Square Foot Garden

As promised I'm going to continue in my new garden adventures and try my hand at square foot gardening. The idea is simple, a raised bed that you plant in square foot plots. I started by doing a lot of research through Pinterest (is there any other way?). I pinned several sites and read lots of blogs and then decided to just dig in....get it? dig in...oh that was bad.

Mr. Hubster built a frame for me (well, he put three sides on - in case I want to expand it later). Mine happens to be 5 ft by 10 ft. BUT, in the future they will only be 4 feet wide, I learned the hard way! It's not easy to reach the middle for me at 5 feet, so make it easier on yourself and stick with what you can reach. Four feet if you can walk all the way around the bed, or just 2 feet if it's against some sort of structure.
We layered cardboard in the bottom of the frame to deter those pesky weeds, and rocks that grow so generously around here. Then we filled it in with some black dirt/compost mix. I got my dirt free, so I got to use what I had, I think I would go with a screened mix, this one still had some sticks in it. They will still decompose, no problem, but just not as smooth looking as I would like.
I then took about 40 pounds of a compost/manure mix and raked it into the surface of the soil.

Time for a water break! Keep yourself hydrated, and while your at it, give your garden a little drink too. You don't want it muddy, just moistened up a little if it's dry. 

Phase 2 - Make the grid!

I took some long roofing nails, big hammer and tape measure out to the garden and measured off 1 ft sections, placing a nail along the frame at each foot. Leave it just in far enough to hold it tight, and leave sticking up to help hold the string for the grid.  Now it's time to string it up. I searched for our roll of string, but I didn't find it, so I used yarn. 

My son helped me run the string. We had fun throwing the yarn ball back and forth. Just wind it around the nails a few times and go to the next one. We did it all in one continuous string line, I guess if  you wanted to stop and tie it off on each nail...but why?
Next....I would have done this step next if I had the forethought, but I learn better from mistakes, so I did this after everything else was done....but for you...I'll let you in on it now!
This is completely not that necessary, but I tied a short string at each string junction. Partly to hold it in place and I'm a little obsessive over details!

Now it's time to get planting. I had already decided what I wanted to plant and made a plan. I drew it all out on paper and took the paper out with me. *Side note....I also did a little research on companion plantings, I wanted to make sure I planting plants together that will be happy, not unhappy (who knew?)

Since my garden was so wide, I chose to plant things up the middle that will be easy to handle later, onions and garlic right now. I left 10 blocks on the open end without anything in them, they will be for pepper plants later. It still needs to warm up a bit here. 

This is my watering set up. I just took a soaker hose and ran it through the grids. This is another, wow, it would have been easier to do this first...or possibly bury it....but....I didn't, so it's actually tied in place with some yarn. I gave it a good 30 minute soak.....and then the next day we received 4 inches of hard rain!! When the plants start coming up they may be all mixed together and radishes with carrots and lettuce with beets....who knows. It was a LOT of rain! I'll update when they start coming up.

The other section of a raised bed sort of garden is my strawberry pool. I took our old little plastic pool, and we gashed some holes, well, some more holes, in the bottom. A good layer of straw topped off with more of the black dirt and compost. I then planted my strawberry plants and since I had some soaker hose left with nowhere to go - I wound it up in the strawberries.

I promise some updates as things get growing around here. I hope this works...because Mr. Hubster is not convinced it will, so I must prove to him it will!