My compost pile had gotten up to about 120 degrees a few weeks ago; I was pretty thrilled that it was working just as planned! It had gone down to about 90 degrees, so I though it was time to turn it. I've since reread my info and found that you turn it when it either gets up to 160 degrees, or when it starts needing more oxygen. Perhaps this wasn't the time to turn, as the temperature dropped to 5 - 10 degrees about ambient temperature over the next few days and then gradually tapered down. Hmmm... what went wrong here... I had watered it a little as I turned it all over; maybe I watered too much, I though. By process of elimination, that looked to be the most probable cause of the temp not going back up again.

Today, I turned it all again. No harm done since it isn't hot now anyway, and it probably needs oxygen. In looking at it, it isn't overly wet, so I'm not sure why it isn't getting hot now. Actually, I thought it might need a little more water! It doesn't smell bad; on the contrary, it has that great composty-smell to it, even though I continue to add kitchen veggie scraps to it. I probably have enough and will start another pile soon. Oh well; I'll watch it and see what happens.

A hint for making temperature readings easy: I got a small indoor/outdoor digital thermometer down at Harbor Freight and I keep the probe end of it stuck in the very middle of the compost pile and the readout under a small lid (to keep out rain) on top of the pile. This makes reading the temp a cinch.

I'd known about the concept of Square Foot Gardening, or SFG as I'll shorten it here, for a good many years. My wife had gotten me a copy of Mel BartholomewÂ’s book "Square Foot Gardening" a few years ago, but I'd not read it until this winter.

His concept is really pretty simple and it makes time-saving sense if you think about it:

1) Everything is set up in square sections of 1 foot by 1 foot.

2) Theses squares are then put together in rows and columns, making a 4 by 4 foot block.

3) Each square contains a different type of plant; maybe one broccoli, or 4 spinach or 16 onions, etc.

4) The soil is the best you can manage to obtain. He gives great advice on improving soil.

5) DonÂ’t plant anymore than you need and donÂ’t plant anymore than one or two seeds. In other words, no thinning-out should be done as the plants start to sprout.

To learn more details about the SFG method, you can start with Mel's website at www.squarefootgardening.com

I determined to set up two blocks starting this coming spring. I noticed that he also uses a timeline. The techie in me leaped for joy – “Hey, heÂ’s using a Gantt chart – on vegetables; thatÂ’s the same concept we use for tracking projects at work!”. This timeline shows when to sow seeds, when to transplant (if applicable) when to start harvesting, etc, etc, all tied to the first and last frosts of the season. Great, I though! All I need to do is check this timeline and see exactly when to do what. Of course, watering must continue so frequently that it wouldn't make sense to put that on a timeline. Weeding is a strong point of the SFG method; since the area is so small, there is so much less time spent in such routine chores, thus packing the maximum yield into each square foot of garden.

I spent about 4 - 5 hours on each of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday digging up a plot in our back lawn, building two simple frames, obtaining the ingredients and mixing them.

The ingredients Mel recommends are:

1) Compost

2) Peat Moss

3) Coarse Vermiculite (although my brother, the curator at the local botanical gardens, recommended something new called permatill, which I used)

4) Sand

5) MelÂ’s own organic fertilizer blend, using blood meal, bone meal, wood ash, etc)

The only mistake I see IÂ’ve made so far is using mulch from our local city mulch pile that isnÂ’t really fully composted yet. ItÂ’s rather hard to turn if itÂ’s not completely composted! It looks bad, too. I believe that that will not be a problem by the time spring gets here, though. I hope.

So, in the space of two 4 foot by 4 foot blocks, or 32 squares, we will be planting:

2 tomatoes

2 cucumbers

2 kale

9 spinach

4 swiss chard

1 broccoli

2 collards

1 cabbage

2 squares of marigolds

1 square of nasturtium

1 hot pepper

1 bell pepper

1 cauliflower

2 summer squash

8 lettuce

16 beets

16 carrots

1 square of cilantro

16 spring (green) onions

16 radishes

plus two other squares that we havenÂ’t decided on yet.

Did you notice that I included two flowers in there? Mel recommends planting flowers in the garden as well, and these two are especially useful in repelling pests. I plan on having one bunch of marigolds in each of the two blocks. Here, at the foot of Green Mountain, we are bothered by a variety of pests, including but not limited to deer, raccoons, opossums, groundhogs, rabbits and even the occasional coyote, skunk and bobcat. Well, IÂ’ll go ahead soon and put up a 3 foot tall fence of rabbit wire. If I see that that doesnÂ’t keep out everyone, IÂ’ll add on an extension to the posts and make it 6 feet. If birds seem to be interested in the seeds, IÂ’ll simply put some netting over it. ThatÂ’s the beauty of having everything in a compact space; solutions to these unexpected problems become a good deal smaller.

Vines crops also do well with SFG; just dig a trench a bit deeper and remember to allow two or three squares, depending on what it is.

After resting my aching bones today, tomorrow IÂ’ll need to clean up the yard, finish transplanting the grass chunks I dug up into bare spots elsewhere in the yard and do some initial watering. Later, I'll start sowing seeds indoors, where applicable.

IÂ’m hoping this will indeed save us money over paying for organic veggies that we are now buying. Unless we make some extra efforts, there will more eating of things in season, but I donÂ’t think thatÂ’s a big problem.