Char's Gardening"As the Garden Grows, so does the Gardener"

I thought I would show you my winter garden, since I haven’t posted a picture in quite some time.  Even though the deer came by and ate it down after I first planted it, I am very pleased with the results.  I’ve been using the protective cover I built, to keep out the deer, and it’s been working great.  The cover is light weight enough for me to remove whenever I need to work in the beds.

One of the best things about square foot gardening is after harvesting one veggie, the seeds for the next veggie can go right in it’s place.  All I do is add a little fresh soil, compost would be best but my compost is not ready yet,  to the square   Here in zone 8b, it is time to plant cauliflower, celery, peas, and potatoes.  I hope to build a few more beds before spring.

After having to purchase compost to build my square foot garden, I told myself no more, from now on I will make my own.  I have to say that my previous attempts at composting have been less than successful.  This time it will be different, I will succeed.   To start, I bought “Composting for Dummies” and have enlisted my friend’s mom, Collete, for help.  Colette takes in hurt, abused, and homeless rabbits.  So what better place to go for a little rabbit poop for the compost pile.

12 of the 26 rabbits

I thought you might enjoy seeing her prize rabbit, the only one which was not a rescue.

Lion Head Rabbit

Here is Colette with one of the rabbits.

Colette

I am pleased to say I survived to tell the story of getting my square foot garden beds ready for planting.  I originally thought I would build one trellis bed and one 4 x 8 bed, in hindsight I think I should have stuck to the plan.  But, being the good American I am, if 1 is good 2 is better.   I decided to forgo the original plan and build two trellis beds and two 4 x 8 beds.  These beds were in the overall plan, see the original sketch here.  But deciding to do this over one weekend in the hottest part of the year maybe wasn’t so smart, but I figured, what the heck, I can do it.  I purchased my supplies Friday afternoon so that Saturday morning I would be ready to get to work.  I placed a few flags indicating where the beds would go and I was ready.

I was so proud of myself I thought I had all the kinks worked out.  I had a plan for where each bed would go and had purchases all my materials.  But when I finished mapping out all the beds and put a line level across the area I realized I had a 15 inch differential from top to bottom. (you can hardly see the pink string with a line level in this picture)

What to do??  Raise the lower part of the beds with more wood or dig the higher part down in order to level the beds.  I had planned to raise the beds 10 inches.  However,  if I left the top of the beds 10 inches then the lower part of the front left hand bed would end up being 17 inches off the ground.  Not only would that require a lot of dirt to fill it but I didn’t think I would like the way it looked.  My only other option was to dig the top part of the bed down, this I knew would be a lot of work but it had to be done.  So Saturday morning I started cutting wood and building the boxes.

All the boxes are built and put in place.

Next my helper and I removed the sod and leveled the boxes.

Finally the two 4 x 8 boxes were ready for dirt.  I would mix my own blend of dirt based on Mel Bartholomews directions from Square Foot Gardening.

Here is a picture of what it looked like after all the mixing was done.

Sunday all that was left was to level the two trellis beds, mix more dirt, and fill all the boxes.  I placed the soil from my old garden in the bottom of the beds and then approximately 4 to 5 inches of the good stuff on the top.

After this was done I took the trellis from the old garden and reused it.  If you notice in the first picture the PVC was white so I painted it with green plastic paint. I wired the plastic fence to the poles and finally I was finished.  Wow, what a weekend!!  After all the hard work next comes the fun part, planting…

Below I have a sketch of what I will be planting in my new square foot garden.  Some seeds will be planted ASAP and others in September.  By the end of the weekend I hope to have two beds ready for seeds, in hopes that the seeds I ordered have arrived.  Thankfully, I have a few extra squares as I am doing some seed exchanging with Mimi from gardening in the boroughs of nyc.  I will need some extra space for these plants, which are not in the sketch. Planting veggies at this time of year seems so foreign to me, but I am very excited about it.  The frost date for my area is Nov. 20 giving me 17 weeks, which should be enough for all the veggies.  As I have never done this I am curious, how will the plants do as the weather cools?  Will I get the same yield as I did with my regular garden?  I will keep you posted.

Garden layout

I have spent the last few days making a list of what to do to start my 4 season garden.  If anyone out there has any suggestions I am open for any help I can get.

1.  Get planting schedule for area.  If you live in Northwest Florida here is a great website to get these dates.

2.  Figure out where garden will go.  When I first moved into this home there was grass covering the entire 1/2 acre lot, except the 5 bushes planted by the front entrance.  At the time I had no plan for where beds, ponds, or garden, ect. would go.  So I made a bed along the far edge of the East side and planted my garden.  I was sure of one thing, and that is I did not want to put in a garden, which will consist of raised beds, and then have to move it.

3.  Decide what plants I want to plant for the second summer planting and then for the fall planting.

4.  Re-read “Square Foot Gardening”.  This is the method of gardening I will be using.

5.  Get garden beds ready for planting.  Since time is of essence to start my late summer garden, I am planning on starting with just a few beds and then add more over time.

6.  Start seeds that can be started indoors.