On April 25 we started getting the new and improved plot ready to go. You can see it's quite a bit bigger than it was last year. My Honey got it all turned over and I started raking it. I just have a little more raking to do to get it all even and get the rest of the crud out of it; Mostly twigs from the tree next door and rocks from who knows where. ( I thought I got all those out last year) I thought I might have started planting by now, but we've still had some pretty dodgy weather; a lot of rain and even some snow just 2 days after we started turning the soil! I'm hoping to get something started by this coming weekend.
When I expanded my garden plot last summer, I was going to follow the same basic plan of traditional rows and just add a few more things to the mix, and maybe expand the green bean section. Well, when I say traditional, I did plant in rows, but I snazzed up the layout a bit by adding bricks. Both for design and to try and keep the neighbor's cat out; I was unsuccessful with the latter. Anyway since last summer, I have heard about something called square foot gardening. I was introduced to this concept when one of my fellow Toastmasters presented a speech on it. It immediately caught my attention as I had been wondering if I was going to have enough space to do what I wanted to do with my garden.
I found out that row gardens actually waste about 80% of the space allotted to them because of the 3 feet of space needed between each row. All you do is walk on that. The idea behind the square foot garden is that you harvest about 5 times what you normally would from row planting; They don't require as much work; you save water; there's very little weeding to do; you don't need pesticides (that's always a good thing); and they are accessible to anyone! Now, according to the instructions, you're supposed to build a 4' x 4' frame which is then divided into a grid to put your soil in, but since I had already dug my garden to 9' x 24', I'm going to have a modified version in that I will just be dividing it into 4' x 4' sections.
The other experiment I'm going to work on is upside down gardening using buckets my Honey brought from work. That will definitely free up a lot of space in the garden plot, as I will be growing my tomatoes, cucumbers and possibly my peppers this way. Oh yeah and I picked up one of those hanging kits to grow strawberries in from Giant Tiger.
None of what I'm talking about here is really all that new, but it's new to me, and I really can't wait to see what comes of all this.
Can you believe that these are just 2 days later?
Swingin' strawberries. You can get this kit at Giant Tiger or something similar online
My garden video
When I expanded my garden plot last summer, I was going to follow the same basic plan of traditional rows and just add a few more things to the mix, and maybe expand the green bean section. Well, when I say traditional, I did plant in rows, but I snazzed up the layout a bit by adding bricks. Both for design and to try and keep the neighbor's cat out; I was unsuccessful with the latter. Anyway since last summer, I have heard about something called square foot gardening. I was introduced to this concept when one of my fellow Toastmasters presented a speech on it. It immediately caught my attention as I had been wondering if I was going to have enough space to do what I wanted to do with my garden.
I found out that row gardens actually waste about 80% of the space allotted to them because of the 3 feet of space needed between each row. All you do is walk on that. The idea behind the square foot garden is that you harvest about 5 times what you normally would from row planting; They don't require as much work; you save water; there's very little weeding to do; you don't need pesticides (that's always a good thing); and they are accessible to anyone! Now, according to the instructions, you're supposed to build a 4' x 4' frame which is then divided into a grid to put your soil in, but since I had already dug my garden to 9' x 24', I'm going to have a modified version in that I will just be dividing it into 4' x 4' sections.
The other experiment I'm going to work on is upside down gardening using buckets my Honey brought from work. That will definitely free up a lot of space in the garden plot, as I will be growing my tomatoes, cucumbers and possibly my peppers this way. Oh yeah and I picked up one of those hanging kits to grow strawberries in from Giant Tiger.
None of what I'm talking about here is really all that new, but it's new to me, and I really can't wait to see what comes of all this.
 | This was shot April 25 |
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Swingin' strawberries. You can get this kit at Giant Tiger or something similar online
My garden video
Hello there , Really nice job.....Lester
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