gardenthoughts

last sunday i decided to plant a square foot garden .. i’ve read a bit about growing such a garden .. and i’ve seen square foot gardening in action .. however, i’m a person who needs to do in order to really see how something works .. and i believe that different ways of gardening work differently for different gardeners .. so .. i went out and chose one of the four by four beds that are in the back veggie garden .. brought a tape measure and some foot long stakes .. oh, and a leftover ball of quite a pretty mauve wool to mark out my square feet ..

it was great fun .. a bit of mathematics .. some ‘construction’ materials .. stakes and mauve wool .. tying all the strings good and tight to define the square feet .. when i stand back and check it out, i find it to be quite a lovely site .. like a mini garden .. sixteen squares to fill with a variety of vegetables .. i ran into the house a couple of times to check out ‘square foot gardening’ on the web .. i know there is specific spacing required depending on the type of vegetables i want to plant .. then i sat on the edge of the onion bed .. considering this new space set out in front of me .. thinking about what to plant in which square foot .. but, wait a minute .. what about companion planting .. back i ran to the house to search the web again .. of course, there are hundreds of thousands to millions of sites .. so many people extolling the virtues of this trend in gardening .. which, actually has been going on for quite a few years .. it’s interesting to me to see what becomes popular as years move along .. oh,  here i am, digressing again .. i went back to the garden with all my new found information .. and sat on the edge of the onion bed .. contemplating vegetables .. one thing just leads to another ..

sometimes you don’t want to contemplate too many things .. it’s easy to get bogged down in the details .. knowing my own ability to bog, i got myself up and began planting seeds .. broad beans in two of the four squares closest to the onion bed .. when it warms up a bit more, i’ll put lima beans and purple beans in the remaining two square feet .. my information suggested that i plant 9 bean seeds in a square foot .. (i can’t imagine how this is all going to evolve .. i have visions of he square foot garden bed overflowing its bounds and taking over the rest of the garden) .. however, my curiosity drives me onward .. in front of the beans, i plant four squares of chard and kale .. alternating .. so creative ..  in front of that row, for a bit of variety, i decide to plant four different squares .. from the left .. carrots .. then beets .. then, i had plants that i’d grown from seed .. two of the drunken woman lettuce, and two bunches of green onions went in next .. four plants per square foot was suggested .. the last in that row i plant with more beets .. okay .. twelve done .. four more to go .. so, in go two more lettuce and two more green onions .. next to them, a square foot of spinach .. next, a square foot of carrots .. and the last of the sixteen i plant up with a different kind of lettuce that i’ll use as a cutting lettuce .. then, just because i could, i planted a few radishes between the rows of lettuce .. and a few more between the carrot rows ..

now i’m excited .. the cutting lettuce has come up .. as have the rows of radishes .. and, you can rest assured that i am out there .. at least once a day .. probably more .. peering into each of the sixteen little square feet to see what’s coming up .. it really is the little things ..

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 8:57 pm and is filed under vegetable garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.