Tag Archives: square foot garden

Where did I go?

Well, its been a few days since I posted something, but you can’t expect too much when you read some poor hacks attempt at a blog about gardening. I haven’t done much by way of the garden this week, except to start seasoning the seedlings to be planted. One of the False Alarm Jalapeno  seeds germinated a few days ago to my surprise. I thought they were all goners. It looks like it may rain most of the week, but I will try to get things planted when the weather allows.

Finally Time to Plant

I was able to plant one broccoli seedling, and pea and spinach seeds yesterday. I have been trying to get the raised beds finished up the last few days but it has been slow going. I would say two of the five are 100%. The rest still need the drip line installed and the deer netting secured, which I want to finish before I plant in those so I don’t disturb the seedlings or sprouts. It is supposed to rain the next day or so, but perhaps Sunday I can finish.

Ready to Plant

These two are ready to go.

Almost There…

The beds are almost ready for planting! This weekend I finished buying and mixing the soil, the composition of which is based on the mix in Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. I wandered around town the last month or so looking for vermiculite, peat moss, and compost. The difficult part was finding compost from different sources as the big home improvement stores only seem to carry the types based on manure. I ended up using cotton burr, humus and manure, grass, and mushroom based compost found mostly at smaller garden and grocery stores. I might actually plant something this week!

Soil - Early Mix

Adding the different materials for the soil mix.

Soil - Final Mix

The final mix of vermiculite, peat, and compost.

Irrigation

Last year, I had a small drip irrigation system on a timer for watering my container garden. This year I would like to do the same thing, but will need some different hardware since I am increasing square footage considerably. After some extensive online research, I found a few manufacturers of drip-line, each with different spacing and flow rates. I decided to go with 12 inch spacing (one per square) with .6 gph per emitter which I found on eBay for quite a deal. Ordered it today, see what it looks like in 7-10 days when it arrives.