Square foot garden

I got the garden all done today. This whole square foot garden idea is so easy. I decided to do this method because the dirt we have here can hardly qualify as dirt, let alone "soil" for planting a garden in. We have a few plants in the back yard and it took about a week of continuosly soaking the ground to be able to dig a one foot deep hole. But square foot gardening doesn't use any of the existing dirt.



Here is the frame for the garden. I did ours 2x6 feet. Nate had been working a ton of hours latetly (like between 8-10 billable per day--he's been actually at work for 12+). But he was nice enough to pound these boards together for me last night at like 9:00.



Then we filled it with "square foot gardening mix" which is a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. I was glad to find out it is sold premixed at Lowe's. And I don't know what the kids are doing. I didn't tell them to put their hands up. I guess they are just excited.

Then you divide it into square foot sections. You are supposed to actually put a grid on, using something like thin boards so you can permanently see your lines. But mine was small enough that I didn't think it was necessary. Plus, I didn't want the cost of the extra wood and the extra work of putting together a grid. I probably would have done it for a larger area though.

Then we put the plants in. Hopefully we can keep it pretty and green like this. From left to right in the picture below is: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, canteloupe, strawberries, and cucumbers. I planted the potatoes and cucumbers from seed, which is why you can't see them. I also only planted one potato plant. In the square behind it I am going to plant 16 carrot plants. But I already planted some carrots elsewhere and I want them to be offset from each other. So I will plant the carrots in the garden over the next few weeks, so I can hopefully have carrots continuosly. And for those of you thinking I am crazy, I plan to grow the cucumbers vertically and have them climb a tomato cage. If that doesn't work, they can grow outside the box. The canteloupe vine will have to go outside the box. I also put my tomato plants way closer together than recommended. But I don't care. They will grow into one giant plant, I'm sure, but in reality, I should have used the entire garden to plant four tomato plants. I wasn't willing to do that. We will see what happens.

My little garden helpers... I even let Kelton skip his nap (*gasp*) so he could help too. You will notice that about half of the garden is in direct sunlight and half is shaded by the wall. This is going to be my experiment. I have one of each plant in the sun and one in the shade. According to the directions, all these plants are supposed to be in direct sunlight. However, I wondered how smart this is when you practically live on the surface of the sun. And the shaded ones might not stay shaded once summer comes and the sun isn't offset in the southern sky. But we will see.

And here are my other carrots that I planted 3 days ago. And no, those are not milk jugs. They are super high tech planters. High quality. Very expensive and hard to find. Okay...they are milk jugs.

I didn't want to make the garden any bigger, but I wanted more stuff. So I planted 5 carrots in each of these. And I have a large storage bin thing I got from the thrift store that I am going to plant 3 more potato plants in. (All of these containers have holes in the bottom for drainage.) I used different dirt for these so we will see how it works. The square foot garden soil is $16 per 2 cubic feet. This other stuff was just $5 for about the same amount. Since I have carrots and potatoes in both kinds of dirt, I will be able to compare.

I went visiting teaching today and one sister showed me her watering system for her garden. That is my next project to look into. It was completely automatic and awesome. I was planning on watering by hand. Okay for the 80 degree here and now. But I don't think I will feel the same way when it is 100+ degrees outside. (Oi! why do I like it here again?)

I am really hoping for at least one edible something to come out of all of this. Otherwise it will just be an expensive failure and we will try again next year (the sq ft soil can be reused after composting). But I figure if it can survive the ants, other bugs, my kids, birds (which I hear love to peck strawberries to death), oh and the blasted sun, we will be in business!

On another note... Happy St. Patrick's Day! Everyone is wearing green today. Well, except me. I don't think I own green. Nate actually has a dark green dress shirt. He wanted to pinch me this morning. But I told him that unless he was planning to pinch all the green-less people at work, he had to leave me alone.

The kids got shamrock shaped pancakes for breakfast.

And yes, they were green too.

Kelton is such a cute boy, but I feel like a lot of times I don't get very cute pictures of him. But I liked this one.

Here's a little St. Patrick's Day story for you. Natalie had a bag of "gold" (spray painted rocks) that she brought home from school. She said we needed to hide them so the leprechauns couldn't steal it. Last night we built a Leprechaun trap and put the gold inside. (Hey Rob, we used glue. Drilling a hole in my foot didn't sound like that much fun.) Natalie was sure she was going to catch a leprechaun, even though we told her they are very tricky. After she was asleep, a leprechaun snuck in and stole the gold and left a few packages of Smarties for payment. Nate told me that she was going to be really upset about loosing the gold. I thought it would be just fine. Well, this morning we all went in to check the trap. Natalie had that "I'm so excited I can hardly contain it" look on her face. She was sure that there was a leprechaun in there. We opened it up and saw the missing gold and Smarties. Natalie burst into tears. She was sad that there was no leprechaun but even more upset that he took her gold. Point for the husband. But that's okay. It probably takes the total to about 425 to 1... Possibly 2. :) (I love you Nate!)

What's funny is that she suddenly stopped the tears and said, "that leprechaun is nice!" Appreciation for the candy had kicked in. I said, "well do you want the gold or the candy?" We had told her she could probably write a note and leave it for the leprechaun and maybe he would give the gold back. Her answer, of course, was "both." Wouldn't it be great if we never had to choose between things we wanted? Hey Cherie, do you want to save up money for a bigger house or pay off student loans? Um... both! I like it. Someone figure out how to work that, and get back to me.