Square-ish Foot-ish Garden

This is a square foot gardening grid at its cheapest. Instead of building a frame, I used about 50 cents worth of materials I picked up at Home Depot - twine and some eye hooks.

28 squares just in that one bed. What to plant first?

Next, to build another climbing trellis. I may actually do 2 - one along the long, back side and one on the short end.

Looking Up

Hit up Home Depot for $10 worth of conduit pipe, pipe connectors, re-bar and netting, and ended up with this vertical gardening support. Pretty much followed the directions from "All New Square Foot Gardening," as best as I could remember them.

Everytime I hit that re-bar another inch into the ground, I held my breath hoping not to hit any utilities. Victory!

I'll be interested to see if it can hold up under the weight of my melons.

I just got supplies for one since I was sure to screw up the first one in one way or another. More to come though -- we are out of horizontal space so at this point the only way to go is up.

Don't really have a great before pic. This is the closest I can get:

The frame is now in the bed on the right. Previous frame was made of old tomato stakes, which is also what my square foot grid is at this point. That's next on the list. Well, maybe not next but it is on the list.

Like my current organic grass/weed killer? I'm planning to put the world's skinniest raised bed there and going to try to grow something using the fence as support. Sunflowers, maybe, though they might get so tall they shade the beds. Perhaps Zinnia or cucumber?

Red

Had to shell out $7 for tomatoes at the farmer's market this week. I've resisted buying any so far, knowing we have a backyard full of green ones on the verge. But who could resist an adorable four year old begging her mom for veggies? I only bought one pint, but then she ate half of it before we left the market, so I bought a second.

Soon after arriving home we found this:

They look even fancier on the vine with a few special effects.

Most are still green, but just as I predicted we should have a decent first harvest by July 4.

Per tradition, I planted everything entirely too close together and have already had to cull the herd. Some items were transplanted elsewhere and others were just thrown on the grown to wither as I silently screamed at myself for planting stupid things like turnips.

DONE. Well, with this part anyway.

(They are all even  lined up, the angles are just weird from above on the deck.)

Eventually grass will fill in (I did add seed), we'll make cute paths, or we'll just get some pigs to play in the mudhole. Not at the top of my to do list right now. If anything does grow, our lawn mower fits through the "aisles."

After, part 1.

Before

and

After-ish:

This is taking a very, very, very long time. Very. But I did move all that dirt PLUS the actual box by myself, which makes me feel like a total badass.

One down, one to go. (See that pesky little guy in the far left? He's moving too.) Luckily the second one is only 10" high, not 20", and doesn't have posts inside sticking another foot into the ground, so hopefully I can finish this project before August.

I'm already fantasizing about what else I can squeeze in there to make it look even better. A bench? A long, skinny raised bed or two? All of the above?

Much work remains to be done

Here's my new box.

Actually it doesn't look so bad; you almost can't tell it's not symmetrical. Pretty lined up with the fences too, but then you see the other problem. I've been digging out the old box (and soon his next-door neighbor too) to relocate them about 2 feet east but still haven't had enough daylight and strength to finish.

Today was spent driving to Spring Break camps, activities and playdates. (And then napping to recover.) So far I am unable to convince my four year old of the fun of doing things like relocating a half ton of dirt about 2 feet to the right. I am dying to get it done, but also know I can't really plant much for awhile, so I am trying to relax about the whole thing.

I envision eventually I can con someone into helping me make beautiful paths between the beds, but until then we're gonna stick with our current whatever-the-heck-grows-can-grow motif between the boxes. My only job is to make them wide enough to get a lawnmower through.

I'll be relocating the onions, which started as seeds last summer, went mostly dormant during winter and now are thriving. Looking into a lot of companion planting this year to maximize space. Planted several rows of carrot seeds today. I don't love carrots and don't even care if they end up edible, but I hear they're great for tomatoes. I can never remember which plants make the tomatoes taste better (basil?) and which keep away bugs (marigolds & carrots, I think) but I do know which ones are BFFs with tomatoes for whatever reason. And, for good reason, it's all about what's good for the tomatoes.

A farmer's work is never done

A few weeks ago our back fence blew over. I briefly considered not replacing it right away until my father reminded me bunnies et al would eat my vegetables. We had a new one 3 weeks later!

The new fence is shorter and lets in more light. (Let's say we wanted it that way, and not that we were too poor for another privacy fence. That's the ticket.) I'm hoping this means a little less shade in our backyard and more sun for our garden(s). We expanded our fence all the way to the property line, which opened up some space for another raised bed, right in the prime sunny spot of our yard!

Farmer Nacho helped me procure supplies, top soil, leaf gro, etc. from our favorite local garden center but was smart enough to flee town right after we unloaded it all. I went at the building alone in my garage, learning many lessons, most of all, I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN SHOP IN HIGH SCHOOL. Stupid other electives - what good are you to me now?

I had a couple of pieces of leftover wood I never got around to using last year. I recommend 10"x2"x8' for beds. (Yes, I probably did that in the wrong order. Figure it out.) You can make one long bed or do a nice 4'x4' bed too.

One piece of wood turned out to be warped pretty bad. Rather than stopping what I was doing and getting a new piece from Home Depot, I just though I could make it work. Due to this and many other misteps along the way, I've ended up with more of a 6.5'x4' bed that is slightly trapezoidal rather than the 8'x4' I had envisioned.

The frame is now in, but in order to leave enough room for a path, I had to put it pretty close to the old beds. This means I'm going to have to remove all the dirt from the other two beds and move them slightly, which I kind of needed to do anyway since the new fence shows just how crooked I put them in the first time.

The more I work, the more I realize needs to be done. I can't wait for the depressing part of the season to be over and the harvesting to begin!