Square Foot Gardening Anyone? (vegetables, worms, backyard, frost)

[mbmouse]

Originally Posted by younglisa7

Welcome. The people here have some great ideas and NRG is doing a great job of visuals. He is doing his garden "by the book" the newest book.

According to the book the recommended material size is:
1 x 6 lumber or
2 x 6 for a sturdier garden

You should be fine with 2 x 8. I think the mix will be about 6 inches deep. Two inches of each of the three ingredients mixed up.

Rocks should work fine. One thing that is stressed in the book is to mark off 1 x 1 blocks using wood, twine, or whatever you have. I will be using some of the electric fence that we have leftover from keeping the cows out, lol.

Got that! Thanks, have huge roll of heavy twine already at the waiting.
I found Mize Farm and Garden stores here have the coarse vermiculite for 18.95 per 4 cubic ft bag, so good there. I am just not sure what to use for the compost part. I am looking at both mushroom compost and black Angus manure. It might come down to just which one is cheaper as my compost container in my back yard isn't done "cooking" yet as I used the whole container last year and refilled.

[ylisa7]

Originally Posted by mbmouse

Got that! Thanks, have huge roll of heavy twine already at the waiting.
I found Mize Farm and Garden stores here have the coarse vermiculite for 18.95 per 4 cubic ft bag, so good there. I am just not sure what to use for the compost part. I am looking at both mushroom compost and black Angus manure. It might come down to just which one is cheaper as my compost container in my back yard isn't done "cooking" yet as I used the whole container last year and refilled.

The book recommends using a "variety" of different composts. I'm going to use different ones in hopes that the garden will be very healthy. I can give you lots of cow manure, lol.

[ylisa7]

I picked up my vermiculite and peat moss today. I got coarse vermiculite for $13.95 for a 4 cubic foot bag. Woo hoo my local farm supply scored for me. Next I have to figure out different kinds of mulch and let my farm supply know what to order. It's almost time. I had "Spring Fever" today. Oh yeah and I found 8 foot lenghths of rebar in the barn. They will be perfect for the netting/trellises.

[swbtoo]

What's "rebar" ?

[ylisa7]

Rebar is thin, about 1/2" round, steel(I think) bars. They are usually used for concrete pouring. Rebar was recommended in the SFG book to use for the growing(vine) plants. Pound 2 into the ground, connect another bar across the top to connect to the ones in the ground and then add netting for the plants to grow on.

I was happy to see we saved some.

This is what rebar looks like. It comes in all different lengths. Click on the link and scroll down to the second picture. The rebar is sticking out of the concrete.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/tenne...nnessee-3.html

[swbtoo]

Originally Posted by younglisa7

Rebar is thin, about 1/2" round, steel(I think) bars. They are usually used for concrete pouring. Rebar was recommended in the SFG book to use for the growing(vine) plants. Pound 2 into the ground, connect another bar across the top to connect to the ones in the ground and then add netting for the plants to grow on.

I was happy to see we saved some.

This is what rebar looks like. It comes in all different lengths. Click on the link and scroll down to the second picture. The rebar is sticking out of the concrete.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/tenne...nnessee-3.html

Thanks so much for that link! (Incidentally, I found that thread very interesting! Perhaps I was meant to "stumble upon it" this way! I'm glad I asked about rebar. (I've used up my reps for you, so will have to wait).

[North_Raleigh_Guy]

I planted some onion set and romaine lettuce in my square foot garden yesterday.

Onion Sets


Romaine Lettuce

[ylisa7]

NRG- I am so jealous. You get to have so much fun before I can even start. Keep the pics coming. Love it and thanks.

[Ode]

Originally Posted by younglisa7

Here is my garden plan according to the SFG directions. I will have 3 trellises on the north side to let those veggies climb.



This is the official site for Square Foot Gardening. I think it sounds great for a beginner. We'll see.

The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author

I like to use containers for squash, tomatoes, and peppers. The 5 gallon buckets you get from home improvement places work just fine, and I have also used empty kitty litter buckets given to me by my daughter. I just cut a few holes in the bottoms for drainage, then set the buckets on the lids. This method keeps the spreaders like squash from invading the sun space in your garden, and you can put them anywhere! Just use the same soil that you use for the planting beds.

It especially makes growing anything that climbs easy because you can just put a narrow trellis in each bucket when you do your planting.And if it turns out you need a bit more space between plants that are growing like crazy, it is a lot easier to scoot over a bucket than to heavily prune back a plant that could be left alone to produce a lot of fruit! And the shorter plants will thank you for letting more sunshine into their leaves.

You might want to look into drip emitters for watering, they are not too expensive and are really easy to set up especially for anyone as handy as you and your hubby. You don't get a lot of the fungus issues that can come from traditional watering, since the water goes right to the soil instead of the leaves. But mainly I got them because I was lazy and didn't want to have to water.

[ylisa7]

Ode- Great idea. How deep is the soil in the 5 gallon buckets? Do you plant 1 plant per bucket? This sounds like something for my stepdaughter. She has a sloped yard which would be really hard to garden but she has a great deck.

Thanks
Lisa