Square Foot Gardening Thread

[Kassaundra]

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That will be a very interesting comparison.

 

[CoyoteMagic]

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Are you near Mushroom??!! (I don't know the real name of the place) Piles and Piles of Mushroom dirt and little Mushroom Shaped Huts that sell everything mushroom?!!

 

[ChickyLaura]

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Are you near Mushroom??!! (I don't know the real name of the place) Piles and Piles of Mushroom dirt and little Mushroom Shaped Huts that sell everything mushroom?!!

Hmm, not that I know of. There are piles of mushroom dirt outside of some of the mushroom houses that you can buy. Imagine all that manure and straw mixture, just begging to be mixed with peat moss! Ha ha! Seriously, though, I really can't wait to get started tomorrow.

I've gardened for years, but they've always been a mess by the time hot July rolls in. Weeds everywhere. Hopefully this year'll be different! I'll post pics tomorrow of the "before" and "after".

By the way, I live in town, but we own the lot adjacent to our home. I want to fit in as much as I can!

 

[CoyoteMagic]

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Are you near Mushroom??!! (I don't know the real name of the place) Piles and Piles of Mushroom dirt and little Mushroom Shaped Huts that sell everything mushroom?!!

Hmm, not that I know of. There are piles of mushroom dirt outside of some of the mushroom houses that you can buy. Imagine all that manure and straw mixture, just begging to be mixed with peat moss! Ha ha! Seriously, though, I really can't wait to get started tomorrow.

I've gardened for years, but they've always been a mess by the time hot July rolls in. Weeds everywhere. Hopefully this year'll be different! I'll post pics tomorrow of the "before" and "after".

By the way, I live in town, but we own the lot adjacent to our home. I want to fit in as much as I can!

Oh well, it was somewhere between Philly and Lancaster.

I know what you mean. We had 88 days straight of 90* + last summer. My garden was shot by July 4th.

 

[krcote]

Speaking of potatoes, we got ours in the other day. We did a 4 x 4 box each of Gold Rush Single Cert. and Red Norland Single Cert. The SFG book says 4/square foot- we just spread out what we had and it turned out to be close to that. We actually removed volume from the box down to just below ground level I think. We are storing it a short distance away in one of our empty compost bins. We will take from this to back-fill the green portion of the plants over time. This way, we wouldn't be so limited by the height of the boxes. I have seen folks do the opposite, and build an additional box and put it on top as the plants grow, just like tires. Significantly more costly, but very similar

 

[math ace]

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DANG!!! I even searched "square foot garden" before I started my own thread to be sure no one else had done the same! Sometimes I swear that freaking search thing is busted. I never seem to be able to find what I am looking for. Any who... I love your boxes! Will you be using grids? I can't get any of my things in until I am off work Wednesday. That darn snow yesterday put a crimp in my productivity!

I LIKE that you started this thread anyways. . . . Having pics of last years "old fashioned" garden to compare this years "SFG" to is an incredible bonus to this thread. . . I hope to follow your journey through the garden season this year and MAYBE chamge the way I do things next year.

 

[krcote]

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DANG!!! I even searched "square foot garden" before I started my own thread to be sure no one else had done the same! Sometimes I swear that freaking search thing is busted. I never seem to be able to find what I am looking for. Any who... I love your boxes! Will you be using grids? I can't get any of my things in until I am off work Wednesday. That darn snow yesterday put a crimp in my productivity!

I LIKE that you started this thread anyways. . . . Having pics of last years "old fashioned" garden to compare this years "SFG" to is an incredible bonus to this thread. . . I hope to follow your journey through the garden season this year and MAYBE chamge the way I do things next year.

math ace? Do I smell a challenge?

 

[krcote]

A few of the tricky fruits and veggies for the limited space gardener have always been squashes and melons because of their ginormous foliage spread. I have solved this issue by planting mine on the outermost portion of boxes. This will allow me to train the foliage OUT and OVER the side of the box. You must have large pathways between boxes if you want to try this. These plants are generally very forgiving of cutting back leaves that are over crowding other plants as well. Here are my seedlings.

 

[krcote]

A few other little projects that I am working on:
9 cuttings from my neighbor's very old, very neglected, apple tree. I do not know what kind of apple tree it is, but the apples are tasty! I have used rooting hormone on these to try and get them going. I have read that cuttings from very old, very neglected trees are the hardest to get to root. This is why I have done 9, in hopes I get at least 2 for my little orchard we are starting up in the front of the house. They are in full shade to get the cuttings thinking "Roots! Not Leaves!"

Secondly, my herbs. I grow my annual herbs in 2 large tubs outside my back door for easy access when cooking. In there now are basil, cilantro and dill seeds. I have my perennial herbs in the flower bed close by. So far they include chives and lemon thyme from plants. This year, I decided to try a type of cold frame. I planted seeds directly into the tubs and placed old windows on top to get the greenhouse effect. I have sprouts in record time!

 

[krcote]

I wanted to post a picture of my compost bins. I have read a lot on composting because I was new to it last year. I've decided to keep it simple. Boy can you get carried away! Last year I built the first bin on the left myself. 4 pallets in total. 3 sides screwed together with a front pallet on hinges for a door. Very fun to make because it comes together so fast. You have to be willing for the bin to come out less than perfect. They can be hard to line up right and you have to look for places to screw together that aren't cracked, etc. For the second 2, I LET my husband help with this year because he saw how much fun I had last year. We have yet to get hinges for the last one on the right. I am following the method of one bin per year. The one on the left we no longer add to. We are only putting stuff into the middle one. The last one is for next year. Right now it is just storage for the soil used to build up my potatoes over time. By year 3, the first bin should be ripe. I should mention, you can get pallets for free. ESPECIALLY if you happen to be female. ESPECIALLY if you arrive to a beer distributor with a large truck. ESPECIALLY if you bat your eyelashes and ask those nice men for some help filling the truck with pallets that they will be burning anyway