Square-foot Gardening
Good Morning All,
I hope you all had a great weekend. This weekend we had a relaxing day at home Saturday and did absoultely nothing and then Sunday we went to church in the morning, did some shopping, and worked in the yard the rest of the afternoon and ended the day with dinner at The Feedlot (those in the Wichita Falls area should definitely check them out!)
I am so excited to get the gardening under way and I wanted to talk about the method that I have chosen for my gardening. I like using the square-foot gardening method. You should google it. Essentially you make a 4x4 raised bed about 6" high and use a good soil mix. You can piece together your own or use the mix sold by the creator of the square-foot gardening method. I, of course, use my own.
I made 3- 4x4 boxes this past week with landscape timbers that I found for less than $2 a piece at Home Depot and then lashed them together to make my boxes. I am doing 2- 3 timber high and 2- 2 timber high.
The first thing I do is lay weedblock in the area I am building my boxes.
Once that is down I make the boxes on top of the weedblock and then add the soil. This season I used a flower and vegetable pre mix that was being sold at Lowe's and then added Vermiculite. Vermiculite helps keep the soil from being compacted and keeps it light and airy to help promote better root growth. I ended up using 2- 2 cu. ft. bags of soil mix and 2 - small bags of Vermiculite per box. My total cost per box was around $20. You can always make that cheaper by using scrap wood in place of purchasing wood, but make sure whatever wood you use is un-treated so there is not leeching of chemicals into your soil.
I like to water down the soil once it is in so I can see how much it will compact down and if I need to add more. (Which I did not). After, the soil is in now map out you square foot sections. So for a 4x4 box you should have 16 squares. You can plant something different in each square. Because of the way this concept works you can automatically plant the recommended distance on the seed packet without the need to thin out as often. Common spacing is one plant per square for larger plants, like broccoli and basil, four plants per square for medium large plants, like lettuce, nine plants per medium-small plants, like spinach, and sixteen per square for small plants, like onions and carrots.
Once you are more comfortable with this gardening method you can adjust and increase the sizes of your boxes. I used this method several years ago in Vegas of all places and had a good results. The reason I limited my boxes to 4x4 here is since this is our first year attempting to garden here I wanted to make it as simple as possible.
Well, I have to get going to map out my sections, but I highly recommend looking into the square-foot gardening method and seeing if it is something you would like to do.
Have a great Monday!
I hope you all had a great weekend. This weekend we had a relaxing day at home Saturday and did absoultely nothing and then Sunday we went to church in the morning, did some shopping, and worked in the yard the rest of the afternoon and ended the day with dinner at The Feedlot (those in the Wichita Falls area should definitely check them out!)
I am so excited to get the gardening under way and I wanted to talk about the method that I have chosen for my gardening. I like using the square-foot gardening method. You should google it. Essentially you make a 4x4 raised bed about 6" high and use a good soil mix. You can piece together your own or use the mix sold by the creator of the square-foot gardening method. I, of course, use my own.
I made 3- 4x4 boxes this past week with landscape timbers that I found for less than $2 a piece at Home Depot and then lashed them together to make my boxes. I am doing 2- 3 timber high and 2- 2 timber high.
The first thing I do is lay weedblock in the area I am building my boxes.
 |
| The box on left has the weedblock on the bottom and building the box on top of it. |
Once that is down I make the boxes on top of the weedblock and then add the soil. This season I used a flower and vegetable pre mix that was being sold at Lowe's and then added Vermiculite. Vermiculite helps keep the soil from being compacted and keeps it light and airy to help promote better root growth. I ended up using 2- 2 cu. ft. bags of soil mix and 2 - small bags of Vermiculite per box. My total cost per box was around $20. You can always make that cheaper by using scrap wood in place of purchasing wood, but make sure whatever wood you use is un-treated so there is not leeching of chemicals into your soil.
I like to water down the soil once it is in so I can see how much it will compact down and if I need to add more. (Which I did not). After, the soil is in now map out you square foot sections. So for a 4x4 box you should have 16 squares. You can plant something different in each square. Because of the way this concept works you can automatically plant the recommended distance on the seed packet without the need to thin out as often. Common spacing is one plant per square for larger plants, like broccoli and basil, four plants per square for medium large plants, like lettuce, nine plants per medium-small plants, like spinach, and sixteen per square for small plants, like onions and carrots.
Once you are more comfortable with this gardening method you can adjust and increase the sizes of your boxes. I used this method several years ago in Vegas of all places and had a good results. The reason I limited my boxes to 4x4 here is since this is our first year attempting to garden here I wanted to make it as simple as possible.
Well, I have to get going to map out my sections, but I highly recommend looking into the square-foot gardening method and seeing if it is something you would like to do.
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