It's been 6 weeks since we planted the garden and here's the first teeny crop of greens, harvested this morning. This makes me ridiculously happy, and probably disproportionately so. Lots of people garden, of course, so it's no big deal. Except that this is OUR first crop of greens grown from OUR very own seeds in OUR very own dirt in OUR very own new vegetable garden, so I am very, very excited.
If you've seen my visual chronicle on Facebook this is probably old news, but we're using the Square Foot Gardening system (book here and cheesy YouTube videos here) and so far It. Is. Awesome.
You build boxes that are 4 by 4 feet square, hence 16 square feet total for each box. Then you divide each box into separate one square foot sections, and plant the appropriate number of plants/seeds in each. There are several advantages to this system. Because you are building a raised bed you can control the soil you use and the mix they recommend using has great drainage (nice given how rainy this spring has been). In addition, you can grow a lot in a very small space. We have devoted one box to herbs, and in the other two we were able to cram 4 kinds of greens, radishes, peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, strawberries, carrots, green beans, snap peas, and 2 kinds of onions. And get this: there's virtually no weeding. Everything is grown so intensively that whatever weeds pop up are tiny and swiftly yanked. Finally, you can rotate easily; when something's done, you can just start over in the square and plant something else. I'm looking forward to playing with multiple plantings and, later in the summer, planting cold-weather crops for fall and early winter.
But first: salad!
If you've seen my visual chronicle on Facebook this is probably old news, but we're using the Square Foot Gardening system (book here and cheesy YouTube videos here) and so far It. Is. Awesome.
You build boxes that are 4 by 4 feet square, hence 16 square feet total for each box. Then you divide each box into separate one square foot sections, and plant the appropriate number of plants/seeds in each. There are several advantages to this system. Because you are building a raised bed you can control the soil you use and the mix they recommend using has great drainage (nice given how rainy this spring has been). In addition, you can grow a lot in a very small space. We have devoted one box to herbs, and in the other two we were able to cram 4 kinds of greens, radishes, peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, strawberries, carrots, green beans, snap peas, and 2 kinds of onions. And get this: there's virtually no weeding. Everything is grown so intensively that whatever weeds pop up are tiny and swiftly yanked. Finally, you can rotate easily; when something's done, you can just start over in the square and plant something else. I'm looking forward to playing with multiple plantings and, later in the summer, planting cold-weather crops for fall and early winter.
But first: salad!
So cool...love the pics
Posted by: Michelle | 18 May 2009 at 11:36 AM
Excellent! We are doing a something similar with very similar crops...except we do yellow squash and zucchini instead of radishes and broccoli and we have horrible luck with cucumbers in SC (don't even get me started on hard it is to keep cilantro and flat leaf parsley alive...)
Um, what about tomato?
Posted by: Mindy | 18 May 2009 at 12:55 PM
Ah, there are tomatoes. We planted one roma plant in one of the boxes, and the rest in their "regular" tomato spots nearby, with cages. I'm going to grow most of the tomatoes conventionally and experiment with the roma in the box and see how it does. And the reason we didn't plan zucchini is that they grow TOO well here! We would be overrun...
Posted by: caraf | 18 May 2009 at 02:56 PM
Ag! I'm so jealous of your yard. Your garden looks so tidy! Neat!
Posted by: D(Jx3) | 20 May 2009 at 09:41 PM