Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Square Foot Gardening

We started a garden a couple of weeks ago...Memorial Day, to be exact. John read a book called "Square Foot Gardening" and went out and bought all the materials...and we went from there.

First Step: Construct Box

4 2x6s, and one 4x4 piece of plywood for the bottom. Numerous brackets. It was John's idea to put the boxes on wheels so that they would not take up any permanent space in our yard. Ingenious.

Step 2: Construct Grid


Step 3: Add soil


We mixed equal parts of manure, compost, peat moss, and vermiculite...6 inches worth.

Step 4: Nail Down the Grid


Wow, that's pretty.

Step 5: Plant Stuff

Eggplant, corn, chard, tomatoes, sunflowers, broccoli, green beans...Here we go!!!

Oh yeah, we made 3 boxes. John and I made the first one together, then the two of us each made one. They roll around so nicely. I'm so proud of my Gardening Johnon!

5 comments:

emily said...

wheels??!!!!! that's amazing--especially if you realize the spot you chose isn't as sunny as you hoped. way to spank the pants off of our attempt at square footing! next year i am definitely filling our box up to the top. this year i made a similar mixture to yours, without the vermiculahoooahhaaa, which i can't find, so i used common dirt. and i got too lazy to fill it, since i made our box too big. but hey, mark says that's enough excuses. we're still growing plants though--ever sowing. name that hymn.

anyway, very impressed. do you really like eggplant?

Julia Harps said...

keep us posted. I wanna see how it looks when plants are big. that is so cool.

Lindsay said...

Awesome idea! How long did it take to make each one and how much did all the materials cost?

The Grimmers said...

Love the wheels, great thinking!! Steven just took out some trees in our backyard so we can plant a garden- fun stuff!!

Gary and Debbie Rex said...

Hi Aimee! I finally found your blog - I know I could have just clicked through from your comments, but I'm not that quick, sometimes... :) Love the garden boxes - our current garden area is quite deteriorated, so I think we're doing the boxes next year. Fun tip about the wheels - I think we may just have to copy!