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I was reading on pringlemom's "Which End Is Up" blog about their looking to set up a garden and she wanted opinions on Square Foot Gardening. I thought I'd share the garden we put in at our old house when we were living in a suburban yard. It worked REALLY well and we got great produce that summer!
I started by reading Cubed Foot Gardening by Christopher O Bird (good book other than his philosophy towards organic gardening etc...) along with Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. Cubed Foot Gardening is quite similar to Square Foot Gardening except that you do your raised beds in 12" high beds made out of lumber. Then you fill it with good dirt. Below you can see the picture of our beds that we made and the dirt we're filling it with. Having deep good dirt beds like that really help the plants and roots. It was sure convenient for weeding and upkeep and keeping the kids out of them! Our boxes were 4' x 8' boxes.
Christopher O Bird also talks a lot about planting things to grow up things. We had an old rusty swingset in our yard that was cemented into the ground and we used it as a framework for putting up trellis material for a playhouse/garden spot. You can see in the pics below what we did. We put trellis material across the front and across one side all the way to our back fence, then on the other side we put it partially to the back fence leaving an opening to get into the inside. So the kids could go into it to play and once the fast-growing things grew up, it could grow across the top on strings (although wire would have been sturdier). See pics below to understand it better.
The front of the trellis - morning glories, birdhouse gourds, and cucumbers were here The side that you can't see also had tomatoes that we tied to the trellis and pole beans
Inside the trellis garden
Showing Judah a bean
Picture showing the trellis better and the garden beds in early fall
I highly recommend the trellis idea in some form! It was so nice to use vertical space for some of those plants! It's so easy to dig and weed a trench that doesn't take up much space!
Anyways, that was the basics of our garden design! Hope that gives someone some good ideas!
Thank you for taking the time to put these photos up along with your garden information. I am so excited to get started in the spring. I had so much fun reading through your blog here and at homeschoolblogger too. I am going to talk with my husband tonight about ordering your ink. Seems like the way to go as I'll be using plenty for our homeschool. We used to live in the Twin Cities too, then Walker-Bemidji area. Thanks so much for your heartfelt response to my entry! Have an awesome day!
Alissa
Thank you!
Posted by abmiller on Mon 22 Jan 2007 at 08:47 - Link
Hello there! I've just started researching the idea of square foot gardening. I, too, have four dc to try & keep out of my garden & it seems that this approach is the way to go. I just bought Mel Bartholomew's book off e-bay & can't wait to get reading it.
Thanks too for the photos!
~Anissa
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Posted by BlueApple on Tue 23 Jan 2007 at 09:53 - Link
Those are great pictures! It will really help those that have limited space. I have a few acres and we are even planning on using some raised beds for certain vegetables - trying to maximize space. Thank you.
J
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