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bonediggers

Our first SFG

20 years ago

I've gardened many times in the past, always organic, always "intensive" and "companion planting" gardening. But this year, as we were deciding what we wanted to plant, etc, my wife visited Mel's website and got all excited about it. I had read the original book years ago and liked the concept, but just never did actually do it. But with the modifications in the principle, the idea of no weeding got my attention in a hurry.

We have a couple acres of land, so have lots of room for a large garden, so I'm putting in sixteen 4' x 8' beds. All up off the ground completely. We're fortunate to have a large company local that makes potting/growing soils of many varieties. I looked at Mel's mix costwise and nutrition wise for the plants and felt we could get something very very close to what he recommended at a reduced price. We are buying their premium planting mix which contains (amongst other things): compost, perlite, sand, manure, pine bark mulch and a starter fertilizer. Buying it in bulk instead of bags, we're getting it for $54 per sq yard. One square yard is enough to fill two 7 inch deep planting beds. I've gotten the first two beds completed, filled with soil and partially planted (not time to plant some of the things alloted to those beds yet). The broccoli has doubled in size in one week. We've got carrots already up in 15 of the 16 sq ft we planted. I'm beginning to wonder if we skipped one sq ft somehow. I've got spinach planted in 12 sq feet, but haven't seen a sign of growth there yet.

I'm only two weeks into this deal at this time, so can't speak for a season's results by any means. But by now, in regular beds on the ground, using existing dirt, we'd have already been pulling weeds and at this point, the only thing growing in those two beds belongs in there.

I just picked up more materials to get more beds built. My building supply dropped a pallet of cinder blocks off yesterday which we'll use for legs on the other beds. I picked up another yard of soil today, so by Monday, we'll have much more stuff planted. We've started a lot of our own sets, so we have lots of stuff that's ready to go into the beds as I get them finished.

I must say, I'm impressed with the ease of caring for things so far. I know I'd have had a lot more effort exerted by this time using my conventional beds on the ground method. We love being able to walk up and have the beds raised so we barely have to bend over to plant. Picking the trellised beans/cukes/whatever will wind up being my chore, since the wife isn't real impressed with being on ladders, LOL. But that's not a problem. We're going to freeze and can a lot of the stuff, so that's why we're planting so many beds. I figure about mid summer she'll be doing more than her share of the labor in the kitchen, which more than makes up for the stuff I do in the garden that she doesn't.

She bought a bunch of herbs and flowers that I have to get beds ready for also.

Nothing like jumping in with both feet, is it?

We're in northeast Texas where summers can get very dry and hot, but having experience gardening in the past, I know which varieties do better around here so I think we'll get through that part of the year fine. I can't wait to see those beds all greened out and stuff climbing trellises and tomatoes ripening on the vine. That's when life gets good!

Rod

Comments (75)

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Bonedigger,

    Just wanted to encourage you to keep up your posts! I've been using them to see how my garden is comparing - just a couple of weeks later since I'm in NoVA as opposed to sunny Texas. I'm about 2 weeks into my first gardening venture, and have 3 Broccoli plants that are doing fairly well that I planted last week. One of my 9 spinach seeds popped its head up yesterday, and 3 of my 8 radish seeds popped up this past weekend. My onions are still developing roots, no growth yet, and no sign of life in my peas or carrots. But it's still early yet, I may have jumped the gun a little on the weather since it got down to 19 degrees last night, and this cold spell is supposed to last for the next few days. But even if I have to replant next week it's a loss of just a few seeds and a few minutes of labor.
    Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you to keep posting!

    Rachel

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hey Rod,

    Just wondering, is everything your growing for your
    own use, or are selling organic vegetable also?

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  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Due east, Rod says to tell you it's for our own use (fresh and canning) but he's looking at the possibility of selling some. He needs to know how many beds it would take to get it into production mode, how much it produces per bed, etc. Personally, I think he should consider selling, too. What do you think?

    Denise, the sleeping bride

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I think if you market towards up scale restaurants that
    are starting to lean towards organic vegetables you should
    do well. I saw a program on PBS a while back, this guy
    got bought of a acre of land in some city, he put up privacy fences
    and set up beds similar as yours, and sold organic vegetables to the
    restaurants in the area. Are you or have you checked into organically certified?

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Due East, I checked on the certified organic status about 20 years ago, but not since then. We're not really into this as a commercial venture, but the further I go along with this, I see how easily it could become one. I believe I'd lean more towards a co-op/pick-your-own type operation as opposed to selling to restaurants, although that's certainly a possibility and one could easily do both. It's the lack of labor once the beds are built that is making me lean towards making it a commercial venture. I believe I could fairly easily tend to 100 4' x 8' beds by myself once I got everything set up the way I'd want it. I can't even begin to imagine what 100 beds would produce.

    I might as well update since I'm posting anyway. I yanked the lima beans. They simply weren't coming up. That one bed is the one that I didn't put drainage holes in and I put off doing it because the broccoli is doing beautifully in the other end. But the beans were just too wet below the ground and were rotting. So I yanked the beans that were up (only 5 of them had broken the ground), took the hand rake and tilled it all up and planted sugar baby watermelons instead. It'll be interesting to see how trellising those babies works out. And I got the drill and extra long wood bit and bored drainage holes on that end. All of my other beds have drainage holes and everything's doing well. So I learned a lesson there. The drainage holes are definitely important.

    I treated the fireants around the beds yesterday. We'll see if that tends to them or not. If they move to the garden beds themselves, I'll have to deal with them differently to remain organic in the beds.

    We have two new additions to the nursery. Cantaloupe and sugar baby watermelon (from an earlier planting) have both broken the ground now. Everything else is doing well. I applied a modest amount of fertilizer to the ground. I know the organic elitists wouldn't dream of using commercial fertilizer and normally, I wouldn't either, but I don't have compost piles going yet and the plants are due an infusion of nutrients. As I get my compost piles generating good stuff, I'll use that and fish emulsion, as well as "garden tea". But I have a lot going on right now and this was my best way of dealing with it under the circumstances.

    More when I have it.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OK, this morning, I went and picked up another load of the ultra blend planting soil, filled Beds 9 and 10, got my grid in place and planted Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, purple top turnips, zucchini, okra, Early Girl tomatoes and Big Boy tomatoes.

    We now have acorn squash and black diamond watermelon breaking the ground. The sugar snap peas are slowly but surely discovering the trellis I built over the weekend.

    I watered everything good this evening and with the fertilizer I put on yesterday, we should see some growth spurts on some of the veggies. We'll see.

    More when I got it.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My god, the workload on this SFG is getting crazy! We've pulled a total of 10 weeds in 5 weeks. Obviously we have failed miserably at this "no weeding" concept of gardening. Weeding has now taken up almost 2/3rds of a minute's time already. If this continues at this pace throughout our growing season, we'll be up to nearly 6 minutes of weeding for this year.

    I finally got around to drilling drainage holes in the other half of the one bed I forgot to do it on in the first place. That's the bed that has 15 square feet of broccoli planted in it, 1 square of spinach planted as sets and 16 other squares. In the other 16 squares, originally I had planted pole lima beans, but very few of them came up and when i decided the lack of drainage holes were the problem and dug it all up again, I discovered most of the beans had rotted before coming up. I replanted that area with sugar baby watermelon seeds and drilled drainage holes in that half.

    I have been watching the broccoli closely this past few days. The plants were developing some leaf curl to them and starting to die around the edges. One of the broccoli plants had actually begun to flower (we're talking yellow flower petals here) so I punched drainage holes in that side day before yesterday. We'll see if I got to it in time to keep all the plants from bolting or not. I have other broccoli planted, but these looked so good until a few days ago.

    If you're building truly raised beds (entirely off the ground), drainage holes are obviously critical!

    So, how is everything doing? Let's see. We have 3 varieties of tomatoes planted, sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, early girl and big boy. All the plants look great. We have two kinds of english peas planted, sugar snap peas and some we bought from Dollar General. Both varieties are doing great.

    We have two kinds of watermelon planted, sugar baby and black diamond. Both have sprouted and have small plants on them already. We also have cucumber, cantaloupe and acorn squash up already. I planted zucchini on Wednesday.

    We have detroit dark red beets, danvers half long carrots, bloomsdale spinach, and swiss chard planted and doing well. I just planted one square foot of parsley yesterday. Wednesday, I planted 16 square feet of purple top turnips.

    We have two kinds of onions planted, a red onion variety and 1015 sweet onions. (again, the 1015 is the variety, not the quantity! LOL) We also have garlic planted and man is that stuff producing! I just planted one square foot of chives yesterday.

    We have cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower planted. All are doing fine except for the broccoli as noted above. We spotted our first cauliflower head yesterday morning. By the way, I have never raised cauliflower before. How exactly do I tie the leaves around the head to blanch it?

    We have two varieties of corn planted, silver queen sweet corn and trucker's favorite yellow field corn. The corn is now about 5-6 inches tall and growing daily.

    We have 4 bell pepper plants scattered about the garden.

    I have okra planted in 16 square feet. This was just planted on Wednesday, so no activity there yet.

    With the exception of the okra, turnips and zucchini, everything is up already. I expect these three to all have plants on them by next week.

    I also have buttergold potatoes planted in tires that are on platforms above the ground. The first plant broke through the ground yesterday morning. I'm hoping to see some life in the other tires in the next couple days.

    I still have 10 raised beds to build and plant. Hopefully, I'll get some of those done next week.

    Y'all are sure quiet out there. I love hearing your comments and questions. Makes me think someone's actually reading all this. LOL

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod and Denise,
    My husband built 1 4'x16' bed last fall for me as a SFG experiment, and I am truly convinced this is the way to go. I believe it's made a believer out of my husband too. I only began gardening last fall, so I am very much a novice. I learn so much on gardenweb and appreciate reading about everyone's experiences.
    Your updates are inspiring and entertaining. Please continue to give updates on your progress. Your setup is very well done - bravo! I wish I had the space as you do, however I think I can get another 7-8 beds built eventually that will keep me quite busy.
    Keep up the great work! Kind regards, June.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yesterday afternoon, after Denise got home from work, we were looking over the garden and in one of the two new beds, she spotted a ton of plants coming up in one square. I had told her about my blunder the day it happened, but she must have forgotten about it. As I was planting the turnips the other day, the package tipped over and a bunch of the seeds spilled into parts of two squares. Trying to locate that many seeds that are that small is simply impossible, so I just let them stay. I knew they'd show up sooner or later. Sooner is obviously the chosen method because we have a ton of turnip plants in those two squares. So I thinned them as best I could and will continue until I get it the way it should be. But man, were those little suckers everywhere! LOL

    I'm going to ask the question again about Cauliflower. How exactly do I tie the surrounding leaves so the head will blanch properly?

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod, I have always used spring type clothespins to "tie" the Cauliflower leaves. Two or three per plant should do it. So much easier, to me, then actually tying them, and lots easier to check on the heads.

    BTW, I just discovered the SFG forum tonight & have enjoyed your reports very much. Thank you.

    Lee in TN

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod ended up tying the leaves together with ummm..some kind of nylon cord thingiemabopper. He'll read this and correct me if I'm wrong, no doubt. ;)

    The garden is looking really great and we need to post more recent photos on the website. Hopefully, I'll get around to taking pictures tomorrow when I'm off. I imagine I'll have to suffer through some weeding, also. Maybe even 10 seconds of it! If any of you are interested, you might check out the diagram he made for my future cottage garden. You can find a link to it at:

    http://members.aol.com/brickshyofaload/garden/index.html

    or go directly to it:

    http://members.aol.com/brickshyofaload/garden/gardenlayout.html

    I don't know if it will work out just as the diagram shows but will more than likely be very close. For days, we've given thought to how to mark off the spaces for planting and this morning he told me he had an idea for that. Spray paint! Yep, spray paint. It will last awhile as long as we don't have tons of rain and will give me a very visual guide for the paths and planting areas. Why didn't we think of that sooner? Tonight I'll bring home a can or two of white paint and will use it to mark the areas tomorrow so I can start getting some things in the ground. I ended up planting some flowers and bee balm up by the house today because they simply had to get into the ground before they die. I might end up moving them later but for now they're at least planted and doing well.

    Anyway, just touching bases with you all. :)

    Denise

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Well, it's about time for an update, so here goes. I have picked up the materials to build the last 6 beds, but haven't gotten started on those yet. Hopefully I'll have that done by next week. I have a lot of other projects going at the same time and it seems like everything is half finished. Kind of like my brain at times. LOL

    As for the existing beds, we had some light rains every day for a week, then a day of pretty heavy rain. I guess this got the fertilizer into the soil better because the plants have gone crazy in the past 3 days. Corn is around 8 inches tall now. Our tomato sets have doubled in size. The sugar snap peas are climbing the trellis like crazy now. Everything is doing wonderfully.

    As for weeds, we've pulled a grand total of 15 weeds now. In 5 weeks of gardening.

    The second bed, the one that I didn't get the drain holes drilled in until last week, is doing much better. The broccoli started to flower on us last week. The heads were up to about 3 inches wide, but started putting on flowers. I figured the root system was drowning, so I quickly got the drain holes drilled. We cut all of the larger heads and used them in a salad. Yesterday, I made a second cutting of some of the remaining heads. I noticed last week that the new growth on the stalks, next to the soil, was much narrower in diameter than the older stalk. Again, I believe that was a symptom of a root system that was drowning.

    Now, the broccoli has almost doubled in size in the past week. The remaining heads seem to be ok and aren't starting to flower. The stalks are getting thicker again and the color of the leaves is much better. We're getting lots of side chutes on the plants we've removed the main heads. So I think I got to everything in time and it'll all be fine.

    We have one square foot of spinach in that same bed. It has always looked great and continues. I've snipped leaves off those plants and we've used them in salad also.

    It appears as if we've got carrots, beets and radishes making roots now. We pulled one of the larger onions yesterday to add to the salad. The bulb was just starting to show some roundness, so those are growing.

    The turnips I planted late last week are doing great.

    We haven't seen any evidence of insects getting to the plants and no signs of any other problems, other than bed #2, which I believe is now corrected.

    So far, I'm totally convinced that SFG is the only way to go. I know the workload is drastically reduced.

    I have to get some more trellises in place, for english peas, cantaloupe and tomatoes. I'm going to experiment using some pvc pipe, but adding electrical conduit inside it to add strength. What I want is something I can reuse every year and that can be removed easily and moved from bed to bed. I probably won't get to that this week, but when I get it done, I'll take some pics and post them.

    Hope someone's reading all this. More when I have it.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wow! I just went out to the garden for my morning bedcheck and found 11 weeds!!!!!! That brings our total to 26 now. All these appeared to be the same type plant, but it's hard to tell since they were all just new sprouts. Obviously we must have had an invasion of airborne seeds from some prolific plant around here.

    Thankfully, besides being wiser, smarter, taller, more musically inclined, more computer literate, a more experienced home gardener, much more modest and faster at picking weeds, I took care of this invasion quickly and efficiently while the Garden Queen sat on her duff watching Fiddler on the Roof inside the warm house.

    I did inform her that since she subjected me to Fiddler on the Roof, I am ordering the entire set of Gidget movies to exact revenge.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Well, they hit today, definitely. I pulled 39 weeds today. Before today, we had pulled 26 total since Feb 27th. Apparently, we have some plant/tree closeby that's sending seeds airborne and conditions are getting good for them to germinate. Even with a total of 65 weeds, we haven't spent 3 minutes total actually pulling weeds. This is still far better than conventional gardening.

    Zucchini is up, Some okra is up. Everything else is doing great.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    This has been so interesting, even the weed part. Thanks for posting, keep it up, and don't for get picture updates....

    Cheri

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I pulled another 15 weeds yesterday, so we're up to 80 total. Everything looks good. More okra has broken the ground. The broccoli plants that we had cut the heads from has sent side chutes out and they should be large enough to pick today. I noticed the radishes are forming bulbs now, so they're well on the way.

    The corn is about a foot tall now in many places. The sugar snap peas are climbing all over the trellises.

    More later.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Well, the weed infusion has slowed considerably. We're at a total fo 97 for the year now.

    I built a trellis for the cherry tomato plants out of 2"x2"s and some nylon strapping material. I don't know if it's going to work well or not, but the strapping material was just too danged good not be used for something.

    I got two more garden beds built yesterday and have enough material cut up to put another couple together today. We have 12 of our 16 built, 10 of them planted. All I have left to build is 4 more and we'll be at our goal. I should finish those this week. Whether we get them filled with the soil mix this week or not remains to be seen, but the beds will be built.

    All the plants look good right now. The spinach in bed #1 is really growing well and we should be harvesting from there in a the next couple weeks.

    Denise had ordered some "Fat Man Beans" from one of the forum members here and they arrived yesterday. Y'all reckon that's a hint of some kind???? I'm going to plant those in one of the new beds.

    More when I have it. . . .

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Been following your tales of daring do with your square foot garden for quite awhile. Enjoying every minute of it. My gardens drowning right now. Having trouble believing the people that know when they tell me we're in the middle of one of the worst droughts in the last 300 years. Poor radish are waving for flotation devices, but I cant find any that small..... Keep up the wonderful stories......Love to see the final results.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Offtom, thanks for the interest in our ongoing saga. I'll update today since we passed a couple milestones yesterday.

    First of all, we passed the 100 mark on weeds pulled. We're now at 103 for the year. And probably up to around 3-4 minutes total time.

    Let's see what's new out there. We planted 18 broccoli plants, 15 of them in the bed that I forgot to put drainage holes in and 3 in a separate bed. The drainage hole issue has been addressed, but let me tell what we've seen with those 15 plants so far. About half those plants bolted, the heads started separating and flowering, so we cut them early. We're getting side shoots on those plants now, but they're trying to flower also, so we have to watch them daily. That half of the plants are also smaller than the other half.

    The other half of the plants have nice thick stems, huge leaves on them, are taller than the bolting ones, and until yesterday, not a single one of them had produced a sign of a head. Yesterday, we spotted the first head on one of those. So, hopefully, those plants didn't have drowned root systems like the others apparently did and are going to produce normally. Time will tell, of course.

    In that same bed (the 2nd bed I built) I planted 9 spinach sets and they have produced beautifully, with nice large dark green leaves. We have been picking leaves from those plants for a few weeks now and they were starting to thin out considerably, so yesterday, I harvested the entire square foot completely, pulling the plants up by the roots. I dug to the bottom of the bed in that square and was surprised to find somewhat dry soil at the bottom, but since I finally got the drainage holes drilled in there, I haven't been watering as much in that particular bed. We've had rain the past couple days, so I imagine the bed is now soaked pretty well, but i'll keep a watch on it.

    In place of the spinach, I planted some yellow straightneck squash We have 16 square feet of spinach in another bed that is doing beautifully, so we aren't out of the spinach business by any means.

    So, yesterday saw us surpass the 100 weed mark and saw the first complete harvesting of a square foot.

    We also spotted the first beginnings of flowers on our cherry tomatoes. The last time I grew Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, I had 5 plants and was picking a 5 gallon bucket of tomatoes every other day. I couldn't believe how well those things produced. We have 4 plants, so we'll see how well these produce. The vines sure look good, nice thickness for their height and the color is just perfect.

    At this point, I think the only real problem children we have in the garden are the bare root strawberry plants. They are not doing well. We planted 24 originally and I think there's 12 still alive. We planted late in the year and I'm not sure I did it right, so going to have to look at that before I do any more strawberries.

    Everything else seems to be doing well. I love seeing 12 inch tall corn stalks growing out of our "tables". It's a strange sight, to say the least. LOL

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod:

    I also have about 50% mortality with late planted bare root strawberries. Its not you. Let them set runners to fill the gaps and you'll have no problems with those transplants.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thanks for the info, Ray. I was getting pretty disgusted. They were doing so poorly that the original plan to plant the entire bed in strawberries went out the window and I planted Big Boy tomatoes in their place. And the tomatoes look great. Nice thick stalks, good coloration, etc.

    I'll give these some more time and hope for babies. :-)

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Glad you mentioned planting something else in the gaps of a new strawberry bed. I've got some Siam Queen Thai Basil starts I need to plant someplace and hadn't thought about the redone strawberry bed, but I've got some spaces there they would fill nicely and its got the right amount of sun.

    When I tore out the old bed last fall I put the 5-6 survivors in a cut-off milk jug and only remembered them this spring after I'd planted what I could of the new bed, and put them in spaces on the opposite end of the new plantings, and they never skipped a beat despite abuse. Both the survivors and the bareroots were Sequoia.

    My Allstar plugs planteed on the top level all did great save one that was probably dead at the store but I bought the last tray left since I wanted to try some different varieties.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Today, I pulled up the one cauliflower plant that had formed a head. It was trying to bolt and was much smaller than the other cauliflower plants we have planted, so up it came. Now, I have this empty square foot, in the middle of a bunch of cauliflower and brussell sprout plants and haven't figured out what to stick in there yet. I intend on planting something in there tomorrow morning.

    We're up to 116 on weeds pulled. I think the huge infusion is over now, we're only getting 3-4 per day now.

    I'm about a week from harvesting the one square foot of radishes we planted. We picked some spinach leaves from the plants we have in the #1 bed that we planted by seed. We have swiss chard coming right behind the spinach, so we'll be in greens for awhile. Right after the chard is used up, we'll have turnip greens (as well as turnips), so we're fixed for greens.

    The sugar snap peas have reached the 5th crosswire on the trellis I built, with their tendrils. This morning we tied the cherry tomatoes to the trellis I built last week . They're looking really good and have unopened flowers on them already. I can't wait for fresh cherry tomatoes. One of my absolute favorite things from a garden.

    We have 6 jalapeno pepper plants that are up, all planted by seed. They'll be a little behind folks who put sets out instead of direct seeding, but we ought to get more peppers than we'll use ourselves, regardless.

    The acorn squash (2 plants in 1 square foot each are putting on their third set of leaves and appear to be ready to start vining. The last time I grew acorn squash, I had two plants. The vines ran from one to the other of a 60 feet long bed. We pulled over 2 bushels of acorn squash from those two plants.

    We had spotted a little bit of grazing being done by some unidentified pest on the cabbage and on the corn. Also a slight amount on the spinach, so today, I dusted all of those well with diatamaceous earth. That should tend to that problem.

    An interesting note (at least to me): I had been noticing these holes in the soil of the beds. They looked like someone took a #2 pencil and pushed it down into the soil a few inches. I had dug a couple of them, in hopes of figuring out what had caused it, but no luck. This morning, I spotted another one and about an inch below the soil, I discovered a june bug burrowed in. I didn't know those things lived in holes in the ground. I figured they stayed in trees since they're a flying insect. I have no idea if they're part of the pest problem we have on some of the plants or not. But at least I now know what caused the holes.

    More when I have it.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The white grubworms that you can dig out of lawns are what june bugs are before they become june bugs, so maybe your june bugs are trying to lay eggs in your garden or something.

    I've really enjoyed reading your ongoing sfg saga--I just have two beds right now, filled with greens, onions, and peas--pestering my dh to build three more beds for me, but we've got so many half done projects around here, it may be the end of the season before he gets around to it :)

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OK, you've taught me something. For years, I've seen those larvae as I've dug into the ground. I didn't have any idea those were june bug larvae. That explains why in several of those pencil holes, when I dug into them, I found nothing. The june bug had already "left the building", leaving eggs to hatch. OK, so we'll have a nice crop of june bugs this year along with everything else. Now, the question is, do those larvae attack plant roots?

    I might as well update since I'm posting. We've had rain for the past couple days, so no watering has been required. We had to remove some of the outer leaves on the cabbage plants since they had gotten so big they were pushing the corn plants over. Denise said she's going to make cabbage rolls from those leaves today, so the bounty continues.

    I pulled a few of the radishes over the past few days. They have smothered that one square foot and are about an inch or so in diameter at the bulb. I promised my aunt in Shreveport that I'd bring her some, so I may pull them all today and ride over there this afternoon.

    All of our secondary planting of sugar baby watermelons are up. Even the dad-blamed strawberries seem to have perked up in the last week so the whole garden looks better.

    I'm raising buttergold potatoes in some above ground tires separate from the garden beds. I now have potato plants in all 5 of those tires. One stack is ready for the 2nd tire to be put on and more soil, so I'll get to that in the next couple days.

    About the only thing that seems to be slow going is the okra. I planted about 20 square feet of okra, 4 plants per SF and only have about 15 plants up so far. There was a couple more breaking the ground this morning, so maybe I'm just being impatient again.

    We have bumbs forming on the beets. The swiss chard has really perked in the last week, almost doubling in size. The sugar snap peas are up to the 6th rung on the wire fence trellis. We haven't seen a bloom on any of them yet, but surely it's coming shortly.

    The spinach SF's are just a mass of green now. It's almost impossible to see the soil from any vantage point now. Our corn is about a foot tall, with a few 15 inchers thrown in for good measure and thick stalks. The acorn squash, cantaloupe and watermelon look like they're going to start vining any day now.

    And the best news of all. . . . there are blooms on the cherry tomato plants.

    Weed count is up to 142 now. (Yes, for some ridiculous reason, I'm still counting. . . . .) This amounts to about 5 minutes total weeding time.

    On an average day now, I'm spending 20 minutes per day in the garden. I make a morning run through it and an afternoon run. That's it. Easiest gardening I've ever done, period.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Dear Bonediggers...
    You know us "northern folks" have to keep a tissue handy when we read your post....hearing about all your wonderful things growing make the rest of us drool! LOL We are still having cool weather here in VA....planted peas a week ago...not a sign of them yet, past 4 days was rain, rain, rain....so sure things will be popping up soon!
    Looking forward to our SFG being filled with bounty soon!

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I pulled my first weed from my SFGs yesterday. I don't have enough to do in the veggie garden! But the amount of raking (roommate hasn't done that task yet, dammit), mulching and weeding (weeds are popping up daily) needed elsewhere in the yard balances that out. I may never get around to trimming the forsythia mess in the back. Fortunately it's a rental house.

    The 5 squares of spinach are doing fine, except for the one seedling whose leaves got bit off.

    The lost-count-of-how-many squares of reddish romaine are also doing OK, at least enough of them are; there are too many to check each one, especially as I wouldn't do anything about it if there were something wrong. I expect to be pulling up some to plant other things. (I'd planted all the lettuce seedlings I had, because I had the space and nothing else to put in. Then I started getting ideas so now I sacrifice lettuce for other things.)

    I haven't looked at the tiny radish seedlings in the full-sun bed yet, I hope they survived the deluge of the past few days.

    I planted two part-sun squares, each half full, with store-bought peas -- one square with sprouted peas, the other with unsprouted. Just an experiment. After one week they have't broke ground.

    This weekend I'm planting:
    - radish in the part-sun bed, for which I'll sacrifice lettuce;
    - sprouted peas in the full-sun bed, for which I'll sacrifice the western half of lettuce squares (IOW, the back half of the square will be peas, the front half lettuce; this allows me to put the trellis along the "back" of the raised bed);
    - sprouted and unsprouted chive seeds in the sidewalk strip.

    This leaves me more sidewalk strip into which to plant onion bottoms leftover from cooking.

    And so continues my larger-than-expected ad hoc SFG & soil experimental garden.

    Thanks for being inspirational Rod.

    Harimad

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I don't know if the larva will eat the roots of vegetable plants--they will damage grass roots--or so the garden centers say when they want you to buy the grub killer. I find a few of them in my sfg every year, but they don't seem to be doing any damage that I can tell.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod, your posts are great. I did some sfg about 10 years ago, but never in raised beds. They really do seem so much easier. I know I won't be able to do much this season, but maybe that will be a fall project and be ready for next year. I do have a question. You keep mentioning potatoes planted in tires. Could you elaborate a bit on that? I have an endless supply of tires and have always wanted to grow potatoes. Thanks and keep up the posting!
    Sandy

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sandy, let me see if I can explain exactly what I am doing with the potatoes. This past year, I bought about 15 ceramic kilns and sold them on eBay. I had metal stands for the kilns, but for whatever reason, not everyone wanted a stand, so I wound up with about 12 sheet metal stands, 4 legged.

    There's a routine I've heard about for years where you grow potatoes in tires. It goes like this. You place a tire on the ground, fill it up with planting soil, put 1 or 2 potatoe eyes in the soil and tend to it until the plant has bushed out good. Then you place another tire on top of that one, fill it up with dirt, just barely leaving some of the green plant sticking out the top. This causes more green growth and the buried stalk starts putting out tubers in the 2nd tire. Once the green plant gets large enough, you put a 3rd tire, again covering the green plant until only a small amount sticks out. Again, you get more tubers. This continues until you have 4-5 tires. When harvest time gets there, you just shove the whole pile over and voila, the potatoes are right there. No digging, etc.

    Well, I tried that routine year before last with two major problems. The first is I used soil I dug from our garden area. So I got plenty of weeds/grass/etc. The second problem is I layed the tires directly on the ground and the fireants just loved building nests in them. I got absolutely no potatoes because the ants at everything.

    So this year, with my handy dandy stands, I raised my tires off the ground. I took plywood, laid it on top of the stands, then placed the tire and filled each tire with the Ultra Blend planting soil I bought from Vital Earth.

    My only mistake this year was trying to use potatoes from the grocery store for seed potatoes. I planted 5 tires. Only one potato plant came up. So I wound up getting genuine seed potatoes and replanted. Now, I have plants in all 5 tires. The original plant that came up is ready for the 2nd tire to be placed, soil added, etc.

    Now, whether this is going to be successful remains to be seen. I've heard successes and failures, so we'll just have to wait and see. I've also heard lots of people concerned about chemicals from the tires leaching into the soil, and other folks saying they had no problem with that whatsoever.

    In my opinion, if it does work, it sure sounds effort free, sounds like it allows one to maximum harvest for the area planted and should give one a good garden story to tell folks next year.

    If it doesn't work, well, I'll take a look at the variables and see if I can make it work. If I can't come up with anything, well, it didn't cost too much for the experiment. And we can always use 25 worn out tires for something. NOT!!!!

    Anyway, that's the Great Tater/Tire Experiment of 2004. Hope that all made sense.

    Here's a link about Potatoes in Tires. Hope it helps.

    Rod

    Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Potatoes in Tires

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Since you had problems with drainage, I am wondering how many drainage holes you used in order to correct the problem. Did you actually measure it out and drill them a certain distance apart? How often have you been watering?
    Thanks for being such an inspiration!
    LMLS

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    LMLS, in that one particular bed, originally, I had zero drain holes. Once I realized that the bed was waterlogged, I drilled one 1/2" hole in each square foot.

    As far as how often am I watering, we've had regular rains, so that's kept me from having to water too often. My routine so far this year is to check the soil in the beds every day. If it's moist, I generally leave it another day. If it's the least bit dry feeling, I water. Typically that has been no more than 3 days without a good watering, with most waterings being every other day. Again, we've had regular rains, so that's tended to a lot of it for us.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod,
    Thanks so much. Your explanation was great. I am going to give it a try. Like you said, it certainly couldn't get much easier if it works. I can't wait to build some truly "raised beds." You have given me inspiration and lots of fantastic advice. Wish me luck!
    Sandy

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OK, it's probably time for an update.

    I have pulled all the radishes (1 square). I don't eat them myself, but those that did said they were good, not hot at all. Most of them were in the 1" to 1.5" size range, but a few of them were in the 1/2" size range. I had read somewhere that radish leaves were good in salad, so we tried it. Personally, we weren't that impressed, but your mileage might vary.

    ok, starting with Bed #1, the Black Diamond watermelon plants are up, have secondary leaves on, but haven't shown a huge amount of growth. My guess is the temps just aren't high enough for them to take off yet. We have a jungle of spinach in that bed. We've been picking the larger leaves for salads and actually got our first amount large enough to cook yesterday. Much more flavor than what comes from stores. For the record, this is my first time being successful with spinach. The carrots in that same bed are doing great. I dug below the surface and the carrots are about 1/4" in diameter at this point.

    Bed #2: This is the problem child bed, the one with the drainage issues. The bed is much dryer now since I drilled the drainage holes. The broccoli has had a problem for a week or so with dying leaves. Denise cut most of those off the other day, so the broccoli looks really ugly. We're still getting spears on a regular basis, so we're leaving them in there for the time being. Obviously the hit they took early on was too much for them to recover from. In the other half of the bed we have sugar baby watermelon and they're up with some secondary leaves, but like the other watermelon, they haven't taken off yet.

    In Bed #3, the beets have really had a growth spurt, with nice big leaves on them and beets are forming with some in the 3/5" range already. The sugar snap peas are one rung away from the top of my trellis and just a mass of growth. I have 6 jalapeno pepper plants in that bed that I planted from seed. They're growing, but are still small at this point. I have one square foot with parsley in it and it's lush and full. Another square foot has chives in it. This is my first time growing chives, but as far as I can tell, it's doing fine. We've snipped a few chives off for salads.

    Bed #4 has 3 broccoli plants in there. They don't seem to have the same set of problems as the #2 bed. We have harvested the heads but are getting spears. In this bed, we also have cauliflower and brussell sprouts. We had one of the cauliflower start to produce a head. That plant was stunted in growth, the head never got larger than about 1.5 inches so I wound up pulling that plant out after it had practically died. The other cauliflower and the brussel sprouts have huge leaves, nice thick stalks, good green color, but no signs of fruit on either. Hopefully, it's just not quite time yet. In that same bed, we have 8 square feet of swiss chard which are racing our beets to see which one can get largest first. They are really doing well. This is my first time being successful with swiss chard and my first time ever tasting it. I'm hooked. :-) We didn't get lettuce in this year, so we're subsituting chard, beet leaves and spinach in our salads.

    Bed #5 We have 20 square feet of sweet corn. The plants are almost 2 feet tall now. We've seen some browning around the edges of the leaves and apparently they haven't been getting enough water, so I've stepped up the watering on all the corn. In the same bed, we have 4 square feet of garlic which are doing fine. The stems are at least a foot long and 1/2" across. We have cantaloupe in the other squares in that bed. It's all up, has secondary leaves, but like the watermelons, hasn't taken off growing yet.

    In Bed #6, we have 6 square feet of strawberries. I planted 24 plants originally. We have 12 still alive. We're seeing some new growth on them, but you won't hear me bragging about my strawberry successes this year. The rest of that bed is all big boy tomatoes. The stalks are 3'4" across, the plants are 18" tall and full of growth. When canning time gets here, Denise may be covered up in tomatoes!

    In Bed #7, we have 6 square feet of sweet onions. They're doing great, except for the ones being pushed over by the cabbage plants! The cabbage is finally starting to create balls. We have 9 cabbage plants, 1 square foot each. If you measured across the outer leaves on a single plant, I'd guess them to be about 24 inches across, so it's really really crowded in there. The outside leaves are pushing the neighboring onions and corn over, so I'm going to have to trim them off. In that same bed we have more sweet corn. The stalks are thick and the plants are about 18" tall. We have two square feet of acorn squash. The plants are starting to make runners and look very healthy.

    In Bed #8, half of it is English Peas which were purchased at Dollar General. Those aren't doing nearly as well as the sugar snap peas, but they may be bush, not pole variety. They're growing well, just not as well. We have more sweet onions in that bed and they're about the same as the other onions, nice thick long stalks.

    On the 2nd row, Bed #1 has 4 cherry tomato plants. We've had blooms on the plants for a week now, but no sign of our first tomatoe. I've had to tie the plants to my trellis the second time. The plants are full and lush with good size stalks. I have 16 square feet of okra planted. About half of it has come up, but I got tired of waiting and replanted the missing spots yesterday. We have 4 zucchini plants (in 4 square feet) in that bed. Those plants are doing great. Knowing what zucchini does around here, I might should have only planted 2 plants, but we'll see what happens. I wouldn't be surprised if we were 2-3 weeks from eating fresh zucchini.

    In Row 2, Bed 2, I have 4 Early Girl tomato plants. They're doing as well as all the other tomatoes. We have 16 square feet of turnips which have taken off in the past 10 days. We'll be picking greens by next week. We also have 4 Big Boy tomato plants on the other end of this bed and they're doing fine, too, but not as good as the other bed of Big Boy tonatoes.

    I haven't gotten the other 6 beds in place and planted yet. Just too much going on. I have 3 of them built and the wood cut for the other 3, so it won't take long once I get started. I've got the design where I want it and can crank them out now. :-)

    The only other stuff we have growing in the garden are the potatoes in the tires. I've already posted about those in another post, so won't be redundant.

    That's it for now.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OK, update time. We're now picking spinach, swiss chard, beet leaves, parsley and chives almost every day. Turnip greens are every other day.

    We've had good soaking rains for the past couple days, so haven't done anything other than just check on things. The corn in all three of the beds is laying almost horizontal. The sun came out late this afternoon and the corn is starting to straighten back up, but it's got a ways to go.

    I've had something chewing on the cabbage leaves. i killed caterpillar on one plant, but I believe there's at least one more still in there.

    The sugar snap peas are now above the peak of my trellis, but still no blooms. I trellised some more of the tomatoes, the sugar baby watermelon, the cantaloupe and the english peas. I'm using a different trellis on each one. I'll decide which one works best after this season and go exclusively one way next year.

    My secondary plantings of okra are almost all up now. All of the tomato plants have blooms on them, but none have tomatoes forming yet. The zucchini has blossoms budding on them, but aren't beginning to open yet.

    The beets are now about an inch in diameter, carrots are about 3/8" in diameter. I pulled another onion this morning. The bulb was about 1.5" in diameter.

    Obviously, by the name of this particular thread, this is my first time using the SFG method. I've now been at this for about 2 months and am massively impressed with the ease of caring for the garden and the results to this point. Unless something drastic happens, this will be my first time to successfully raise cabbage, carrots, spinach (already successful there), swiss chard (already successful there), cauliflower and brussell sprouts. This will also be my first time attempting to trellis sugar baby watermelon and cantaloupe. We'll see how that works out.

    At this point, I'd have to say that I'm 95% sure that I'll never garden a different method again.

    The only two things that have really given us any trouble at all have been the strawberries and the broccoli. We have 3 more heads of broccoli that haven't completely formed yet and I've decided that when they do and they're picked, I'm yanking the plants up and planting that half bed in purple hull peas or those "Fat Man" beans that Denise got.

    As far as the strawberries are concerned. I'm going to wait till the fall and get some more bare root plants and give it another shot before I declare it a total failure. We do have 12 plants out of the 24 still alive, although a couple are just barely so. But we have some of the 12 that are putting on more growth and look very good. If I don't have luck with the bare root plants this fall, I'll plant again in the spring, but they won't be bare root plants.

    I have completed the construction on all 6 of the last beds we're going to have. I need some 2" x 6"s to finish up everything, and a few more cinder blocks. Then I'll get those planted with hot weather stuff, southern peas, watermelons, etc.

    That's it for now.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OK, update time again.

    I pulled the broccoli in Bed #2 after the last 3 untouched plants created heads. This is the bed that had the drainage issues. I planted purple hull peas in the newly empty squares.

    In Bed #1, I harvested the spinach after seeing a too many of the plants starting to brown. It wasn't a water issue and the plants were large, so i decided to just yank them. In their place, I planted the Fat Man Beans that Denise got from one of our forum buddies here.

    I have started a new job and it's taking a lot of my time, so I'm even more glad I'm doing the SFG method.

    The garden is doing marvelously. We pick an occasional weed now, but nothing like what we've done in the past conventionally. I think the count is somewhere around 160 weeds for the year.

    The sugar snap peas have reached the top of the trellis and are just a jungle of growth. We haven't seen a single blossom there yet, but I imagine they're due anytime. The other English Peas we have growing have blossoms all over them but I haven't spotted the first pea pod forming as of right now.

    The turnips are about 16" high now and you can't see the soil for the growth. They're starting to form bulbs now. Our beets are about the same size in growth, but the bulbs are approaching the 2" size mark. The Swiss Chard is also about the same size.

    In one bed, I have 3 more broccoli plants which I haven't pulled, 9 cauliflower plants and 16 brussell sprouts. All are very tall plants with healthy looking stalks. But we haven't seen heads being formed on the cauliflower yet, nor sprouts on the brussel sprouts.

    The watermelons and cantaloupe are finally starting to vine. The acorn squash is really starting to vine now and already putting on fruit.

    The corn is now at the 3' mark. We've had a lot of rain in the past 10 days and the corn has layed down almost horizontally, but straightens up after a couple days of no rain.

    Our sweet onions are forming bulbs. We've picked a couple and they were about 1.5" in diameter. I also pulled a couple of the carrots. They are about 1/2" in diameter and about 4 inches long. The tops are well over a foot tall now.

    We have zucchini forming on all 4 of the plants. In the tires, the potatoes are really doing well. I'm out of the planting soil, so haven't added any more tires.

    And then there's the tomatoes. All of the plants are around 30 inches tall now, with blossoms all over them. I have spotted a a few tomatoes starting to form on the Sweet 100 cherry plants and on the Big Boy plants. The Early Girls haven't started to set yet, but I'm expecting to see it any day now.

    The okra is now about 8 inches tall.

    I added some trellis for the smaller melons and for some of the tomatoes.

    It's amazing to look over and see such lush growth in those beds. I have never had a garden that looked this good. We get a lot of folks slowing down and galking at what we're doing there.

    The new job has kept me from getting those other 6 beds in yet, but I'll get to it sometime in May. Again, I'm glad I have the SFG garden going instead of a conventional one. The SFG garden requires very little time to keep it going well. I keep looking out towards the garden and imagining 80-100 beds out there, lush and full of growing veggies. I may wind up turning that area into a commercial venture. I believe if one installed soaker hoses on timers into the beds as they were built, one person could tend to 100 beds in about 2.5 hours per day.

    At this point, I think the only thing I'll change in the future is to build the beds a little bit deeper. All the ones I have now are 7 inches deep. When I load them with the planting soil I level it off at the top, so it's a full 7 inches. The broccoli and spinach beds I pulled had compacted down to about 5 inches and I think the plants would have done better with a little bit more depth. So, I think I'll bump the depth up to about 10-12 inches on any future beds I build. After this season, I'm going to add depth to my existing beds.

    More when I have it.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Rod,
    I have really enjoyed reading about your garden adventures. Too bad that you have had to spend so much time weeding, though. What are you up to now--about 8-10 minutes now? :) I have a separate e-mail coming to you and will send it tomorrow sometime (it is in the draft file at the moment)
    I have truly gotten inspiration from your posts, and we hope to use similar raised beds at our next location. I am still wondering how that MDF is going to hold up. Please keep us posted on that, okay?

    God Bless,
    Mom of 3 M's

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OK, update time again

    Denise and I just came back in the house from the morning garden jaunt. Things are popping out there!

    We have tomatoes forming on all three varieties, the Big Boys, the Early Girls and the Sweet 100's. The Sweet 100's will produce first and we should be 4-8 days away from eating our first tomato from the garden. If you go back and read my first post in this thread, you'll know this is the moment I've been waiting for. :-)))

    The cauliflower is finally forming heads. The sugar snap peas have blooms all over them, but we didn't spot a pea forming yet. The other english peas have peas all over them, one even large enough for Denise to pull and sample. The zucchini is forming, with one that's about 5 inches long and about an inch in diameter. Denise may pull that one later today. The same plant has 3 more forming and there are 3 more plants, so we're going to be in the zucchini business in a major way in a few days.

    The purple hull peas I planted have come up, as well as the fat man beans. The turnip greens need thinning again. They're about 18" tall and you can't see the soil they're so thick in the bed. They haven't started forming roots yet, but we love the greens, so no biggie.

    One of our 12 remaining strawberry plants has thrown a runner out and it's rooted, so we have a baby there. A couple of the others are starting to send runners, so we may not have a total failure with the strawberries.

    We yanked another one of the carrots. It was about 5 inches lon and about 5/8" diameter. It still had the "baby carrot" taste to it, so the carrots aren't quite ready yet.

    Everything is doing great out there, in spite of me working the long hours I've worked this week. Denise has been making sure the garden is watered. She's going to give it all a shot of Miracle Grow today so it should really start producing in the next couple weeks.

    More when I have it.

    Rod

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    For sure don't give up on those strawberries. I picked our first one a couple of days ago, and oh, my! What a flavor treat!

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Okay, I just spent a very enjoyable hour or two reading through this thread, but I can't believe the last update was May 8th!! Please, is there more to this story??

    I'm just getting info together to start my own first SFG, and this is all very encouraging to me :)

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I find it amusing that we square-footers always know exactly how many plants and how many weeds we have....
    Let's see, I'm down to 51 lettuce now that we (and the bugs) have started eating them.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I've pulled most of my lettuces out as several have bolted to seed. The swiss chard seems to be holding on. I'm also about to severely trim down my mint and basil to get a nice regrowth going through the summer.

    LOTS of tomatoes coming in. The zucchini plant has a fruit ready to be picked tomorrow for dinner and I have one tomato that will probably get picked tomorrow as well

    I just trellised my cucumbers (laziness on my part) and it looks like I have a few fruits starting up. Lots of flowers not getting fertilized which has surprised me because it's down in the backyard with the zucchini and not on the porch with the planter boxes (less bugs up here)

    Also, if anyone can tell me what that red bug is I'd be appreciative. So far they don't seem to be doing anything but hanging out on a few plants but I'd like to know for sure.

    Here is a link that might be useful: SFG as of 6/30/04

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I am delerious with joy! I just planted a few things in my first square foot bed on Sunday - some Celebrity, Patio and Dona tomato seedlings, mulched in with hay, some Montpellier Bush beans, Japanese Eggplant and California Wonder Bells. Well, my bush beans are already sprouting!!!! I feel just like Jack, ready to climb up that beanstalk. I may have to quit my job to go home and watch this miracle. :>) Can't wait until September and October to plant more fall crops.

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    bonedigger...where are you? why haven't you posted here since may? what's happening to your garden?

  • 20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I am new to the forum and just spent over an hour reading about bondigger and would like to know what happened in there garden.

    Come on and give us an update.

  • 19 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Bbonedigger..where are you?

  • 19 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just emailed the Bonediggers. Let's see what happens....

    Tikanas

  • 19 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    this was a great story he had going...

  • 19 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    What an interesting garden blog. Thanks for sharing, from an SFG (and veggie garden) newbie.

    I was a bit surprised to see April 25 come up, I thought I was reading about this year's garden!

  • 19 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I thought it was this year too, until I got far into it. I would love to hear how things worked and what changes they decided to make for this year. Hopefully we hear from them.

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