Anyone have a square foot garden?

[galanie]

Not a great picture, but here's my newest bed with shallots, spinach, and elephant garlic in it.

I wouldn't put vermiculite in a soil mix. I have a bed that it was used to create 20 years ago and the soil in that thing is horrible now. I just use aged horse manure and a bag or two of other manures, a bag of vegetable garden mix and peat moss. You can use regular garden soil too, but the problem with it is that it is full of weed seeds. If you use only prepared mixes/manure/peat then you'll start out with a weed free mix.

As you can see in the picture, I put cages over my garden to keep the squirrels and chickens out. We have so many squirrels here, they dig everywhere constantly and love to dig up those tender plants in search of something that is not even there. Argh I hate squirrels. Anyway, I make a square of pvc pipe and ziptie 48" chicken wire to it, then bring the top of the wire together and ziptie the top shut. If I'll be growing tall plants like tomatoes, then I have a portable fence made with pvc frames and netting that I put around it.

This bed is of course 4x4 but I have four others that are 4x8. As long as you can get to all sides, there's no problem at all getting to everything. I've been gardening in a modified square foot method for 20 years, starting in the 80's when the Square Foot Gardening book first came out. It works well if you have lots and lots of compost and manure in there but if not, the plants really need more space. I adjust the spacing depending on the condition of the soil and how much organic matter is in it.

PS - the wooden cross thing in the picture is my measuring device. Each arm is exactly 12 inches. This way I don't have to have a permanent grid in my garden which gets in the way.

 

[ChickyLaura]

Great! Thanks a lot for posting the picture and the info. I was wondering about the vermiculite, and I appreciate your input. I am going to price everything today to see how much more I need to shell out! Ha ha! I have just been overrun with weeds, but for some reason I kept trying the same thing every year.

I can't believe how green your garden is already! We have nothing but brown here. Ugh. Can't wait for spring!

 

[Urbanfarmerkc]

I love, love, love mine... We have hard clay here and I had tried everything in my power to get the soil amended so I could have a good garden and finally after several years just threw my hands up. A friend of mine had 4 SFGs and she outproduced my large ground garden almost 3 to 1. Really ticked me off. So I build 25 SFG in the garden space and I grew so much produce I didn't know what to do with it all. LOL

Problems I had: Grass between the rows was and is a problem. I didn't get it mowed fast enough and the seeds got into my beds. BIG FAT UGLY problem. I now put my geese in the garden with cages around my SFGs and let them manage the grass. MUCH better plan! I also let the geese have at it all spring and they pull the tiny grass up for me till I'm ready to use the garden spot.

I also let my chickens run through the rows as they eat bugs.

Squash, is an issue if you have squash bugs. I am all organic on my gardens so I put my squash garden outside the garden fence and I put build them the same way as the others and then put the chicken wire on top of the ground. I cut a hole big enough for the squash then I let the chickens pick the bugs off the plants for me. Free protein for birds and they don't scratch the plants out of the ground. A small warning though, the chickens will also eat the squash so you have to be clever on how to manage that. I solve the problem by managing my birds. I let them out only intermittently and try to harvest before I do. It is a trade system. They get some of my squash and I get free labor.

Green beans didn't do well in mine. I also had problems with other crops but tomatoes LOVED mine and peppers love mine. No luck with water melon or pumpkins. Corn is really unhappy in these boxes (I've read other people have had this same problem). I had a lot of luck with sweet potatoes and peas. BEAUTIFUL carrots but I used the smaller version so they had plenty room to grow. I suggest you also incorporate vertical gardening so you can avoid the head aches of having plants on the ground.
Good luck!

 

[ChickyLaura]

OK, thanks! I'm getting plenty of ideas, here!!! I made up a plan of everything, but then realized that I need 8 vertical trellis' made. I thought, "what the heck am I doing", and told my DH. He said he didn't mind making 8 trellis', and as a matter of fact he just happens to have a bunch of conduit in the garage that he could use. OK, so I guess I'm going to be doing my vining plants!

I was wondering about the corn in these boxes, but I'm not planning on planting any of that this year. We don't have good luck with corn. I was also thinking that the carrots would need to be a "stubbier" variety.

I'm thinking of putting pole beans outside of the SFG and making teepee's out of them so the kids can play in them - sort of a novelty. I've always wanted to try it. I plan on putting lots of straw on the ground to try to keep the weeds away, or mulch would work too.

 

[galanie]

Due to our soil, we never grow carrots that get much longer than around 5" but I've grown those in raised beds and they did very well, even with very close spacing such as the square foot way. I'll have to agree with corn not doing that well. It really needs lots of space however you grow it. And in larger clumps than 4' x 4' for pollination. It doesn't even do that well in a 4' x 8' spot.

 

[FarmerVal]

We're getting to start our square foot garden. We're starting out with two 4'x4' beds. I wanted to start of sort of small. We started playing around with some gardening last year, but this year we're jumping in! We still need to fill the beds with soil. Once all is done, I will post some pictures!

We'll be planting some elephant garlic in our beds too... My husband is a garlic fanatic!

 

[galanie]

Quote:
Grats on the new garden! Starting this way, you'll be hooked. When people start a traditional garden they often don't do as well and are discouraged by that and the weeds.

Oh and I'm a garlic fanatic too! Can't ever have too much garlic around my house.

 

[FarmerVal]

Quote:
Grats on the new garden! Starting this way, you'll be hooked. When people start a traditional garden they often don't do as well and are discouraged by that and the weeds.

Oh and I'm a garlic fanatic too! Can't ever have too much garlic around my house.

Thanks! I'm so excited to get started! My yard is full of nothing but rocks here in Middle Tennessee... We bought the property in hopes to raise a few animals and garden. Once we got our land cleared I was EXTREMELY upset to find that our backyard was nothing but rock. Even where it looks like there is no rock, if you dig a couple inches-- you will hit rock

So needless to say, I was pretty darn excited to come across Square Foot Gardening! I've been researching it for about a year now and can't wait to get started. I just recently came across this pretty helpful blog... http://mysquarefootgarden.net Not sure if anyone has heard of this site, but I've found it to be pretty helpful. Especially for a newbie gardener like myself

 

[FarmerVal]

Quote:
There is this really awesome book called "Roots Shoots Buckets and Boots" and it's all about gardening with kids. There are some really cool projects in there-- including Tee-Pee vine type projects and a Sunflower House. We're going to try the Sunflower House this year. I've already got all of my seeds, just waiting for the darn cold weather to go away...

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

In our last house, I kept up a blog detailing what I did in our "backyard grocery garden" ... lots of raised beds, containers, potatoes in tires, plastic kiddie pools, and more. (Check it out: http://backyardgrocerygardening.blogspot.com/ ... use the search or label functions). I even did corn as part of a 3-sisters in raised beds that year and boy howdy did we get corn, green beans, and winter squash!

I don't use that "mel's mix" concoction ... I use whatever I have on hand. We moved to this new house last year and the soil is HORRIBLE. Should be better by next year with all the goat and chicken poo we're "making" but meanwhile, this year, it's still containers, raised beds, kiddie pools, and so on. I've already got seedlings in my windows for tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, and more. And even tho we haven't built the raised beds yet, I'm planning them out!

Feel free to ask me anything.