Wednesday, April 02, 2014

My Square Foot Garden Plan

One of my goals this year was to pick up a few "life skills".  One of the important life skills that I decided to focus on is growing food.  I am a terrible gardener.  We had a pretty decent herb container garden the last few years, but the only reason that survived is because herbs do better if you mostly ignore them.  However, the very cold/rough winter we had this year has killed off all of our herbs.  So we are starting anew completely.

The only other time I've tried to grow vegetables it has been an abysmal failure.  One year my tomato plant had a grand total of two tomatoes, one of which was rotten, and the other was not very tasty.

I've done my research, planned my little heart out, and come up with the following plan.  I will be following the square foot garden method.  The plants were chosen based on our tastes, and space restrictions.

We will have a 4x4 raised bed.  We will also have 6 large pots, and 2 extra large pots.

We will be growing the following from seeds (direct sow): marigolds, cucumbers, beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, peas, spinach,  and squash.  My plan is to order them from the Burpee catolog.

The following will be purchased at our local nursery, and transplanted: basil, peppers, tomatoes, sage, rosemary, dill and mint.  We are also going to be ordering a blueberry plant and strawberry plant from Burpee.

The next step is to build the 4x4 raised bed.  I'm still debating whether to build it myself, or to purchase one that is precut, and you just have to put it together.  The cost is the main difference between the two.  My husband is finishing up grad school, so I've promised not to bug him TOO much with this stuff until he is done.  I will also be ordering the seeds in the next few days.

I need to get the lettuce and the peas started soon, but I don't have to wait for the raised bed to be built, since they will be in pots.

So far, I'm really enjoying myself.  I told my husband I was surprised I hadn't gotten into gardening before, since there is so much planning involved, and planning makes my heart happy.  Hopefully the manual labor part won't total suck the fun out of it.  Or the bugs, or rabbits, or diseases, or all of the other stuff that can go wrong.  I plan on spending a lot of time in our backyard this spring and summer, so hopefully neglect won't be my downfall.

I'm Baaaaaccck!

So, I haven't blogged in years.  Lots of ideas, having a kid, new position at work, and there you go.  I'd like to get back into the swing of things, if nothing more than a way to keep track of things, and go into more details that I can on facebook.

No idea really what this will look like, but odds are, I'll probably talk about my son, gardening, prepping, books, and general musings.