Square Foot Gardening - Part Two

Square Foot Gardening - Continued!

After you get all of the soil in, its time to start sectioning off your garden.

Measure measure and mark at every foot. In the book, they tell you to use small wooden slats to divide the sections, but we decided that we would just use colored (heavy-duty) string.

I picked hot pink! We just knotted the ends, pulled it tight, wrapped it around the nails and tied it off on the end. Then we hammered the nails down (bent over) so the string couldn't slide off.

Darren picked bright yellow. And the third box, we mixed with yellow and pink.

Then we started laying out where we wanted everything, and marking it. It's important to take in account how things grow when you do this! For example, cucumbers start to take over, so you want them towards the outsideand melons grow on vines so you need two squares nex to each other for them, etc.

All marked!

Everything is layed out and marked (except for the last box - we ran out of markers and had to go get more the next day).

The basis of square foot gardening is being able to plant a lot, in a small amount of space because you plant based on how the plant grows and how much space it needs. You can plant 16 carrot seeds in one square foot. In that same size square, you can plant 4 corn, 2 lettuce or 1 broccoli. Melons take more than one square - you can plant one per every two sqaures.

Darren and I drew out boxes and listed everything we wanted to plant. We took that list to the store, so that we could check everything off that we needed. When we got back we wrote in where we wanted everything and then kept that list with us as we planted, to make sure we planted as directed.

NOW everything is planted and marked. We sprinkled some vegetable fertilizer over the top, and watered everything in really, really well. Now, we just wait!