Tag Archives: Square foot gardening

May Dirt to Dinner Update

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Sprouting and Growing    Sprouting and Growing

There’s no doubt that the garden is starting to fill out nicely. If I hadn’t noticed it myself, the evening parade of dog walkers would have been happy to remind me.

We continue to receive attention and even gifts from neighborhood well-wishers. We now have two new lavender plants, starts from lavender bushes up the road that attract several different types of bees. We have a new moisture meter, which is addicting to use and is a huge help in watering. The small horseradish we were given has turned into an enormous pot of lush leaves and roots. And the seed donation from Seeds of Change has arrived with many interesting varieties we may want to try.

Bauer Lumber in Mountain View has also been very generous with donations of scrap wood that has come in handy several times already and which will be used to complete the potato bed as the hills get higher.

Thanks everybody! It’s wonderful to have your support.

Easter Egg Radishes make delicious pickles

Easter Egg Radishes make delicious pickles

In the kitchen, I have finally perfected my radish pickling brine recipe and can’t wait for everyone to try it out the next time we meet. It’s a mix of mostly sea salt, apple cider vinegar and tamari and it tames the stronger radishes in a way I hope the kids will like. Oh, and did I mention that recipe also uses a pinch or two of suagar and a swirl of honey? That could be part of what’s helping smooth it out. Delicious!

The January planting of shelling peas is just about done producing and we are moving on to pick the February shell peas and the snap peas. I’m sure people walking past the other side of the fence think we are growing the world’s tallest Snap Peas. Little do they know the peas are started in raised beds that are three feet tall. I won’t tell if you won’t.

Eight Foot Tall Snap Peas

Eight Foot Tall Snap Peas

The broccoli is also still producing nice side shoots, but will flower if given half a chance. The Broccoli Raab the kids planted in their individual beds is also prone to flowering. I’m keeping the flowers trimmed to see if it will go back to making more broccoli or not.

Intensive Planting to the Max

Intensive Planting to the Max

Some of the individual planting beds are small jungles at this point. Remind me to go over plant spacing with the kids again. :-)

This one has carrots, radishes, beets and tomato plants–and that’s just in the first two square feet!

Square Foot Patchwork

Square Foot Patchwork

These will be a wonderful experiment since they are all planted differently with more or less attention to the spacing ‘suggestions’ we used at planting time. Here’s one bed that was planted with careful attention to the square foot measures that gives it a visual patchwork look that many of our visitors find appealing.

I wish I could keep the rest of the garden looking that nice and neat!

 

 

Circle of Pollinator Attractors

Circle of Pollinator Attractors

We have added a few more flowers to our pollinator collection, a blue basil, some coreopsis and others. And we have our first potato plant flower bud! I wonder what it will look like? I’m actually not sure at this point which sack of potatoes is which, so I’m not sure which kind of bud this will be. I hope Mackenzie remembers or we may not know until it’s time to pick the potatoes.

The blue potatoes sent up blue sprouts, which I would never have expected.  I didn’t even recognize them as sprouts when they first came up because they looked so dark against the soil and compost. Who knows? Maybe it will have blue flowers as well!

First Spud Bud

First Spud Bud

Raised Bed Trials

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30" Potato and Tomato Raised Bed

24" Potato and Tomato Raised Bed

We are testing a wide variety of raised beds in the Dirt to Dinner garden. Just this week I added two new No Dig beds with tall trellising for cantaloupe and spaghetti squash. They are made of “found” lumber (it was Clean-Up Week in our neighborhood, so the finding part was easy) that 50 years ago was a backyard fence. I figure anything potentially unhealthy has surely leached out of it in all this time. Right?

The first bed we added to the front garden we took up the turf and dug the soil underneath, so it’s somewhere between 18″ and 24″ of new ammended soil mixed with the existing clay and topped with an inch of turkey farm compost. This bed holds potatoes and tomatoes, so I’m sure we’ll learn a lot about the quality of both the drainage and the new soil from the way the plants develop. It’s also in a windy corner, which the bush beans we tucked in there while the potatoes and tomatoes are getting started don’t seem too happy about. This also means the bed dries out more quickly than I would like and needs a thick mulching as soon as the plants are better established.

5" No Dig Squash Bed

5" No Dig Squash Bed

The shallowest of the raised beds is a No Dig 5″ deep bed with as close to Mel’s Mix as I could make with the materials at hand. And I do mean, No Dig with this one. It’s made out of found redwood timbers tacked together and laid straight onto the lawn. I am very curious to see how this bed does through the summer. I planted my spaghetti squash in this one, so I really hope it does well.

The idea is that the grass will die underneath the soil, turn into a natural compost and eventually become one with the dirt in the planting box. I imagine adding a lot of compost to this one through the Summer to keep the moisture content up. But will the grass grow up through 5″ of soil?

2'x2' of 6" and 12" Square Foot Sections

2'x2' of 6" and 12" Square Foot Sections

We also have a variety of Square Foot style beds in the Dirt to Dinner garden. My favorite ones, surprisingly, are the bi-levels. I thought I would want everything as deep as possible to hold all the soil and plants I could imagine, but I like the way this one looks in the garden and so far the occupants seem happy with their digs.

By far the largest raised bed in the Dirt to Dinner garden is the kids’ growing area which is over 18″ deep. The kids removed the turf and turned the soil underneath before the bed was constructed. At 112 square feet framed in traditional English willow hurdles, it is unique and also seems to be holding up well. willow-planter-almost-done1I have no doubt that the bed will provide ideal growing conditions and can’t wait to see what the kids do with it.

The original raised beds in this growing space are large plank board planters that stand 3′ high and are 4′ wide. They are great for keeping the dogs out and not having to bend over very far, and they are sturdy enough that you can even stand on the edge to adjust your cages or add to the trellis systems. But they are so deep that the soil compacts in them by a foot down and they are very ungainly to try to turn the soil in them because of their size. It’s tough to get a shovel into them and you end up breaking your back digging them out by hand every year or two to lighten the soil.

We Will Have Peas

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90 Days from Seed to Flower   90 Days from Seed to Flower

One way or another, we are determined that we *will* have peas from our garden. Two of the varieties from the Spring pea trial are all but forgotten, but the Picolo Provenzale  are growing in all three different plantings, and the January planting is starting to flower. OK, it’s what? Nearly 90 days out from planting, but hey, it’s flowers!

I’m also amazed that the Sugar Snaps in the back garden that each had their heads snapped off by some marauding varmint are starting to recover! They grew new vines from the roots up and around the bitten ends of the first ones and some of them are starting to put out tendrils like they mean to actually grow.

Sugar Sprints and Carrots

Sugar Sprints and Carrots

Nearby, in a 4′ x 4′ bed, there are Sugar Sprint peas growing, mostly under a burlap covered cage to protect them from everything. They don’t seem to mind the shade. The Picolo Provenzale starts in the front garden didn’t seem bothered by it while they were covered either. I take it off of them in the morning to allow them a few hours of direct sun and they seem fine.

buckets-of-tomatoesAnd we are getting to the stage where we have literally buckets of tomato plants. We have Roma Paste tomatoes for sauce and catsup, we have Principe Borghese for drying, we have Costaluto Genovese for fresh cooking, Big Beef and Crimson Carmello for slicing and eating, we even have a German Orange Strawberry tomato that I can’t wait to try! I’m afraid I may have even ordered some grape tomato plants in fun shapes and colors from Park Seed when it was still cold out and the garden was a limitless imaginary place.

Surviving the Spinach Monster--So Far!

Surviving the Spinach Monster--So Far!

And, happily, the evil Spinach Monster that devours my plants right down to the roots if I leave them outside after dark without a cover does not appear to like Bok Choi. What IS that thing? For a long time I thought it was ravenous snails or slugs because the plants that were up on the hottub cover at night weren’t bothered by it, but earlier this week several six-packs up there were creamed by whatever it is and the chard, tomatoes, peppers, etc. sitting right next to the spinach were fine. Maybe Popeye the Possum? I don’t know.

Square Foot by Square Foot

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Square Foot Tomatoes and Chard

Square Foot Tomatoes and Chard

The Dirt to Dinner garden is starting to really take shape and I’m loving the time I am able to spend out there. One of the fun things we are doing this year is practicing some French Intensive gardening, or “Square Foot” gardening, as it’s often called. I have several beds divided up more or less in this way. Today I put in a two-level 2′ x 2′ bed with my drying tomatoes in the deeper sections and Swiss Chard in the two lower sections that will probably get shaded by the tomato plants, even when I cage them. I hope the Chard doesn’t mind too much. It should have lots of time to establish itself before then–if the crows don’t eat it!

Another bed is divided into three sections with a test bed of beans that I started ahead indoors, beans I started in place a month later, and beets. I lined the edges of this bed with carrots also, so it will be crowded as things mature and I will need to keep it fed. The bush beans won’t mind all being together and the beet tops hopefully won’t shade the carrots too much. We’ll have to see how this one works out.

Square Foot Beans and Beets

Square Foot Beans and Beets

I’m also trying a 3′ x 3′ with two tomato plants, again, and sections of spinach and chard. So that will make a nice comparison bed to the 2′ x 2′. I wish I had grown this type of tomato before. They are a determinate heirloom variety called Principe Borghese but I can’t get any concensus on how tall they like to grow or how bushy they will be. I’ll let you know how they turn out!