you seeds. The pellets typically have a small indentation in the top center. I just place my seed in that indentation and cover with some of the surrounding soil.

This is a photo of six pellets in a small plastic container I had around the house. I think I picked up a package of three of these containers at Wal-Mart for under $2.00. When I snapped this picture, I had just poured the water in the container, so they hadn't absorbed the water yet. Some of the water spilled onto the pellets, which accounts for the different coloring you see. 

Once they had reached full size, I planted the seeds. As you can see from this photo, I decided to go with Sweet Basil, Spearmint, and a cherry tomato. (Sorry, honey, but I haven't planted any cucumber, yet. Hopefully, soon.) I planted two of each plant, one seed per pellet. I have never seen any reason to plant multiple seeds per hole, since it only takes one to grow, and almost all the seeds I have ever purchased were viable at the time of purchase.
I chose Sweet Basil because I love the fragrance and the flavor. Basil has a wonderful flavor. I add it to many dishes that I cook, from meat dishes, to soups, to spaghetti. (I make my own spaghetti sauce. Store-bought sauces are NASTY-tasting! Thanks, Mom for teaching me that when I was a kid!) It is also great when you want to make home-made garlic bread. Just place the amount of butter/margarine you need into a bowl, add the desired amount of garlic, and about one quarter to one-half that amount of basil. Basil has a way of making the garlic flavor pop out just right. Mix them up and spread on the bread. Then bake/broil it for a couple minutes and you're ready to eat it!
I purchased this package of Sweet Basil on July 2, the same day I started this blog. The package states that it has a germination period of 5-10 days. I planted my mini-garden on July 4th (Happy Independence Day, for those of us in the U.S.A.) so these should be ready to burst forth any day, now. I checked a few minutes ago, and none of my six plants has broken the surface yet.
I chose Spearmint for the same reasons as Basil (fragrance and flavor), plus the fact that I had a bunch of seeds left over from a previous year. Honestly, I don't expect these to grow, because I don't think they were stored well and are probably not viable anymore. However, this is my experimenting year, so here goes! The package says they have a germination period of 12-14 days, so I probably won't see anything for at least another week. When mixed with other seasonings, mint adds a great flavor to beef and pork dishes. It is also well known for its use as an infusion to make a delicious, relaxing herbal tea.
The cherry tomatoes I picked were all I could find as a substitute for what I was looking for. There is a variety called "Sweet 100's" that my family loves. They have a great flavor and the plant produces lots of fruit when it is kept right. Unfortunately, we couldn't find those this year, so I chose these instead. We'll see how they go. My family likes having fresh tomatoes growing on the vine that we can just pick, clean off and pop into our mouth. They are also great in salads or anything else that calls for tomatoes. I bought this package at the same time that I bought the Basil, so these seeds should be good! The seeds were normally priced at $1.00(USD) per package, but because it is so late in the season, they had been marked down to $0.75. The package says their germination period is 7-10 days, so they should be popping up very soon.

Here is the finished July 4th product. I used some paperclips and 3x5 cards that I had around the house to make the labels. What I really want to use are some popsicle-style sticks. I will probably pick some up today or during this coming week at Hobby Lobby. They sell boxes of them really cheap, and they can be used for lots of different things. I can then replace them, because I don't like having all those cards in the way.
As I said, right now nothing has broken the surface, but I expect that to change before next Saturday, so I will hopefully have some new pics for you. Take care, and let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas. Thanks!

- Jim