For the past two years, I have planted a vegetable garden in my backyard using the old-fashion, mounded rows method. I'd start by tilling an area of roughly 50 feet by 30 feet. That's 1,500 square feet!
I raked up many long rows and planted away.
As you can imagine, A LOT of weeds can grow in 1,500 square feet!
Besides the weeds, another con of planting with this method is the drainage when it rains.
So to combat the weeds, I laid down rolls of weeds barrier.
But this still got muddy and weeds still came up on the rows. Enter straw! (Notice the metal T post at the row ends. This keeps the garden hose from damaging the plants when you water.)
This garden was fun but really too much work was required.
So I started researching other gardening methods and it wasn't long before I found The Square Foot Gardening Method by Mel Bartholomew.
This book, along with many other online testimonials, quickly convinced me to use this method and to use "raised beds". Why raised beds? Lots of reasons:
1. With the dirt elevated from the ground it warms up quicker, thus you can plant sooner.
2. You don't step in the raised beds therefore the soil stays much looser and the plants like that.
3. It helps with weed control.
4. Water drains better (less root rot)
5. It looks neater
6. Water, fertilizer, compost, mulch, etc. can be applied more carefully
7. You don't have to bend over as far, etc.
8. Many other reasons
So now I know "how" to put it together. But what do I want to grow?
It's always a good idea to grow what you like to eat. That way you'll be more excited to be in the garden and more motivated to harvest your garden.
This is my list for 2013:
Arugala
Asparagus (Jersey Knight)
Basil (Aton)
Beets (Detriot Dark Red)
Blackberry (Triple Crown, Navaho)
Blueberry (Jersey, Premier, Patriot and Brightwell)
Bok Choy
Broccoli
Cantaloupe (Honey Rock)
Carrots (Scarlet Nantes)
Cauliflower
Celery
Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum)
Collards (Georgia)
Cucumber (Sweet Burpee Hybrid)
Garlic
Gourds (Large Bottle)
Green Bell Pepper (Big Dipper)
Green onion (Evergreen Long White Bunching)
Jalapeños (Early)
Kale (Lacinato)
Kale (Red Russian)
Lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson)
Lettuce (Giant Caesar)
Lettuce (Red & Green Romaine Blend)
Mesclun (Sweet Salad Mix)
Mint
Mustard Greens (Tendergreen)
Parsley (Single Italian Plain-Leafed)
Pumpkin (Halloween Mix)
Pumpkin (Triple Treat)
Pumpkins (First Prize Hybrid)
Rainbow Chard
Raspberry (Heritage)
Red Bell Pepper (California Wonder)
Red onion (Red Baron)
Spinach (Bloomsdale Long-Standing)
Squash (Early Summer Crookneck)
Squash (Early Prolific Straightneck)
Strawberry (Earliglow)
Sunflower (Citrus)
Sunflower (Skyscrapper)
Sunflower (Mammoth)
Sunflowers (Starburst Aura Hybrid)
Sweet potatoes
Swiss chard (Ruby Red)
Tomatoes (Red Cherry, Whopper, Champion, Beefsteak, Beefy Boy)
Watermelon (Allsweet)
Watermelon (Bush Sugar Baby)
Yellow onion (Stuttgarter)
Zucchini
I'm adding a few new things this year while saying goodbye to corn, banana peppers, okra and peanuts.
This list may seem like a lot but I'm trying for an all vegetarian diet these days. I'm not there yet. And I like to bring food to my family and coworkers and I need enough to barter with the lady two streets over for fresh eggs! Not to mention I want to start canning and making my own salsa. I bought all of that equipment last season but never got around to it. Plus I love juicing and I go through lots of organic produce from the store already. Here's my juicer.
I had just made a homemade V8 with these ingredients
the leftover fiber or pulp from this goes into the compost.
With the Square Foot method, you plant something in each square foot of the bed. In most cases you can plant multiple things per square foot. See chart below.
Here's an example of a 4x4 foot square foot garden
My next step was to design my beds. I figured I'll need 13 beds for all of the things I want to grow. I checked my companion planting chart to see what plants work well together (some plants don't like to be near each other.)
and came up with this for the backyard.
Here's each bed in more detail
Now that I have my designs, it's off to Lowe's for wood. I'm building 12 4'x4' beds for the back yard and 4 2'x4' beds for the front yard. Plus one 3'x16'. So I need 278 feet of boards.
Thankfully Lowe's will cut your lumber there. That makes it easier to store in my garage. And if you ask nicely, they'll give you the sawdust which is great for adding to your compost or directly to your garden to lower the pH.
I built all of the beds inside my house because it was cold and snowing outside.
Now to retill my old garden area for three reasons:
1. To chop up and kill off all the stuff growing there.
2. To get the soil loosened again after walking on it all winter.
3. To get it flat for the beds.
You can see by the picture below that the old rows are still evident.
Now it's retilled and flat and I've laid out my boxes with 4 feet in between each bed. Plenty of room to maneuver in between (even if something grows over).
Now to fill it with 7 yards of Ultra Soil (finely screened topsoil, compost, and Pine Bark Fines). The Square Foot Gardening book says to fill the beds with Mel's Mix (1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite) but for as many beds as I'm doing, that was going to cost a fortune. Over $1,000!
To divide up a bed into sections, I used some thin plastic material I had leftover from an earlier project. This will keep invasive plants like asparagus and mint from spreading into unwanted places. Each bed is 1 foot deep, placed on twice tilled soil in case some roots want to go deeper. I thought about attaching 1/2" hardware cloth to the bottoms so burrowing critters like moles don't move in and eat my roots. But that would have been laborious and costly so I opted for no bottoms.
The boards are 2" thick and made from untreated pine. Untreated lumber is important so chemicals don't leach into your growing medium and then into your crops. My garden is 100% organic. Redwood and cedar are the prefered types of wood but this was not easy to come by in my city.
The long 3'x16' bed in back has my blueberry bushes. Each is a different variety: Jersey, Premier, Patriot and Brightwell. It's recommended that you plant at least two different varieties of blueberries.
The next bed has 16 strawberries. 1 plant per square foot.
I also planted a whole bed of raspberries and a whole bed of blackberries.
Finished all of the grids in the beds I'll be square foot gardening in and spread pine bark mulch in the blueberry bed. This will help with weeds and keep the acidity pH perfect for blueberries. They prefer 4.8 to 5.2 range.
That's it as of March 23. I'm just waiting on the soil temp to reach 45 degrees so I can plant some cool weather crops.
In 2011, my vining crops like pumpkins, watermelon, cucumbers and cantaloupe, took over everything. It was impossible not to walk on them. I had 30 foot vines creeping down every row. So in 2012 I decided to plant the vining crops separately away from the main garden so they could sprawl freely into the yard.
But these never took off because of poor light and poor soil.
I still wanted to grow these vining crops because they are some of my favorite things to grow. So I figured since I live in the county and my neighborhood doesn't have Homeowners Association rules, I'd just plant in my front yard because it gets the best sun anyway. Sorry neighbors, grow food, not lawns!
So I tilled a nice strip in the front yard. It's hard to tell from this picture which is dirt and what is yard. Everything was brown. June 2012 was the hottest June on record in middle Tennessee and the day I tilled it was 108!
and grew
and grew
and grew
and then, the squash bugs moved in and killed every single pumpkin :(
Frustrated with the bugs and the vines taking over the yard (I had to move each vine and pumpkin every time I mowed!), I went back to the drawing board.
That's when I discovered vertical gardening. This takes care of all my problems. So this year, 2013, I'm growing all vining crops vertically up seven foot tall metal mesh trellis's. No more sprawling in the yard. Getting the plant and fruit off the ground will take care of my squash bug problem too. The fruits will form more naturally since its full weight will not be on the ground. No discoloration on the bottoms. No rotting from being too wet on the ground. Increased air flow around the plant will improve its overall health. I have not yet built the trellis's so pictures are still to come but I am growing watermelon, pumpkin, gourds and cantaloupe all vertically this year! You're probably thinking, how will the vine support the weight of a 30 lb pumpkin, or a 15 lb watermelon? The answer is that the vine will actually support that weight up to about 15 pounds. After that, you need to attach little "slings" or "hammocks" to the trellis to support the weight of the hanging fruit. You can use things like panty hose to make the slings.
Each of the four above mentioned plants will be grown in the front yard this year, in their own bed, with their own trellis. These beds will be 2 feet x 4 feet, 1 foot deep. I've been killing off the grass where the beds will go for about 3 weeks now.
Last year I also grew some gourds in the front yard.
I'll be growing more gourds this year. I want to make birdhouses out of them for my yard and maybe to sell down the road.
Here was a fun project that turned out well. I tilled up an area of my yard, raked it flat, sprinkled an entire 5 pound bag of wildflower seeds down and
keep it moist and viola!
