Spring 2010 Garden
Last year I started a small square foot garden, after reading All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew.
Our garden is a 4 x 4 raised bed, built by The Picky Apple.
Last year I grew (or attempted to grow) mammoth sunflowers, various herbs, tomatoes, beans, jalapenos and green bell pepper. The mammoth sunflowers were impressive (7 or 8 feet tall!), and a few of the herbs did well, but I had minimal production from the other plants. Perhaps because of all of the shade from the sunflowers.
I recently planted my spring garden. I had lavender, rosemary, and oregano left from last year. This year we added basil (grew great last year but didn’t survive the hard freeze), tomatoes, beans, mesclun, lettuce, spinach, cantaloupe, carrots, and strawberries. I’m really hopeful that we’ll be able to eat at least SOME of it this year!
I thought it would be such a great experience to plant with The Littlest Apple this year. He LOVES digging, and seems very interested in seeds. But he still doesn’t quite “get” it. Or if he does, he’s just not that big on following directions. He DID enjoy digging lots and lots of holes. But not the small holes I needed for the seeds. Nor would he listen to my instructions regarding the planting of the seeds. He just wanted to throw them here, there and everywhere! He just wanted to keep on digging even after the seeds were in the dirt and I’m not sure if any of the seeds actually STAYED were I planted them. We’ll see if anything actually grows….
I love this book! SFG was my very first intro into gardening. I have to say, it didn’t work too well for me, but I’m positive it was user-error. 🙂 I moved onto containers, but kept Mel’s mix. Good luck with yours!
I’m really interested to see how your square foot gardening works. I’ve always sticked to the spacing in my gardening books, so everything is two or three feet apart, but it would be awesome to add more if they can take being closer together. Good luck!