How Does Your Garden Grow?

The garden is doing very well! We have had a ton of people asking us for updates. So, I decided to post some pictures of our progress so far.

Carrots at 10 Days

Corn at 10 days

Green Beans at 10 days

When we planted the green beans, we used a booster from Burpee. It's made for green peas and green beans. We forgot to add it to the peas, but added it to the green beans and can tell a HUGE difference. Our green beans are growing like crazy. We definitely won't forget the peas next year!

Box 1 at 3 weeks. We have green beans in the top left hand box and cucumbers in the top right hand box.

Box 1 has green beans, strawberries, cucumbers, watermelon, canteloupe, mixed bell peppers, green bell peppers, banana peppers, and okra.

Green beans at 3 weeks

Box 2 at 3 Weeks

Box 2 has corn, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, asparagus, onions, red onions, green peas, cauliflower, broccoli and eggplant. Salad Box @ 3 Weeks This is standing to the side of the box. On the far left side, it's mustard greens that are doing so well, and on the very top, those are radishes that are growing like crazy.

The 3rd box we call our "salad" box. It's full of greens, lettuces and herbs. It has mustard greens, collard greens, caesar lettuce, salad mix, spinach, radishes, cilantro, dill, basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary.

Box 1 at 1 Month Weeds are starting to appear, but we don't have very many since we put the weed barrier down.

Box 2 at 1 Month

The corn in the upper left hand corner is leaning - we had two full days of STRONG, crazy wind and they took a beating but the roots are still completely under and they are doing well! On the left side and on the bottom left are yellow squash and zucchini that are really starting to grow like crazy!

Salad Box at 1 Month

I'm standing in front of it this time. The second column, top row is the mustard greens. Second row, third column is a salad mix (the expensive stuff you buy in containers at the grocery store), and the third row, fourth column are the radishes. They are growing like crazy!

In fact, we got our very first radish at 1 month.

Here it is, after we picked it.

Box 1 at 6 weeks

The green beans (top left) and cucumbers (top right) are now in tomato cages - we have been teaching them to climb and they are doing really well. The bottom left are watermelon and the bottom right are canteloupe.

Box 2 at 6 Weeks

Salad Box at 6 Weeks

There have been some very plump and happy caterpillars and ladybugs have a feast on our salad box. Darren and I bought some organic vegetable safe bug spray, and sprayed everything down a couple of nights ago. It's time to start picking some of that lettuce, and spray again and hopefully it will take care of the problem.

Yellow Squash at 6 Weeks

Our first squash!

When we got in from being out of town this weekend, Darren checked on the garden and was able to pick a couple of banana peppers. I will have to get some pictures of them!

Needless to say, we are thrilled with the progress are garden is making. We were late planting everything and didn't get everything in the ground until May 1st, but the only thing that it seems to have bothered are the strawberries. We haven't had any sprouts in those boxes but as you can tell - everything else is taking off just fine!

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!

Square Foot Gardening - Part One

When Darren and I decided to move back to "the country", one of the first things that he mentioned was how badly he wanted to start a garden. I had a bit of hesitation - I could just imagining ME weeding and ME plowing and ME taking care of it. But Darren assured me that this was going to be a partnership and this was going to be OUR garden and it didn't have to be huge. The next week, he made a trip to Barnes and Noble and picked up this really great book on square foot gardening. The basis is to be able to plant a lot of stuff in a small, easily accessible space with little to no weeding.

This is how our garden started! We haven't organized the garage yet, so Darren's tools and tables are not set up yet. He made do by finding an extension cord and pulling everything out into the driveway.

My very handy husband, building our boxes. Each box is a 4' x 4' square (6 inches deep)

The book suggests that a regular family of 3-4 have 3 boxes. 1 for vegetables, 1 for salads and 1 for canning, preserving or giving away.

All 3 boxes set out. It tells you to keep about 3' of space between boxes so you can move around the boxes easily.

After the boxes are in place, you take a weed barrier and roll it out underneath the boxes so that the interior of the box is completely covered.

Darren picked up these handy little plastic stakes to tack the netting down.

After you get the barrier down, the book suggests you pour out all bags of soil (which consists of peat moss, vermiculite and compost) on a tarp to mix well, before you put it into your boxes.

The "manual labor" part of this project really hits home when you have to shovel all of that soil mixture into each of the boxes. Darren and I took turns so it didn't take us that long. You want to fill the boxes all the way to the top.

Here is all three of them filled with the soil mixture!

It's looking good, isn't it??

I'll post the rest of the instructions later!