I've been meaning to post about our garden for awhile now. This past week, everyone has been sick and that left me little time to post anything. However, everyone is fully recovered and I'm ready to sit down and tell you about our little endeavor.
We first heard about Square Foot Gardening from some friends at church. We had toyed with the idea of having a garden for years but didn't feel confident enough to take on a traditional garden. Jeff stays pretty busy and I was not ready to take on the task of weeding and watering all on my own. Upon recommendation, we purchased Mel Bartholomew's book and took to reading it. I jotted down some notes and a list of things we thought would be useful to our family. We then sat down and drew out a garden diagram to help us visualize what it would look like and how we would go about things. We bought some lumber and Jeff went about the business of tilling our 10x10 space.
Next, he built the frame for the garden.
I told him all of the things he was doing wrong. (LOL, just kidding but that's what it looks like I'm doing!)
We then divided the inside into 4x4 squares (roughly) and got the manure and top soil ready to put in.
Snapped a photo of my favorite man-kitty, Tumnus (I'm easily distracted when it comes to work! LOL!)
Mixed manure and top soil with the tilled up soil.
Sectioned each 4x4 square into 16-1x1 squares.
Planted the seeds and let Caroline go behind us and water.
Labeled everything and put out some moth balls to keep our cats out (They thought we had spent all day building them a giant litter box!)
The only thing we did differently is that we used existing soil mixed with manure and top soil. . We wanted to keep it simple and as cheap as possible so we didn't invest in the products the book recommended for a real, raised square foot garden. It seems to have worked well since we have cucumbers, okra, mesclun, and broccoli coming up. Most of the plants are still very immature and haven't produced veggies yet. As soon as they do, I'll post some pictures. In my opinion, the idea of square foot gardening is wonderful! You can create a weed free, easily maintainable garden with minimal labor. You can also use this method to make raised flower beds for your deck or porch. You can read more about it at the square foot gardening website. Mel has some lovely pictures of his raised flower beds that I would love to have around our house! That'll be a project for next year!
Have a great Friday!
9 comments:
I'm glad you shared that. I haven't had a chance to look that up since your earlier post, so I wasn't sure exactly what you had going on. Sounds like a wonderful project. If only our yard was big enough to hold that (if we did it now, Vader would destroy it!)
Looks good! :o) We had squash from our garden last night and it sure was good. I can't wait for the tomtaoes to start turning red! Y'all enjoy your goodies as they produce!!
Thank you so much for the wonderful baby wishes!! :o)
What a cool idea! I'm a little afraid of gardening, but this looks completely manageable. Can't wait to see pictures of the veggies!
This is so cool! I love how you included all the photos so I could see exactly what was going on :) Looks great and I hope you guys get tons of fresh veggies from your new garden!
Well isn't that just a cool idea. I've never heard of this before. We have very little space for a garden but somehow I am going to squeeze one in one day.
It looks great!!!
btw have you lost weight?
It looks great!!! I have a small raised bed and I think you will like working with that gardening style!
Kelli
That is so cool! I'm going to show that to my husband. I've never heard of that before. I look forward to the pictures!
You guys worked really hard! And it paid off! It looks great! My parent's used to plant a fairly big garden. But that one looks so easy!
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