My Square Foot Garden

Gardening is my joy and my pain.  The pain mostly comes from the soil in my lovely Central California Valley Community.  We have Clay.  If you have clay then you are nodding your head - enough said.  But if you don't have clay then let me explain.  Clay makes pots - and is tough to grow anything in.   When it's wet it sticks to everything and when it is dry it breaks yard tools.  There is about a 15 minute time when it is perfect and that is usually when I am at work.  

 

I am surrounded by farms where is live and I have watched them over the years.  They cut their product off, plow into the ground the remnants and then churn that into the soil over and over (sometimes as many as 3 times) till the soil is workable.  This is repeated every season, year after year after year.  Now I own my own rototiller but really - no - you gotta be crazy to til your soil every season - over and over and over. 

 

So one year I had reach my limit - tired of dealing with the clay and more tired of the lack of product that I was getting back.  

Where were my tomatoes?

Then I found Mel and enlightenment :)

 

Really Mel Bartholomew and his square foot gardening method.  Truly I'm getting no kick back from this publicity for him but, after reading his book from cover to cover, I decided to give it a try.  So I dragged my husband, Jeffery, in kicking and screaming :) 
I got the boxes built and mixed the special mix as prescribed by Mel. 

 

Wooohooo - product. 
Finally. 
Best stupid garden ever. 
So I'm going to share.

 

 

Nice pretty boxes in a row :)  Works well with my OCD. 
All our boxes were made with redwood.  The one in the front uses 2" x 12" boards and the one's behind it and in the back are 2" x 8".  Mel's prescribed method is using 1" x 6" but I decided with our oppressive heat in the summer I wanted something a bit deeper.   And I wanted something that would last for years and years, not just one season.  And not only that but I wanted potatoes and carrots and so I needed more depth.

 

 

If you count the pretty squares then you see that our back boxes are 3' x 4' and our front boxes are 3' x 7' and 2' x 6'. 

 

Next I lined the bottom of each box with 2 layers of landscaping cloth to keep any weeds from coming up before putting in the 'Mel's Mix'.  If you have gophers I would line the bottom with chicken wire first before putting in the landscaping cloth to keep those little buggers from eating everything.

 

 

Now the Mel's mix - truly this is the heart of his plan and the toughest for me to pull together.

You mix 1/3 peat moss (easy to find), 1/3 compost (from different places, not so easy - will elaborate more later) and 1/3 vermiculite (pain in the butt to find and horribly expensive).  But I had decided that I was going to do EXACTLY what I was told by Mel

so I could complain later if it didn't work. :)

 

So first the Peat Moss - found this at the Ace Hardware in town.  No Problem.

 

Next the Compost - now you want compost, not potting soil with compost.  You want not only compost but you want a lot of it and from different sources.  Mel says that the compost is made differently depending on who you purchase it from.  So he suggests buying several different kinds and mixing them together.  Right, got it, not so easy, but got it.

 

Finally the Vermiculite.  This along with the Peat Moss are to hold moisture and nutrition in your soil.  So I hunted and hunted.  I didn't want those tiny bags that they sell in the stores since they are horribly expensive and I would need about a thousand of them.  Okay, so maybe not a thousand, but way more than my budget could stand.   Tried ordering it online.  Nope.  Shipping cost was more than the vermiculite.  Tried special ordering it from the local nursery.  Nope.  Tried special ordering it from a nursery 25 miles away.  Nope.  Finally went to OSH and found that they sell it in larger bags too but still spent over $110 just on the vermiculite.   Just a quick update here - I was at Home Depot the other day and they FINALLY sell Vermiculite in large bags.  Hallelujah!

 

Seriously looking at $75 tomatoes if this didn't work. 

 

 

 

Final addition when the plants got too high - the cheap electrical piping and some elbows to make a frame.  We hammered in the ground some re bar that fit into the piping to hold the framework upright.  Slid the whole frame over the re bar and then strung some netting. 

Tied everything up and it worked like a charm.

 

 

At the end of the season I did something totally radical. 
I planted a winter garden.
  I'd never even considered it before. 
So I slowly transitioned the tomato plants out.  Banging off the Mels mix from the roots (saving all I could - that stuff was too expensive to waste).  Added some more compost (as prescribed in Mel's book) and in went the Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbage.

 

 

I'm showing off now :)  

 

 

 

 

 Score one for me :)