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Square Foot Gardening

My plunge into Square Foot Gardening

15 years ago

Early December, 2007 I was in the process of building the boxes for the raised beds. I was a little apprehensive about setting them on top of excellent garden soil I had built up over a 35 year period. They will be 8ins deep and filled with finished compost, hopefully before the hard winter sets in.

Mid December, My progress to date is, the two boxes on the left and the three boxes in the center are finished and in place. I am currently building the three boxes for the right. The poly tubing will be about six ins. below ground level and the soaker hose will be about three ins. below the bedding surface. CanÂt wait for spring!!!

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Mid April, Every thing is in place and ready to plant. A good amount of effort later IÂm still hoping I did the right thing.

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Mid June, IÂm feeling very good about making the move to SFG. Some people say you canÂt grow vegetables in 100% compost or you should have between 5% and 8% compost well these are growing in 100% compost. Every thing is doing well except for two boxes because of a pesky wabit but I think he has moved on.

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John

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Comments (9)

crystabel
15 years ago
Wow, your garden looks great! I love seeing the pictures from concept to prepped beds to all of that lovely green growth! :)
albertar
15 years ago
John
Congratulations, your beds look fantastic!! That cabbage looks so delicious, as does everything else you're growing.
Alberta
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Lianna, your boxes are *very* lovely! I can tell your husband really put a lot of time and effort into making them!! Good luck this year! EG, thanks for sharing your knowledge on the elevated boxes. My beds are raised about 4 inches off the ground on blocks, and last year I just couldn't keep enough water in them during the worst part of the Texas heat even while watering twice daily. I didn't even think the problem could be because they're up off the ground! (Mel never mentioned that in his book - or maybe he did and I just glossed over it.) It also never occurred to me to make the boxes deeper, but I did notice the other day when I was planting my zucchini that the one 12" box that I have had a lot more moisture in it than the 6" boxes did. I just figured it was because there are 6 inches of sand in the bottom of the 12" box... If I take my beds off their blocks and let them rest on the ground will this help reduce water loss, or will there still be a problem because the boxes have plywood bottoms?? Also our ground where the boxes are isn't level, so there will probably still be some gaps underneath the boxes. Should we get out there level out the ground if we do decide to put them on the ground? And we thought we were being so clever to put the boxes on blocks so we could move them with his tractor if we decided the spot we had them in just wasn't working... Rachel Here is a link that might be useful: Look Ma No Weeds
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Granny If I can buy chick pea flower here you should be able to find it. I get mine at the Bin Store, which is store which carries bulk candies, spices, baking goods etc. I am celiac which means I am not supposed to eat wheat so I have lots of different flours. You can also look in the organics section of the supermarket and health food stores. It has a bunch of different names: From Wikipedia: Gram flour is a flour made from ground chickpeas.[1] It is also known as chana flour (Indian), besan (Hindi), kadala maavu (Tamil), "Senaga Pindi" (Telugu), kadale hittu (Kannada), chickpea flour, garbanzo flour and harina de garbanzo (Spanish). Used in many countries, it is a staple ingredient in Indian cuisine, and, in the form of a paste with water or yoghurt, a popular facial exfoliant in India and Pakistan. EG. We get a lot of snow and wind and storms but it is not actually that cold as far as actual temperature. Snow is strange as we get a lot of it but then we can get a lot of rain and it goes quickly. What is really bad is 2 feet of snow that turns into rain at the end. It is really miserable to move. Many years snow doesn't stay on the ground until the middle of January. The biggest gardening problem is that we also never get real hot and not a lot of sunshine so stuff takes a much longer time to grow.
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Hrm, that might work for my beds built out of wood, but 5 of my beds are built out of recycled plastic timbers - I'll have to figure out a better way than nails to attach those ones. As far as the seedlings, I found that instead of cutting an X like you do for transplants, I made a circle (3 inches in diameter or so) and then put little rocks around the seedling on the black plastic, it kept the plastic from flapping and damaging the seedlings. This does allow for a "couple" weeds to grow, but it's almost non existent, and still gives you the benefits of warming the soil, water retention, etc.. No matter how "tight" you get the plastic across the bed, when you cut those X's they are going to flap in the wind, so you need something localized to hold them down. Thanks for the ideas, I'll have to think about how I will secure them, as I really love the plastic.
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sinfonian
15 years ago
Drool! Fabulous!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!
engineeredgarden
15 years ago
looks fantastic, john. Thanks for posting the pics!
njmallu
15 years ago
John,
Your garden looks great.

I have a question for you - the vermiculite in the original Mel's mix was for improving the water retention of the soil. Since your garden is running on 100% compost, I am curious to know how often you water the beds. (For the original mix, Mel advocated once a week watering, IIRC.)

Thanks
Melissa Houser
15 years ago
I love seeing your garden from concept to reality! I did some pre-planning on mine, and really should do a new grid for what I'm going to plant at the end of August/beginning of September! :)
jbest123
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks all for the comments. I have another garden area i will be converting to SFG this Fall.

njmallu, The controller is set to water every 7th Day for 20 min.

John
engineeredgarden
15 years ago
Thanks for sharing the nice photos, John. It's nice to see pictures of some of the things i'll be growing later in the year - for the very first time.
medontdo
15 years ago
WOW so that's what the food i'm "trying" to grow looks like!!! LOL ummmm mine don't quite look like that, hmmmm..... LOL i can't wait!!!! tabor, my son (12) is building me 2 so far boxes, i think the measurements are 10x5 something like that. next will be to fill them in. we are so anxious!!! LOL i still have lots of winter sowing stuff that has to be placed into them. but next year i'm going to sow into place. i think that will turn out ok. (ya know, winter sow) i don't care for the jugs to well.
ohhhh ya, your gardens are soooo beautiful!! i'm easily sidetracked!! LOL ~Medo :')

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