What is Square Foot Gardening?

I first discovered Square Foot Gardening while trying to figure out a way to grow a garden at a house we were renting. G.W. is in the Army, so we rent houses at each duty station. You’d be surprised at how irritated landlords can get when you take a rototiller to the yard of a rental house! I had to find another way.

With Square Foot Gardening (SFG), you don’t dig up the ground. Instead, you build a raised bed that sits on top of the ground. You can even build a bed with a solid bottom that can be placed on a patio or driveway. It was the perfect solution to my problem of how to put in a garden without ripping up a yard.

Here is the link to the official Square Foot Gardening website.  If you’ve never heard of this method of gardening before, you will be amazed at its simplicity and effectiveness.

 http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

Since a SFG sits on top of the dirt in your yard, it doesn’t matter how crappy your soil is. You’re going to fill the raised SFG bed with a special planting mix, not dirt. Because of the planting mix used, there’s virtually no weeding. Since the beds are raised, you don’t walk around in them compacting the soil, so there’s no need for digging or tilling every year. SFG eliminates all that hard work. It sounded too good to be true. A garden without all the work! 

This is an example of a SFG bed. The photo is from the SFG Forum website.

The beds are simple to make and you can use scrap lumber. Just don't use treated lumber, which has icky chemicals that will leach into the soil and contaminate your garden.

I tried it and it worked. I was growing an amazing amount of food in two small (2’ x 4’) raised beds that were only 6” deep. I wish I’d taken photos of that little garden with huge tomato plants and basil that was so tall it was toppling over! Because I don't have photos of my own garden at it's peak, I'm posting photos from someone else's garden, again found on the SFG forum.

Pretty amazing what you can grow in a few square feet, huh? It's all about the special soiless growing medium used. And even that is simple to do. You fill the raised beds with a mixture of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 compost. That's it. Easy peasy!

Now that we’re settled on Crossed Sabers Ranch, I could revert to the old method of digging up a big plot of land and putting in a traditional garden. But why would I go back to that old way with all the digging, hoeing, and weeding?  Besides, the soil here is almost pure sand. It would take literally a ton of compost to make it into something you could grow in.

The SFG I'm planning is pretty ambitious. I'm going to build it in phases. Many gardeners make the mistake of putting in a monstrous garden that ends up neglected because they underestimated their desire to garden or the amount of time involved in caring for it.

The first "phase" of my garden consists of nine prefabricated plastic 3' x 3' raised beds and four wooden beds that I built myself. Two are 2' x 10' x 12" deep and two are 4' x 10' x 12" deep.



I bought the lumber for the wood beds at a big box store. They cut it into the lengths I needed, which helped a lot. It's hard to get 16' 2x12's home in the back of a Toyota Tacoma!

Before we got too deep into this, I have to tell you that I do not have any real skill or experience with building anything.  Yet. However, I think these raised beds turned out OK and will certainly do what they were made to do.

Even if you've never picked up a board in your life, you can do this, too. 

The first step is to measure out and drill the pilot holes for the deck screws that hold the bed together.

Pilot holes marked..,.

...and drilled.





I used 3" deck screws to hold it all together. For a while there, I got all wrapped up in getting everything square. Some of the boards were curved and one had a wicked twist to it. I could feel myself getting all spun up over it.  Being a Type A person is a blessing and a curse.

After taking a step back and reassuring myself that it's a garden bed, not a piece of fine furniture, I waded in and started putting it all together.

I'm still getting the hang of this blog thing and forget to take photos. I built both of the 2' x 10' beds before it occurred to me to take a picture.

Here's one of the 4' x 10' beds during assembly.

When finished, these larger beds were HEAVY! I about busted a gut trying to drag one over to the garden site. It bothers me to ask G.W. for help with one of my projects. But I sucked it up and asked him to help me get the two beds moved.

Here are they all are.

These four beds are going to hold perennials. The smaller ones will have strawberries. The larger ones will have asparagus and rhubarb.

In my next garden post, I'll show you how to prevent the grass from coming up through the raised beds and what you use to fill the beds.

My asparagus and garlic is arriving in about a week, so I have to hurry to get these next few steps done!







Food Storage Friday -Intro to Canning

Last April, we had a disaster. Our big upright freezer had a malfunction while we were away. We came home to a freezer full of mostly-thawed meats. Ugh!

Luckily, I had the equipment and knowledge to safely can meat. For three days, I cooked and canned almost everything that was in the freezer. To be on the safe side, I threw out the seafood. But was able to save all of the beef and chicken.

I even saved all of the scraps and fat trimmings and canned them as pet food.

If you can meat or other low-acid foods like most vegetables, use the pressure canning method only.  Water bath canning is only appropriate for acidic food like tomatoes and most fruits.  Don't listen to anyone who tells you differently.  You risk making yourself sick by using another method for canning meat.

Next week, I'll post some information on water bath canning. Depending on what I can find at the store, I'll walk you through making some kind of jam then water bath canning it.

Square Foot Gardening

Gardening will be another topic I'll post about at length. Back in the day, just about every home had a garden. During war times, planting a Victory Garden was a family's patriotic duty.  There's a lot to be said for that.

Growing your own food is hugely satisfying! You actually know where your food comes from!

Believe me, you don't need a huge plot of land and a green thumb to get something growing. If you have an apartment balcony, you can grow a tomato plant in a 5-gal bucket! Some of my friends will be posting about their experiences with gardening in a city.

My favorite gardening method is called "Square Foot Gardening". It's a way to grow a lot in very little space. Here is a link to the "official" Square Foot Gardening website where you can read all about this innovative way to garden.

Square Foot Gardening

For me, the beauty of this way of gardening is that you don't have to spend a lot of time digging up a huge plot of land and it doesn't matter what your native soil is like. Square Foot Gardens are in raised beds that sit on top of what ever ground you have.

I just started plotting out where my garden will be.

This house came with a well-established perennial garden, which you can see on the right in the photo above. Note the tall deer fence around it.

My vegetable and herb garden will go next to it. That area has great exposure to sunlight. It's on a slight slope which will help with drainage.  Those black planks you see are the sides to prefabricated raised garden beds. I found them on Craigs List for $10 each.

Next week, I'll show you how I built raised beds out of lumber. It's not hard to do and you don't need any carpentry skills.





How Not to Manage Your Food Storage

One topic you'll see me talk about at length is food storage. I believe it's vitally important to have at least some extra food on hand in the event of an emergency. The extent to which you store food depends on your unique situation. In upcoming posts, I'll share with you how I do it and offer my suggestions on how to start. Each Friday, I'll post something about food storage.

This, however, is the absolute worst thing you can do when it comes to having extra food on hand.

While we were house hunting, we saw this in the garage of one of the homes we walked through.  Based on the price stickers on the items, all of this came from a place in Colorado Springs called Bargain Mart. It's a discount grocery store that tends to have things that are nearing their expiration date.



Most everything was piled in boxes with no catagorization whatsoever.

How would you know what you have? How would you find something specific? How do you even get to the stuff?

This is a good idea gone very wrong.  I'm guessing the prices were so attractive that the person just loaded up on everything and anything. I saw about a dozen jars of different types of caviar. The price was $1.00 per jar. 

Don't make this mistake. Make a plan, make a space with shelves or other organization system, then make your shopping list. Store what you use and eat, not just what's on sale.

Unless you really, REALLY love Coleman's Dry Mustard, don't buy two dozen tins of it simply because it's an awesome price. You won't use it before it goes bad which means you've thrown your money away.



There's a right way and a wrong way to go about laying in supplies. Please don't get all excited about some "case lot" sale or something you find at a discount grocer and load your trunk up with a bunch of stuff like this person did. 



Who here has some food stored up for a rainy day? If not, have you thought about it? Feel free to share your thoughts on the matter.