Square Foot Garden

This spring, Carlos and I are starting a Square Foot Garden.  It's such a basic concept, but not that many people have ever even heard of it, it seems.  After the WLC and getting into the habit of eating so many vegetables, we realized that this diet will be hard to sustain long term for financial reasons.  And I've been saying all along I wanted a veggie garden so we decided to make the investment and take the plunge.  Added bonus: the boys will see us gardening, can help, and will also hopefully be more willing to eat vegetables if they helped grow them.  I think kids should have a basic understanding of where their food comes from.

So I checked out Square Garden websites like this one and this one and bought Mel Bartholomew's book.  It's the bible of this type of gardening, and it's well-written and very simple and clear in its instructions.  This guy Mel seems like a great guy--I'd like to meet him, actually!

Last weekend we went to Lowe's and Home Depot and bought some of our supplies.  We got seeds, potting soil, the wood to make the raised beds, landscape fabric, and some PVC pipe to make a cover for them.  But we still need chicken wire to add to the cover and keep animals out and some cheap wire fencing to build a compost container.  I ordered Mel's Mix online via Home Depot.  Mel's Mix is the "perfect" soil mix and absolutely 100% essential to the success of this kind of garden.  A 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 mix of peat moss, vermiculite, and various kinds of compost, it's expensive, but lasts about 10 years.  After the growing season you do nothing to it and the following year you add nothing but compost to the garden when you plant.  I had to go to Ocean State to find seed starting trays and some additional seeds.

Last week, according to the suggesting planting schedules, I started seeds for Broccoli, Cauliflower, and parsley.  I tried seeds in a tray of vermiculite at the suggestion of the Sq. Gardening book, but I also (just for this first round and the sake of comparison) started the same seeds in potting soil to see if one method worked better than the other.

Today I went in to mist the seeds and keep the soil moist and found that most of the seeds had sprouted!  It took about 4 days in the living room near the windows and heat and covered with plastic wrap.  So far, I don't notice a difference in quality between the vermiculite and potting soil.

Potting soil trays

Vermiculite trays

This weekend, I have a few more seeds I have to start to keep on schedule, but I forget what!  Have to check the book again!  I also need to go back to Ocean State and buy more supplies.  I didn't buy many last weekend because I half expected to fail with the seeds.  I feel more confident in my seed-sprouting abilities now, though, and will have to transfer these to small 4-packs or pots in a short while.

I think this year will be full of trial and error and it will be easier (just like the beer brewing was a learning experience the first time and we'll be much better prepared for our second attempt) next year.  But so far so good!  I'm so excited!