Closer to the dream - SFG at SGF

After a wonderfully productive weekend, we're a few steps closer to our dream of food sustainability: Square Foot Gardening at Simple Green Frugal. I recently read the book Square Foot Gardening, recommended by one of Dave's colleagues who said it was a wonderful way to garden. We were impressed by the book and decided to go for it. 

The basic idea of Square Foot Gardening is that you build a 4 ft x 4 ft raised bed, subdivide the bed into 16 - 1 ft x 1 ft squares and plant crops in those individual 1 x 1 squares. The amount that fits in each square, of course, varies - one broccoli will fit per square, but 16 onions can also fit in one square. In the end, you can grow a wonderful variety of veggies (or flowers if you prefer) in a small area which is easy to weed (be cause it's only 4 x 4 total, it's easy to reach in), easy to rotate crops, and never has to be tilled (because you never step on the soil). It's farming on a small scale. Of course, we're just starting with one 4 x 4 bed. We'll be adding at least one more (the second will be twice as deep to accommodate potatoes and carrots). You can grow as much or as little as you want, it's simple to maintain, and because they are raised beds, they look really nice. At least, that's the idea. Who knows what will happen once I get my little hands dirty in all this. 

The first roadblock we encountered was finding the right materials. We wanted to build the beds out of something that wouldn't quickly rot, but we certainly wanted to avoid treated wood and all the chemical toxins they would leach into our veggies. Our first choice was cedar, but we were having some trouble finding it. Finally, last week, I walked over to a small hardware store, not far from our house and low and behold... cedar! So we drove over this weekend and purchased two 4x6x8 ft boards and had them cut in half. Perfect!

Dave used decking screws to make the box, we chose an area of the back yard where we wanted the first bed to lay, then we put down trash bags in an effort to kill the grass underneath. We'll let that sit for the next week while we pull together the rest of our supplies - like dirt. The Square Foot Gardening book recommends a mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 course vermiculite, and 1/3 compost. We have the compost, we picked up some peat moss over the weekend, and yesterday I was able to local the vermiculite by calling around to the local gardening centers. A quick errand this weekend to pick up the vermiculite and some digging in our compost pile, and by this time next week, we should be ready to plant!

Right - so plants. What in the world do we want to plant? Of course, I already have everything planned out. Would you expect anything less from Mrs Type A? 

A friend of mine, who is also starting her first veggie garden this year, gave me the rest of her spinach and broccoli seeds. So as you can see, I have both broccoli (photo to the left) and spinach (photo below) seedlings currently in residence on my window sill. I also picked up a tray of cabbage plants over the weekend. That will still leave us with extra space, so I'm planning on picking up more green onion bulbs at the farmers market next weekend. Here's the plan (keep in mind, I have four rows of four square available:

Row 1: 4 squares of broccoli (one in each square)

Row 2: 1 square of broccoli, 3 squares of cabbage (one in each square)

Row 3: 2 squares of cabbage (one in each square) and 2 squares of spinach (9 in each sqaure)

Row 4: 4 squares of green onions (16 in each square)

With this being my first year, it'll be a real learning experience to see how long this feeds us - whether it's too much or two little. How quickly does each grow? When to harvest?... But then, as far as I'm concerned, that's the wonderful adventure in all this. I can see it now... I'm canning cabbage soup from veggies right out of my backyard!

So that's where we stand today - The bed is built, we have one more ingredient to purchase for our soil mix, and my seedlings are growing strong just waiting for their new home. It's a very exciting time at SGF. We've talked about this for so long and it's finally coming together. Stay tuned. There's much more to come!