Square Foot Garden pt. 3

 

This is the current state of the square foot garden. I've made a few additions. I was using tomato cages I made in Michigan out of pvc, but I brought only 2. The trellis is official SFG but I had assumed it would be expensive to do and felt I'd spent enough on the boxes and mix. However, the electrical conduit, rebar, and nylon trellis roping was actually quite cheap.

 

 

I had a lovely purple pepper forming when it was suddenly gone. Apparently the abundant number of rabbits in the neighborhood started looking at my garden as a smorgasbord. I then added the rabbit fencing with the stakes at the corner. It is not SFG official.

 

I have five tomato plants in with one being a cherry tomato. I had planted a cherry tomato in a pot earlier but now realize it is a yellow tomato. In my mind tomatoes are meant to be red. I also have four pepper plants--a green, a yellow, and orange, and a purple. Two squares have beans (9 per square) and 6 squares have okra (1 per square).

 

I also added four zinnias as I thought they looked so nice at the nursery and I like the color.

 

Square Foot Gardening Pt. 2

The mix is mixed and placed in the boxes and the tomatoes and peppers are planted.

What I have learned.
1. "Mel's Mix" is sold pre-mixed at Home Depot. For the cost of the 3 items (peat moss, vermiculite, and compost), the time to mix, and the effort to mix, I think it is worth buying the pre-mix.
2. The book says to put the 3 items on a tarp and pull corner to corner to turn it over and get a good mix. This is heavy to do. I got it done, but for the second box I ended up turning a lot of it with a shovel.
3. There is a reason the book says to use a tarp. I used a plastic dropcloth and on the stony patio this ended up not working so well. It also ripped with the heaviness of the mix.
4. It was heavy to drag the mix to the box and try to get it in the boxes.
5. It would be better to put the grid on after filling with the mix.

Most important things I learned:
6. I'm all prepared to help others build and fill their boxes.
7. I had a lot of fun in the "dirt" today!

Square Foot Gardening Pt. 1

With a smaller back yard I am making a switch to gardening this year and trying the square foot gardening (SFG) method. I am not completed but wanted to share what I've done so far as I'm very excited about it.

Here are most of the supplies ready to go.

 



 Maybe not a conventional way of doing so but here I'm building one of two 4x4 boxes. I was working on it alone and wasn't sure of how to do it but this worked for me.

 



 This is one box completed. The author says if you don't have the grid it isn't really SFG.

Saturday I leveled out part of the yard, put down the landscape fabric, and placed both boxes.

The next step is to make the "soil" mix, but all of the items are dry so the book recommends not doing it on a windy day. Of course, now that I'm ready to mix it we are having 15-25 mile winds with higher gusts so am having to wait to mix it. I may end up mixing it in the garage but then that means making multiple trips to the backyard with 5 gallon buckets of the mix so not real excited about that.

More updates coming as the process continues.

Summer Project

During one of the hottest weeks of the sumer I spent two evenings cutting 1/2" pvc into 18", 12", and 6" pieces. There are also 16 packages of 1/2" Ts as well.

All of those parts fit together to make these:

I got so tired of year after year having our wire tomato cages fall over that I designed my own. Our tomatoes haven't been the best this year, but we had enough for at least one day of canning salsa. The nice thing is we can leave these out all winter.

An designer or engineer would not like my design: 30 pieces of pvc with 20 connecting Ts.

Garden Whoas

If it's not too hot and I have a free evening to work in the garden, it's raining. If it's not raining, it's too beastly hot or I'm busy with something else. Such is my life.

Miscellaneous Saturday Notes

1. I turned on the AC today--too much humidity this morning and I really don't want to pull in all the allergen with the attic fan. And after all, it is May 1!

2. Why if you have an old hose reel and and an old hose for sale at a yard sale would you not entertain a lowball offer that would come up instead of holding out with, "Those are real expensive at the store." Yes, I know. That's why I'm trying to buy one at your yard sale where everything else is priced .10 and .25. Good luck selling that opened can of motor oil for .25.

2b. I went back later and offered twice what I had offered and the lady took it. I don't think she remembered me or she would've held out for that $13 I'm thinking.

3. Good news and hallelujah!!! Penn Station is in Kalamazoo!!! Guess where I'm going to lunch tomorrow? Jayne from Handbells--want to go?

4. We are buying supplies to fix our chicken tractor for this year's chicks. Over the winter the middle support gave way so Renae, the engineer of our chicken operation, has devised a new plan.

5. We've enjoyed 3 servings each of fresh asparagus from our garden. Mmmm, good. (Yes, Mary, mmmm is a word. It's in a Campbell's soup commercial.)

6. Next Saturday I have my first real guests to my new patio set. (If Renae doesn't count.)

Garden Emotions

This was an evening of mixed emotions. I love the garden but it's fall, and I'm ready to be done with it. Tonight after dinner Renae and I went out to pull out tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash, and the worst--corn. We cut some to use for decorating but most got pulled up to go on the compost pile. We laughed when I said, "And to think we were so excited when we saw the first corn stalks pushing through the soil in early June!"

We put the gazing ball, the "Rhoda" figurine (Renae thought it looked like me so she bought it for my flower garden), and the garden plaque into the barn.

I may Rhoda-till the garden on Saturday or it may wait until spring. . .I think I'm finished with this year's garden.

First Summer Garden Report

This is the garden in its current state. In front you can see the tomatoes, to the left are the peppers which aren't as green as I'd like them to be. To the left of the peppers is a row of potatoes which are looking really good above the ground, to the left a row of onions, a first year attempt for us, and then you really can't see but the beans are coming up and in the middle left you can barely see the squash. And then you can see the mass of raspberry bushes. On the other side of the raspberry bushes, the corn is just popping up.

We are starting to get strawberries, the asparagus is over, and like other years we have some rhubarb to supplement what we buy at a roadside stand.



This is our new project this year after two evenings of working on it; there is more work to do. Any ideas on what it is?

First Stawberries

Hoo-yah!!! Yesterday I picked two strawberries--one for Renae and one for me. Tonight I picked five--Renae got three and I took two. These are the first of the season and with the many blooms we should have many, many more in the next 3-4 weeks!

Garden

The garden is essentially done. Friday night was our first freeze so yesterday we picked the rest of the tomatoes. I dug the potatoes, but something went wrong and I found only about 10-12 small red potatoes. Maybe we waited too long to dig them, but we had been told we could leave them as long as we wanted. The only thing left is to pick the popcorn and hang it to dry. We'll do that next weekend.

The garden overall was not a success this year although at the end we did get quite a few tomatoes and some peppers to make quite a bit of salsa. We also had quite a few beans. The potatoes, broccoli, squash, and okra however never really made.

Maybe next year we should back off some on the garden--it's a lot of work.

The final garden report will come in a few weeks regarding how the popcorn is.

Oh Charles, The Children Will Have Fruit This Winter!!!

This is the result of Renae's and my work last night. We canned 13 quarts of pears. Renae has a pear tree in her yard that has produced pears every other year. This year she learned that you have to pick off half the blooms each year to get the tree to produce every year.

This is the first time to can pears so we won't win any awards for presentation, but the pears are in the jars, canned, and all the lids popped.

Tonight's job is to mop my kitchen floor and scrub the counters.

Mmm, good carrots

Over the weekend we harvested carrots anticipating putting some in the fair (but that's another post). Last night I finally got the carrots cleaned up and sliced some for a snack today. Renae is not a big carrot eater, but we both agreed that fresh garden carrots are really good. Typically I've only liked the baby carrots in the grocery store, but these were as good or better. I almost wish I hadn't frozen as many as I did last night so that I could snack on more. We're pretty sure we'll find more if we dig more.

We actually found them rather hard to get out of the ground and broke several. I also learned to not plant them quite so close together as we have some very misshaped carrots with 2-3 growing together.

The next big garden chore is to dig potatoes but we may let that go another couple of weeks.

The tomatoes are just now getting ripe so I also have some cherry tomatoes to snack on today as well. The peppers are getting bigger so that means salsa is just around the corner!

Bean Harvest

This is the result of my first bean picking this year and an updated picture of the garden. I'm working on the weeds, but it's a never ending battle. The raspberries keep coming. And, I "weeded" two carrots last night. It appears we could be picking them.





The garden picture is taken as it is getting dark so it actually looks better in person. The tomatoes are coming along but not as nicely as previous year. The beans are to the right; you can definitely tell which plants made it on the first, second, or third planting. The popcorn is to the right of the beans. About half of it came in. Behind those three is peppers, lettuce, carrots and potatoes that you cannot see. The raspberry bushes are at the back of the picture. Behind that is the squash and cantaloupe. Last night I decided that you just cannot grow okra in Michigan. My plants are only about 6" high and it's almost the end of July!

Mmmm, raspberries

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings I picked a total of almost 3 quarts of raspberries from the garden.

Today I passed a house selling fresh picked raspberries for $3/pint. If I do the math correctly (which is highly suspect), I would say I picked almost $18 worth of raspberries. The raspberry bushes have been in the garden for quite a few years so there is no yearly cost for seed or plants, we don’t weed the bushes so there’s no work there, and all we do is pick the berries if the birds and Japanese beetles don’t beat us to them.

Faith is. . .

Faith is putting big tomato cages around tomato plants that stick about two inches out of the ground.

Everything is planted but not pictures this week. I'm too tired to move after planting everything and mowing my friend's 3 acre yard.

Miscellaneous

Today I was a research subject. I got to sit in a chair for 1/2 hour and basically give my opinion of the seat every five minutes based on the way I adjusted it. Not bad for a Target gift card! The best part was I got to read USA Today for the time--well while I wasn't talking to the researcher who I've gotten to know over the last year.

To continue my customer service rant(s): The teller at the bank today said my name correctly--woo-hoo!

Tomorrow I begin a stint of five days of vacation, two weekends, and a holiday with two days of work mixed into the middle. I plan to get lots and lots of work around my house done. I also have a work project for a friend as well as getting the garden planted on Saturday.

This year we are going to plant at least two tomatoes upside down. Has anyone done this and what were your results?

First picture of the garden. I picked some rhubarb on Saturday and combined it with some from a stand to make rhubarb crisp on Saturday. The garden is nicely tilled and ready to be planted next weekend. Beside the rhubarb is asparagus. You can kind of see the stalks. The bushes on the right of the picture are raspberries. I'd like to move them to the other side of the yard and let them expand as they break of the garden. On the back right side of the garden you can see three slim green stakes. Those are the rows of potatoes and one of lettuce. The carrots are on this side of the raspberries. The broccoli is on the right side of the asparagus but you can't really make out those plants.

This is my flower garden near the pond at Renae's. Originally it was about 3/5'x6' and rectangular. It looked like a grave. Last year I expanded it to about 9x20. I don't know a lot about perennials, and I have a lot to learn. This is a trial and error project. The little figurine is named Rhoda. That was Renae's gift my first year. She also bought the looking ball at Goodwill and the birdhouse at an auction. I'll get a picture of the plaque (which used to be at the head of the garden until I decided it looked like a gravestone) later when there is more color around it.

My Annual Garden Joke

Last night I rhoda-tilled the garden.

I also planted some early stuff like potatoes, broccoli, carrots, and lettuce. The plan for the rest of the garden includes corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, kale, okra, muskmelon, winter squash. And the new item for this year (besides carrots), drum roll please. . .. . . . popcorn.

Why can broccoli go in now, but kale must wait until May 15?

The kale is for Renae; the okra is for me.

The tomatoes, peppers, and corn will all go into our homemade salsa.

I'm going to try to post pictures of the garden throughout the summer.

We are actually going to have some decent rhubarb this year although it still isn’t turning a nice red. According to my cousin Cleve, we need lots of manure. I guess it have to wait until next year unless it goes on in the fall.