garden's a growin'

Well, its been a couple of weeks and things are definitely looking good. I've learned a few lessons the hard way though, next year I'll do better:
      > cage of trellis plants from their infancy, not after they're already beginning to take over your garden
      > Squash (crookneck and zucchini) can be grown in tomato cages but its hard. next year I think I'll try making a chicken wire trellis instead.
      > because I was not so good at teaching my plants to grow up this year, my zucchini squash may have stunted the growth of my garlic. More on this at harvest time.

I harvested my first crop of cilantro!! SOOO yummy!

I also planted a second cilantro plant so that hopefully I'll always have fresh cilantro :)

The best way to get large onions is to cut the stem that grows above ground down every 4-6 weeks. As you can see, it's nearly time to do this again. (I planted 2 squares of sweet red onions at 9 onions per square)



    

My strawberry plants were getting a bit too much sun so I transplanted them into pots. I'm hopeful they'll survive to be fruit bearing this summer :)

In their place, I planted two New Mexico Hatch chilies (the only difference between New Mexico Hatch chilies and Anaheim chilies is where they were seeded; both make delish salsa among other things).

 Please disregard the adorable toddler taking a water break next to the garden. :)

I remembered to cage these two immediately. I also grabbed a couple of sticks out of the yard waste bin and used soft twine to tie the plants to them. I'm planning to watch how they grow and may switch to a different trellis system if they get too tall and sprawling like the squash.

And so the growing continues :)


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Square Foot Saturdays

I'm starting a new **hopefully** weekly feature: Square foot Saturdays!

GET EXCITED.

Each Saturday, I'll post about how our newly planted square foot garden is going. I purchased The All New Square Foot Gardening  By Mel Bartholomew. The premise of square foot gardening is that your grow more in less space, up not out.  You can also find some cool stuff on his website but, well, since I'm a rebel I had to break a few rules and do things my own way a bit.

SO I had this shabby old, empty concrete planter in our backyard. It happens to be 2 feet by 12 feet and while more square foot gardens are 4x4, I (with the help of my dad) built this 2 foot x 6 foot wooden frame using 2x12x1 boards. My sweet husband dug the rotten dirt out about 6 inches down and drove these old picket fence stakes (YAY for recycling!!) into the ground. Then we (he) screwed the frame into the stakes.

Here you can see the weed barrier that we put down and brought up the sides of the frame. this will prevent any thing from growing up from underneath our garden.     ...Please disregard the cute Betsy dog with her rear in the air.
You can also see the 12 cubic feet of soil we used: 3 bags of "Mel's Mix" aka: 5 kinds of compost in one bag, one bag of organic miracle grow peet moss, one organic miracle grow vegetable garden soil, and one bag of miracle grow vegetable garden moisture control soil.  The point of mixing the 5 kinds of compost, peet moss, and regular garden soil is to provide a very nutrient rich foundation for our vegetables.

We used a planting guide specific to our county to pick what vegetables to plant at what time and also spent a fair amount of time talking with the owner of Treeland Nursery who was most helpful.
Since we have 12 one-foot squares, we chose to start with garlic, cilantro, 2 squares of onions, 2 varieties of strawberries, zucchini squash, summer squash, and tomatoes. This leaves us 3 empty squares to plant more things as the seasons progress.

Here you can see (starting top left) zucchini-planted one per square, 3 empty squares, strawberry-also one per square, onion-9 per square, strawberry, and onion.

Here is (starting top left) tomato (we chose a medium sized summer hybrid)-one per square, Cilantro (cilantro is planted 4 per square but since it matures so quickly we left room to add one per month for the next 3 months so that we'll always have fresh cilantro), crookneck summer squash-one per square, garlic-2 per square, and the zucchini squash shown in the picture above.

We are SOOOO very excited to have fresh veggies to eat that we no longer have to purchase! YAY!

Once its time to turn the AC back on - puh-leeease not too soon! - we'll be creating a filtration system so we can use the runoff to water our garden instead of the hose. Details on that will come later. :)

We will also be building a system to help our tomato, squash, and strawberry plants grow UP not out in the near future.

Hopefully the garlic will keep the bugs away but if not, we may plant marigolds in with the cilantro at the east end of the garden and in one of our empty squares in the middle.

Square foot gardens are great for small areas, even apartment patios. They require less maintenance that traditional gardens because of less weeding and you should be able to reach all areas without ever stepping in your garden. Part of the success of square foot gardening is continual crop rotation so that the soil remains healthy and you always have something fresh to harvest.

Here's one last pic to help you get inspired! YUM!



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