Square Foot Gardening

Sandy's sister Linda Lonsky sent us a book last year called Square Foot Gardening, written by Mel Bartholomew. It described a new (to us) method of gardening whereby a garden is divided into squares instead of rows, and plants and seeds are planted in specific ways and amounts to yield the largest harvest for the smallest amount of work. Our previous gardening efforts have yielded less that great results. We followed the book and the updated advice from Mel's website. We built garden boxes, filled them up with a mixture of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite (the latest methods of this method of gardening advocate starting with a new soil mixture so you don't have to worry about your own) and planted the seeds. We water the gardens by hand every day, and are training all the crops to grow up if possible. This includes tomatoes, beans, and pumpkins. The only thing we had to add to the gardens was more squirrel proofing, as they like to uproot the plants and toss them aside, aparantly for fun.


Our Herb Garden



Annika's Garden. The tomatoes were staked and tied up shortly after this picture was taken.



The vegetable and fruit garden. This is the only garden with southern expose and it is doing very well. I can't wait to harvest my own corn! The metal structure is built from half inch pipes screwed together. Heavy twine is tied to this to allow for vertical growth. Next year we will probably put more gardens on this side of the house, but didn't want to overdo it this year. There is enough room for 40 square feet of garden if we keep to the recommended 2 foot depth, more than enough to raise vegetables for 5 people.