What We Love Most About Square Foot Gardening

We really do like square foot gardening, really.  We get so excited to see new growth and the beginnings of tiny vegetables forming.  The peas dont even make it in the house theyre so good and, yesterday, I lopped off our first zucchini and threw it right on the grill.  Its just a lot slower than growing in aquaponics and we are not the most patient people you will ever meet.  But Im pretty sure weve found the best outdoor gardening option for our family.

Why?  The soil mixture retains water like a sponge.  And I have not had to weed my gardens.  Not once yet.  To me, its a miracle.  I cannot tell you how many gardens weve tried to grow in the past that ended up overrun with weeds and dried up when we went on family vacations.

Before watching my video (riddled with the background noise of dogs and children), Id like to share a few things about us:

1.  We have a small yard in a small subdivision.  It gets even smaller when trying to find a place that gets full-sun all day, our options were very limited.

2.  We have a horrible track record when it comes to gardening.  A few years ago (and at a different house), we spent hundreds of dollars starting a garden and our only harvest was a few measly carrots that looked like thumbs. 

We sincerely hope that this encourages all of you out there to try gardening.  Dont let living in a subdivision, past failures, or lack of time hold you back.  You CAN grow your own food!





This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, Natural Living Monday, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, The HomeAcre Hop, Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop

Read more

What is Square Foot Gardening A Brief Overview

Our little homestead is located in a suburban subdivision in southeastern Michigan.  That basically means we have a short growing season and barely anywhere ideal to plant a conventional garden.  Most of our backyard is taken up by our pool and the septic field.  Sooooooo, raised beds it is.  But even better than that, square foot raised garden beds.  Why, you ask?  Here is some information that caught our attention and sold us on the idea to be square foot farmers.


Square Foot Gardening is very intensive.  You can plant more veggies in a smaller space than in a conventional garden.  There is also little weeding (yay!) and because the special soil mixure retains water extremely well, we have less of a chance of killing our plants (we need all the help we can get).


Here are the key elements to square foot gardening:


1.  Raised Beds:  Garden box frames should be no wider than 4 feet x any length, and 6 to 8 inches deep.  We opted for 3 x 6 raised beds.  Todd built ours using free pallet wood, click here to learn more about that process. 

2.  Special Soil Mixture (Mels Mix): 

1/3 coarse vermiculite
1/3 peat moss
1/3 blended compost  (your backyard compost pile is the best option for blended compost, otherwise, you have to obtain several different forms of compost)


3.  The Grid

1 foot by 1 foot grid and must be permanent.  On top of each frame place a permanent grid that divides the box into one foot squares. The grid is the unique feature that makes the whole system work so well.

4:  Plant Spacing:  Depending on the mature size of the plant, grow 1, 4, 9, or 16 equally spaced plants per square foot. Choose fruits and veggies that make sense for your family and for the intensive planting style of the Square Foot Garden.

Here is a great resource for knowing how many plants to plant per square.  Numbers will vary slightly depending on which website you use.
http://plantandplate.com/p-downloads/PlantandPlate-SFG-planner.pdf


TIPS

Here are a few tips that really helped me when planning and planting our gardens:

1.  Plan out your garden first on paper.  I planned out our two beds on this piece of paper. 

This helped me determine how many seeds to buy and start indoors.  Which leads me to the next tip,

2.  Start your seeds indoors, especially if you have a short growing season.  We also got a great jump-start on our tomato plants by using the cloned clippings from the plants in our aquaponics beds.  We started out with plants almost two feet tall!  Learn all about that easy process here.  Best way to start tomatoes in my opinion!


3.  Plant the tallest plants on the north side of your square foot garden beds, especially the veggies that need trellises or supports to grow.  This helps the shorter plants get all the sun they can. 


4.  And here is the most important tip, the tip I read and forgot about, and did not follow.  So please dont be like me.  Water your soil BEFORE you plant your seeds!  I know thats a good idea in any garden, but this soil mixture is the thirstiest, spongiest soil you could ever hope for.  It took me FOREVER to water after I planted, especially since I didnt want to wash away the fragile plants I had just planted.


Learn more and meet the inventor of the Square Foot Gardening method: 
http://www.melbartholomew.com/what-is-square-foot-gardening/






This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, The HomeAcre Hop, Natural Living Monday, Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop

Read more

Square Foot Garden Update Not Impressed Just Yet

Phew!  Its been a busy week with the holiday, normal chores, and getting our "new" camper trailer ready to take up north this week.  Now, everyone who lives in Michigan knows what we do, but for those of you who do not live in Michigan, we like to go up north every chance we can.  Whats up north, you ask?  Lakes, campgrounds, seasonal resort towns, trails, rivers, cabins, and a whole lot of nothing, too.  You cant ask for a more relaxed, laid-back vacation than in northern Michigan and its Upper Peninsula.  Torch Lake, UH-mazing.  If you havent been, you should visit Torch Lake at least once in your life.  And Copper Harbor, there are no words to describe that part of our state.  Its perfect and gorgeous and just so awesome up there.

So, I have been patiently watching the slow progress of our square foot gardens over the past few weeks.  I cannot tell a lie, we are not impressed by their growth.  I honestly think our aquaponics system may have ruined us for gardening in dirt.  Notice the 8-inch tall tomato plants in the square foot beds above.  Now, look at this baby.......

Almost 4-feet tall!  This tomato plant was started from a clipping of a tomato plant growing in our aquaponics system.  All of our cloned tomato plants are flourishing, and fruiting.  My husband calls it his Clone Army....he thinks hes so funny.  Heres another one of our pride and joys.

It has been cooler here in Michigan than whats normal for this time of year, so maybe thats why the garden is slow to grow.  But we are enjoying the benefits of not weeding and the moisture retention in our square foot garden beds, thats for sure.

Would love to hear from readers about your garden growth so far!  Anyone out there square foot farmin?


This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, Natural Living Monday

Read more

Awesome Aquaponics Events for Earth Week 1 of 3

Various folks are rolling out the aquaponic carpet for Earth Week. Im going to be holding tours every night, as are several dozen other aquaponics folks across the United States.

For tonight, I wanted to mention a workshop my friend, Sahib Punjabi, is putting on down in Florida. If youve seen the book, Sahib is the one who has created a garden paradise in a vacant alley behind a strip mall. Hes got everything going on down there, from floating rafts to vertical towers to media beds, including wicking beds and xeriscape-like root-zone watering of plants and trees along the verge of the parking lot.

Tomorrow Ill talk about free tours being held by members of the Aquaponics Association, but for those of you ready to move forward to some serious gardening, Sahibs workshop near Orlando, FL, is a great opportunity.

Sahib is also working with the non-profit Feed Hunger Now to train folks on how to use aquaponics to alleviate hunger, using "dead space," areas that get sun and rain but that are currently empty.

Sahibs Florida vision is very close to that of Eric Maundu, of Kijani Grows. Hundreds of thousands of people have been introduced to Erics vision of converting urban wastelands into productive gardens and farms, as shown in the video below:



A third place I know of that is working to serve the urban hungry is The Grow Haus in Denver, Colorado. Tonight Ill close leaving you with a short piece where Coby Gould talks about the neighborhood food hub concept behind The Grow Haus. Very Cool!

Read more

Square Foot Garden Planting Template

In this video I show how to make a easy and extremely useful template that can be used year after year to plant your gardens.

Last year we decided to start using some of the methods of square foot gardening in order to get the most out of our small raised bed gardens. The whole idea is that all of your vegetables are planted very close together using specific spacing for each variety. This is a much different process than traditional gardening and has many benefits.

Planting using a template allows you to have complete control over where each seed goes. This can save seed and does not require anywhere near as much thinning if any at all. All you do is drop one or two seeds (if they are small) into each hole and wait for them to sprout (dont just stand there staring it might take a few days). Once they have sprouted go back and reseed any of the spots that did not sprout. If you save your own seeds then you already know how important it is not to waste seeds.

The obvious benefit to using the template is the spacing. You are guaranteed to have perfect rows of vegetables and each will have its optimum room to grow. There is a great site that I use each year when I get ready to plant here - http://www.mysquarefootgarden.net/plant-spacing/. There is a list of common vegetables and how many you should plant per square. It also gives you some rules of thumb to use if your plant is not listed there. The most common plant spacing per square foot is 12, 9, 8, 4, 2, 1 and some plants actually take up more than one square foot in which case you dont really need a template.

I first designed the template on cardboard and gave it a try to see if it actually helped make planting easier. I was surprised at how much fun it was and the kids loved using it. So, I decided to make a more permanent design.

The first step is to get a 12" X 12" piece of wood. Any wood will do but not too thick as you dont want it to be heavy. Once you have your wood cut and sanded start marking grid lines every 3/4" horizontally and vertically. Every fourth line should be a different color (I choose orange). This will give you a 16 square grid to start with.

The next step is to mark the spots where holes need to be drilled. I would recommend checking out the video for the best placing. Once the holes are marked you can drill them out using any size drill bit you choose. I used a pea seed as a guide to select mine. I wanted it to be just big enough to fit through as this is one of the larger seeds I normally plant.

Next I used a couple of different sized washers to make circles around the holes and then painted them various colors. This  will allow you to identify the various seed spacing easily. I then added some handles using a small piece of 3/4" X 6" piece of wood.

The next thing that I needed to do was to cut out a section where the template will need to fit around the corner and center support posts in our raised beds. I marked out two 3.5" X 1.5" squares on the bottom two sides and then cut them out. I then used two small hinges to secure the cutout pieces back to the board. This will allow me to move them out of the way when needed and swing them back in to place.

Lastly I designed a small push stick using a 1/4" dowel and a square piece of wood as a handle. This was then color coded with markings every 1/4" so that you can easily make holes to whichever depth you need. It also pushes the seeds down tot he proper depth. 

The template has been working great so far and the best part is it gets our kids excited about planting in the garden!

 

General Store

Please follow us on....

http://www.pinterest.com/simplesuburban/
http://www.facebook.com/simplesuburbanliving
http://www.twitter.com/simplesuburban5
http://www.instagram.com/simplesuburbanliving

Music - "Shot Down" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/ShotDown

Read more

Square Foot Gardening with Aquaponics

A Grow Bed with a Grid

I like the idea of square foot gardening - marking your growing space into square patches that are each about one square foot in area. But since I have these oval rubbermaid tanks, I hadnt wrapped my mind around how to do the marks.

But this past February I decided to pay attention and figure something out. I took some thin rope and black binder clips. The binder clips can be the small ones that hold 3/8-inch of paper. This allows them to grab onto the edge of the lip of the rim securely. Then the thin rope is tied between the handles of the binder clips on opposite sides of the grow bed.

When I initially created the grid, the rope was slack. Heres where the rounded edges come in handy. I moved one of the binder clips for each pair around the lip so the distance between the two clips was smaller. I re-tied the rope between the clips, then slid the clip back into position. This made the rope taught.

Once I was done, I broadcast seeded the squares, as well as planting my floating raft. I also added seed to bare patches in my two grow beds that still had plants that had survived the winter. Heres the map I drew for myself.



I planted seeds on 2/16, and a month later the bok choy, turnips, and radishes have germinated. Im starting to see hints of cabbage and leek, and my carrots and beets are still AWOL. Im sure they would have germinated more quickly inside, but direct seeding is much easier. And even though most of the nights since February 16th have dipped below freezing, the temperature of the water in the fish tanks has held steady at 40-50 degrees, as measured by my "through the cover" meat thermometer.


My tank temperature was still 38 degrees on February 23rd, even though night-time temperatures had dipped well below freezing for six nights in a row leading up to this picture.

Read more