How Does Your Garden Grow

The Garden Project.  Oh, what a project.  We already have one garden box from a previous owner.  It was 3'x5' or something, I think.  But it was in the worst spot in the yard.  Literally, I have no idea how they grew anything there.  It was in the shade until 4pm.  So, in an attempt to keep it thrifty, we decided we would just move that box over to a sunny spot, and build another to match.  But it was only 6" deep and we felt like we wanted it to be a little deeper than that, so after digging all the grass out, we dug a big hole.  The plan was to put the weed barrier down, and then level the dirt, place box and done.  Ha!  Nothing is ever that simple.  Intro wires.  Totally in our way.  Shoulda called on that.  Although, I can't say that it would have changed our placement.  It's a good spot, I think.  Back up to pre-garden box idea because the first plan was to consider doing an in-ground garden.  That idea was gone as soon as I started digging in this....stuff.  It's clay/rocks with a little dirt in the mix.  So two ideas were now being scratched and we went back to the drawing board.  I got to fill in that awesome hole I spent two hours digging.  It was an awesome workout and the kids did enjoy playing in it and finding snakes worms.  They're just HUGE!

The old box we had didn't feel deep enough.  Even though Square Foot Gardening says you only need 6", we felt we wanted 12".  Especially because we were putting the weed barrier down and the ground underneath would be completely impossible for weeds to grow in.  So Jon went and bought some ridiculously priced wood, that was the best price we could find, and built some boxes.  We used untreated cedar, so we don't have to worry about anything leaking into the soil and cedar is rot-resistant.  And we drew up a new size to get the most square footage out of our rectangle that we had already ripped up.

Don't the boxes look amazing though?!  I'm always impressed with Jon.  He goes the extra mile to make them look nice, like routing the sides to give them beveled edges, etc.  The stones in this pic are stones that we already had, we think they were laid down for a grill.  There are only six though, so we aren't sure what we'll do with them.  We can't find any to match.

It took forever to get the "mix."  And it was more way expensive than I like to remember.  The peat moss was cheap at least.  I think that cost $10 for all three.  We didn't buy nearly enough vermiculite.  The square foot gardening "recipe" says to use 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 compost.  Had we bought that much vermiculite, it would have been $200!  And I called around to at least five places.  That was the cheapest we could find!  We got compost from four different places, though I don't know how many sources we actually had.  We used cotton-burr, compost from the local recycle plant which is yard waste, compost from Carson's which they said has all kinds of crazy stuff but couldn't tell me what, and cow manure.  That's right, I bucked up and went with a manure.  I bought the cheap bags from Lowes.  At that point, I was sick of spending money on dirt and poop and just wanted something cheap.  The sales associate said it's actually a mix, with lots of fillers so it was probably only 50% manure.  I was nervous to use it, but it looked like black dirt and didn't have a smell, other than earthy.  At first, I didn't want to touch any of it with my hands.  I got away with not touching it while mixing, but once it was time to plant, I kind of had to.  It wasn't too bad and my hands didn't stink or anything after.  So I guess the manure was okay.  There were people advertising on craigslist, that you could have their horse manure or rabbit manure or whatever.  But that was a little too real for me.  I'll take the bagged stuff from Lowes that is already composted and I don't have to take my pitch fork and clean your barn.  Maybe we'll get the kids a rabbit that can poop in the garden all winter long.

 Square foot gardening says you have to have a grid.  But, I was WAY past the point of spending more money on these boxes.  This was supposed to be a $100-weekend project.  It was way over the price and took like two weeks or something.  So, back to the grid.  I used duct tape and string to plant.  It didn't last long, obviously.  But I did eventually go to Lowes and check out prices for the lattice board.  It would have been almost $50 to get enough.  So I bought little hooks for $1.50 and now the string is permanent.  It even remains after our last storm.

 Jon has been working on putting in a cement border around the garden now.  He has two of the four sides done.  It only takes an hour or so to get one side done, but then you have to wait for like two days before taking off the boards/forms.  And we didn't buy a ton of those.  So it's kind of a drawn out process. 

One idea I really liked in the square foot gardening book is that you plant in rotation.  So you don't plant all your tomatoes at once, or all your cucumbers, etc.  You plant one of everything, then plant again in a week.  That way, everything isn't coming to harvest at the same time.  And you have some give in when things need to be planted, so it's kind of fun to try.  It might not make a difference for some of our vegetables.  But at least we won't have 40 carrots ready to be pulled in a week.  Maybe we'll get 10 or so.  We are planting almost everything from seed.  Except strawberries, I bought those and planted them all, obviously.  They aren't too expensive though.  I bought some of the pricier ones, because they looked healthier and they were $8.00 for 25.  We won't get many strawberries this year, so we'll for sure have to stick around here for at least three years, until the strawberries don't produce anymore.  I have also planted corn, green onions, peas (I was probably too late on those, but we'll give it a shot), basil, rosemary, parsley, cilantro, cucumber, tomatoes, cantaloupe, and carrots.  I might be forgetting something, but I think that covers it.  I didn't want to get too crazy this year and get overwhelmed but I kept going back for different new kinds of seeds.  I would read about growing another vegetable and think, I love that one fresh, I better get those.  I just really hope this makes the kids love eating fruits and vegetables.  We'll see how green our thumb is now.  I'll post some pics once we have some growth and the cement border is done.