SFG Seeding Square - New Toy

My main garden is a raised bed garden which follows the late Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening principles. It was developed in the US so it uses English measures based on 12 inches to a foot. The beds are divided into "squares" or square foot sections and plants are planted in squares based on their space requirements. Plants are planted in a grid with 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, or 16 per square. If a plant requires 3 inch spacing, for example a radish or carrot, it is planted in a grid of 16 plants per square. Beets and bush beans are planted nine per square, giving them 4 inch spacing.

The Square Foot Gardening method is superior from a number of perspectives. It makes highly efficient use of space in the garden, important to me because of my small garden. It makes garden planing and layout simple. The Mel's Mix soil blend is light and friable. It dries out quickly in the spring so you can plant earlier, and it is easy to weed. When planting seeds, all you need to do is mark out the planting pattern on the squares and plant. I usually use my finger and an approximation of the spacing. Then I ran across this device on Amazon.



This is the Seeding Square, a very clever device that makes it simple to layout the garden. This was funded by a kickstarter campaign and is manufactured in Canada from a very tough plastic. It is washable and waterproof, so it won't be ruined if you leave it out in the rain. One device accommodates all spacing and planting depths. It is flat, easy to store, and comes with a plastic zipper case. The planting patterns are color coded and it comes with a planting guide, a combination dibble/seeder, and a funnel. The dibble is marked in inches and has an embedded magnet to store it in the slot when not in use.



The shape of the device is like a pizza box. The raised sides are pressed into the soil, marking out the sides of the squares. The funnel stores underneath when not using.



The Seeding Square is started in the corner to align with the sides of the bed. The dibble is used to make planting holes at the necessary depth. If you want to use the seeding funnel, you can now plant your seeds.



Here I am planting this bed with bush beans, with a 9 per square spacing (the yellow holes). The squares and 2 inch holes were quickly laid out. Given the size of the bean seeds I did not use the funnel and chose to insert them with my fingers. The column to the left was planted with pole beans that will be trellised. For them, I use an 8 per square spacing, just the inner two rows of red circles.



When planting carrots, the funnel definitely was handy. Above I am seeding carrots in the space allocated to the now sadly deceased shallot plants. The small size of the carrot seed and the relatively shallow depth of planting hole makes the use of the funnel very handy. Two days of planting have proven the Seeding Square very handy and well worth the somewhat pricey $29 US.

What Works Well in Raised Beds (and What Doesn't) Part 1

 

 

I now have two years of experience growing vegetables in raised beds, so I am getting a handle on which vegetables grow very well in raised beds and which don’t. I am using the Square Foot Gardening method promoted by Mel Bartholomew. SFG uses a soilless medium called “Mel’s Mix”, consisting of one third peat moss, one third vermiculite, and one third blended compost. Replanting is done by adding additional compost to the squares being replanted. In Part 1 I will concentrate on the positive and talk about the vegetables I have had success growing in my raised bed garden. Part 2, to come later, will talk about the negatives.

 

The use of the soilless mix in raised beds has many advantages:

• The soilless mix has excellent mechanical properties, being light and fluffy, well-aerated with good water retention.

• Raised beds thaw and dry out quicker in the spring so planting can start earlier.

• The square foot method provides very efficient use of space, maximizing production from a given area.

• Weeding is easier and beds can be kept relatively weed-free.

• The pH of the mix is near neutral so there’s no need for liming or soil tests. The blended compost (replenished every planting) provides organic matter, nutrients and most trace minerals.

• Watering is easier and the beds make efficient use of water, retaining it and minimizing runoff.

 

So which vegetables work well with the SFG method? In assessing that question, you first have to factor out all the variables caused by weather, pests and disease. I experienced  plenty of those elements the last few years. In general, vegetables with reasonable root masses and reasonable nutrient requirements should grow well in raised beds. A square (foot) in a six inch raised bed will have a soil volume of only half a cubic foot for plants to grow in and supply nutrients. Of course roots are free to spread into neighboring squares, but if they do too much of that, production in those squares will be affected.

 

Leafy Vegetables

All of the leafy vegetables I have grown (lettuces, endive, escarole, chard, spinach, parsley, and even kale and collards) have grown very well. They like the light, well-drained soil mix in the beds. Weather is the biggest factor affecting them. since they tend to like cool weather. Since I plant them fairly densely, slugs can be a problem but are easily controlled with Sluggo. Flea beetles and cabbage moths are problems on kale and collards. Those can be controlled either with row cover or sprays approved for organic gardens like Spinosad and Pyrethrin.

 

Small Root Vegetables

The root vegetables I grow (beets, radishes, turnips, carrots) should be happy in the Mel’s Mix. My biggest problems with them have been weather and pests. I have had the most luck with beets, although they grow slowly and occasionally get Cercospora leaf spot. I am going to experiment with adding a boron (Boraxo) supplement this coming season. Apparently beets (and broccoli) respond well to boron in the soil (even Mel recommends the use of a boron supplement).

 

Pests are the biggest problem with the other root vegetables. Radishes and turnips were plagued by flea beetles, which have become a severe problem in my area the last few years. In addition, the cabbage root maggot and  carrot fly maggot cause a lot of damage. The cure for all that is row cover, which is a real nuisance to manage. I may have to consider consolidating all these crops in a single raised bed so I can cover the entire bed. That’s unfortunate because they lend themselves to being tucked in here and there in the garden to maximize the harvest.

 

I grew carrots in raised beds last year for the first time and they are a bit challenging. I used Granny’s seed mat planting method, but germination times were long and germination was spotty. The carrots were supposed to get a good start before the kale and collards achieved any size, but that didn’t happen. The other consideration for carrots is length. I looked for varieties that grew to a length of 5-6 inches. You can  use a “top hat” to extend the depth of the bed, but that is far more trouble than I am willing to take on. The carrots pulled earlier were beautiful, but the later carrots were riddled with carrot fly maggot damage. The only reason I am going to plant them again in 2014 is the superior flavor of fresh carrots.

 

Beans

In general, beans (both bush and pole) grow very well in raised beds. I have good crops every year with no problems. I usually use seed inoculant, particularly in a new bed, since you never know if the right kind of bacteria are present. Studies have shown that even in real soil, inoculants help increase yield. One thing I have noticed is that during the first few weeks of plant growth in spring, the leaves of the plants are a bit yellowish and become darker green as daytime temperatures increase. I attribute this to the fact that the nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria work better in warmer weather.

 

Peas

Peas also grow well in raised beds. I just grow snow peas and snap peas. Regular peas yield too little for the space they take. And I always use inoculant before planting. My past practice has been to select varieties that only grow 2-3 feet tall. I confine them in the bed with some short fencing and let them grab onto each other for support. The problem with this technique is it is a bit difficult to find the peas in the jungle of foliage to harvest them.

 

Cucumbers

Cucumbers do well in raised beds but need to be trellised. Cucumber beetles (which spread bacterial wilt) and powdery mildew (PM) are the two biggest problems. It helps to pick resistant varieties. PM can be controlled with sprays, but the beetles are a real problem. I usually seed cucumbers directly in the soil, but last year the weather caused germination problems. I had to revert to starting seeds indoors in pots and then transplant them in the garden. If you can manage the diseases and pests, and the weather is not awful, cucumbers will do well in raised beds.

 

Onions, Garlic, Shallots

I have had good luck growing onions and garlic in raised beds. They are shallow rooted, like light soils but don’t like competition from weeds. The raised bed environment is ideal for them. Last year I planted onions in the row next to the tomatoes. They did well and so did the tomatoes, whose roots had grown into the neighboring row but under the onions. The only conflict occurred when the onions tops were falling over and I was supposed to stop watering them, but I knew the tomato roots were in the same area and needed watering.

 

Garlic from cloves planted last fall did well. I harvested the bulbs in July and was pleased with the yield. So much so that this year I planted five different varieties. My one failure was trying to grow shallots from bulbs planted in the fall. The heavy snowfall cover last winter caused the bulbs to rot and not a single one survived. In 2014 I am going to try growing shallots from seed, like onions.

 

Summer Squash

If you stick to bush-type summer squash and give them enough room, summer squash will thrive in a raised bed environment. They like the light soil rich in organic matter, so I make sure to add plenty of compost. The trick is to pick varieties that are fairly reasonable in their space demands yet will produce a reasonable amount of fruit. I plant them in a 3x3 square, usually pushing 4 seeds into a circle in the center of the square. For zucchini, Dunja is a great variety. It forms a compact, open bush which allows good air circulation and makes it easy to spot fruit before they become baseball bats. It pumps out beautiful dark green fruit and it is highly resistant to PM.

 

The path to success revolves around pest and disease management. Around here, squash bugs and squash vine borers are a plague. Add in PM later in the season and there is a lot to deal with. Row cover helps with  the pests, but when the squash start flowering, you are faced with the choice of hand pollinating or removing the cover. Planting PM-resistant varieties helps, as do sprays, for the PM.

Harvest Monday 20 May 2013

Well, it had to happen sometime. I was able to cut my first harvest of salad greens. The greens below included New Red Fire, Butercrunch, Green Ice, Forellenschluss, escarole, endive, and some herbs. It was nice to finally have a salad with my own lettuces.

 

 

The garden seems to be in slow motion. The lettuce went into the garden on April 1 and Sunday was May 20. That is seven weeks to first cutting. It has been dry and cold at night but the lettuce has been watered regularly. I keep hoping that the garden is going to shift into high gear soon. We have a week of warm, rainy weather coming up and maybe that will do it. Tomatoes will go in the end of next week but peppers and eggplant will wait a few more weeks along with the bush beans.

 

 

However, there was indeed activity at the Bolton Community Gardens on Sunday even if it wasn’t happening in my own plot. A local troop of Girl Scouts has a plot they use to grow food for the local food pantry. Last year after a day of mucking out weeds, they spied my Square Foot Garden and asked why they couldn’t have one. They spent the winter planning and raising funds and now are putting in their own raised beds, using the Square Foot Gardening method. They used my blog articles on constructing my beds to plan and build their own. They built and filled 5 beds and weeded their plot in one day with just Girl Power! I’ll have another post  with more details later.

 

 

That’s what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Garden Planting Schedule 2013

I finally have completed my 2013 planting schedule sufficiently to post on Google Drive and share. It is a modification of my spreadsheet from last year. I deleted the column for seed source because that information is in the Planting List.  Since I am using Square Foot Gardening, I have added two columns for number of squares allotted to the vegetable, and either seeds/plants per square or the number of plants I need to start indoors. Note that the file will be changing as I tweak the schedule.  I print off a copy of this spreadsheet and take it to the garden with me, along with the plot plan. The biggest hurdle remaining is completing the plot plan and figuring out where to allocate all of these vegetables I hope to plant.

 

One of the challenges I have is figuring out what to do with the new and uncommon plants I am trying. I am going to treat fava beans just like peas and plant them in late March. Kohlrabi will be started and transplanted on the same dates as other cabbage family plants like kale and collards. I also figured an August planting date for fall harvest of Kohlrabi. Then there are the Asian greens like Tatsoi, Fun Jen, and Hon Tsai Tai. Most of these can be grown in early spring and late summer/fall, but I have no experience with them.

 

We are having a snowy but not awful Sunday, perfect for thinking about gardening. I finally got my Copra and Rossa Lunga di Tropea onion seeds planted in pots today and nestled on the heat mat. I outsmarted myself flipping particular seed varieties back and forth between my Fedco and Pinetree orders and succeeded in not ordering the Red Wing onion seeds I need to plant today while double ordering the fava beans. Oh well, I ordered a packet from Pinetree and will just have to wait for them to arrive. I hope I like fava beans.

 

I decided to try seed blocks for seed starting this year and ordered 3/4”, 1.5” and 2” soil block makers. I also ordered a 20 quart bag of Johnny’s 512 mix, which cost me $12 plus $6 dollars for shipping. A $20 box of dirt! But I wanted to see what the real thing was like before I try mixing my own. Some use the Vermont Composting’s Fort Vee Mix, which is carried by a local hydroponic supplier, so I may also try that when my supply of 512 runs out. I also used the 512 for the onion seeds since it has compost and some fertilizer and the onions will be in the pot for a long time.

Memorial Day Weekend Planting

The new raised beds are complete and filled with Mel’s Mix and the Memorial Day weekend is here. It’s time to finish planting and we have perfect weather, mostly sunny, warm, with the prospect of a few showers or thunderstorms. I spent Saturday and Sunday planting seeds and transplants, and erecting the tomato trellises for the new beds.All the beds were mulched with chopped straw to preserve moisture and prevent soil from splashing on the plants.

This will be my first year in a long time growing tomatoes in a raised bed. I built 8 inch beds to give me an extra inch or so, even though everyone says 6 inches is enough. This will also be my first year in a long time training tomatoes up a string trellis. I do have experience with this and used the technique in my original raised beds back in the late 80s, where I did indeed plant one tomato per square foot.

So here we go. I have a pair of Juliet tomatoes I am trying this year, variously referred to as a mini-Roma or a really big grape tomato. My neighbor planted them last year because her husband likes them. Her vines were so loaded with fruit she lost a lot to drops and birds. So I am giving them a trial this year. If they get ahead of me they will become sauce.

Finishing My SFG - Adding the Final Beds, Part II

Finally it has stopped raining, although we still get a lot of cloudy and threatening weather. Over two days I took advantage of the weather to mix up two batches of Mel’s Mix and fill my new raised beds. The boxes are 4x6 by 8 inches deep, so doing the math that is 16 cubic feet of mix. Since 16 is not evenly divisible by 3, I rounded up to eighteen. One box required 6 cubic feet of each component. I happened to have bought two 6 cubic foot bags of coarse vermiculite, so that works out. Six bags of five different kinds of compost, check! For the peat moss, I bought one 4 cubic foot bag and one 2 cubic foot bag of Canadian peat moss and used the eyeball method to divide them.

The technique for mixing the ingredients is detailed in an earlier post so I will not repeat it here. Instead, I will offer a few observations. When mixing up a batch of Mel’s Mix the fourth and fifth times, I was considerably more relaxed and less anal than the first few times I did it. Practice makes relaxed. Mixing 18 cubic yards of mix is a heck of a lot easier than 24 cubic feet, the amount needed to fill three 4x4 boxes. Still, I figure I mixed about a half ton of Mel’s Mix, so it was a significant amount of work to fill the two boxes. Mixing 18 cubic feet when calculations called for 16 turned out to be fortunate, yielding an amount of mix that almost filled the beds to the top. Finally, I was at first skeptical about the #4 coarse vermiculite but I now like it and believe it makes the mix much lighter and fluffier than finer grades. Finer grades allow the mix to compact and settle more.

This picture shows 6 cubic feet of #4 vermiculite dumped on the blended compost. You can see the size of the pieces, some almost a half inch in size with very little in the way of fine particles.

Finishing My SFG – Adding the Final Beds, Part I

Last year I planted my tomatoes in a row at the end of my plot in the Bolton Community Garden since I had already built and filled 8 raised beds and planting season was well underway. The plan was to finish the implementation of raised beds this spring with the addition of two 4x6 raised beds. These beds were going to be used for tomatoes along the long side of the boxes, planted 1 per square and trained up a trellis.

I began looking at alternatives, buy versus build, cedar versus composite. I actually bought a couple of cedar raised beds from The Farmstead. They had a 4x6 box using 5/4 rough sawn white cedar lumber with mortise and tenon joints, 8 inches deep. These same beds are sold by other vendors, including White Flower Farm. The best price was from The Farmstead itself, $104.50 for a 4x6 including shipping. Unfortunately, the specification were a bit lacking. The quoted dimensions were for the total length of the side pieces, including the mortise and tenon. When you assemble the boxes, the interior dimensions are a bit more than 3x5 feet, or 15 squares, quite a bit less than the 24 squares I was planning on. I decided to keep the Farmstead beds and use them at home for strawberries and herbs. For the community garden, I decided to build my own beds.

The decision to build my own was based on the discovery that Lowes carried 1x8 cedar lumber (the Home Depot I checked only had 1x6 and I wanted a little more depth for the tomatoes, despite what Mel says). So the boxes were going to be constructed of 1x8 cedar (Lowes had 8 and 12 foot lengths, which was perfect). I also bought some 1x2 and 1x4 pieces to use as corner blocks and as braces for the bottoms. The beds are going to sit on blocks to keep them out of the standing water that we frequently get after a hard rain, so I would need a bottom. I planned to use hardware cloth rather than plywood for the bottoms, with landscape fabric to keep the mix in the boxes. Assembly in the garage was fairly easy, as shown below.

Organic Compost Survey

I am in the planning stages for adding the final two raised beds to my garden. These will be 4x6 foot beds and will house 12 tomato plants along the long edge, trellised up nylon cords, leaving 36 squares for other plants. Since I have to fill these beds with Mel’s Mix and my own supply of compost is limited, I have been researching what types of organic compost are available in my area west of Boston. First of all, I have written off Lowes, Home Depot and Wal-Mart. I am only looking at what is available in bags at  local garden centers and nurseries.

The following is the list of bagged organic composts I have found and review in this diary, along with my own compost:

• Dave’s Own Compost
• McEnroe Organic Premium Compost
• Dr. Earth Natural Choice Compost
• Vermont Compost Company Compost
• Coast of Maine Quoddy Blend Lobster Compost
• Gro-Well Organic Garden Compost
• Jo-Barb Farms (Bolton, MA) Compost

Dave’s Own Compost

I have a black plastic compost bin behind the shed which I use to produce my own compost. I used to use 4” square plastic-coated fencing cut into sections and rolled into cylinders. I could fill these with leaves and pine needles, then throw in kitchen scraps and some top soil. Harvesting was easy by just pulling the fencing straight up, leaving the pile standing there. The top layer of partially decomposed material could then be pitch-forked back into the bin, leaving the pile of completed compost sitting there to be screened and used in my garden.

Unfortunately, the open nature of the bins made it easy for squirrels and raccoons to play around and toss the contents all over the place, plus they tended to dry out very easily in warmer weather and were easily crushed by heavy snows and falling tree limbs. I switched to the plastic bin two years ago and it has worked out fairly well. The bin gets some leaves, plus garden refuse and kitchen scraps, including egg shells, coffee grounds, tea bags, melon rinds, corn husks and cobs, spoiled produce, stems from collards and kale, etc. I fuss at my wife to keep fruit and avocado pits out of the scrap bucket since they do not decompose in anyone’s lifetime and are as obnoxious as rocks in the compost.

My own compost is dark brown in color, crumbly with good tilth. Some partially composted egg shells and pine needles are present but that doesn't bother me. It looks lighter in color than the bagged composts because it was drier when I took it out of the bottom of the bin.

Soggy Bottoms

Before Irene we had a front come in and stall, dropping enough rain to saturate the ground. Then Irene, which fortunately (for us, not so for folks west of us) tracked to the west of us so winds and rainfall were significant but not catastrophic. Now we have the remnants of Lee, which has dropped rain on the area since Tuesday. The garden is once again flooded, worse than after Irene. My beds are sitting in a stream of  running water 4-5 inches deep and I have to wade around in rubber boots to tend to plants and harvest produce.

Wading around in the water, my boots being sucked into the muck, the weather semi-tropical with humidity, I could be trying to garden in the bayou. Stooping down to pick beans, I risked dipping my bum in the water and getting a soggy bottom. Since we had just attended a Serra Hull bluegrass concert, a musical prodigy who played with Alison Krauss at the Grand old Opry when she was just 11, I was reminded of the music from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Soggy Bottom Boys. Meanwhile I kept an eye peeled for any ‘gator who might me lurking around, waiting to ambush me.

Square Foot Gardening Symposium

I attended the  Square Foot Gardening Symposium in Elkridge, Maryland (just south of Baltimore) the end of August. It was a great experience and I met a lot of nice fellow gardeners. The picture above shows me receiving my certificate as a certified Square Foot Gardening teacher from Kim Roman, the local coordinator and instructor, and Tracy Mastergeorge, the SFG office manager.



Above is the class picture with Kim in the middle and Tracy and her son in front. It was taken on the porch of the residence at Samaritan Women in Baltimore. Fortunately, hurricane Irene held off and the sun came out Friday afternoon so were able to visit and see the gardens. Then it was a race for home on Saturday, trying to stay ahead of the storm.

Building My SFG - Part III, Filling Beds with Mel’s Mix

Once the beds are constructed and set in place, it is time to fill them with Mel’s Mix, the perfect synthetic (and organic) soil mix. Three 4x4 foot boxes require 24 cubic feet of Mel’s Mix to fill them (4 x 4 x 0.5 x 3 = 24). This much Mel’s Mix requires one 4 cubic foot bale of compressed peat moss (expands to 8 cubic feet), two 4 cubic foot bags of coarse vermiculite, and eight 1 cubic foot bags of 5 different kinds of compost.

Building My SFG - Part II, Building the Beds

The next step on my way to Square Foot gardening was to prep the garden plot to ready it for the raised beds. It was a very wet spring and it rained a lot during this preparation work. The soil was saturated and very gummy. I chose not to till the soil. I simply used a hoe, spade and rake to hack away at weeds and to roughly level the plot. Once I had the plot weed free and level, I covered the plot with weed barrier, pinning it down with U-shaped wire staples made for the purpose.



I already had purchased my materials and on rainy days I assembled the 3x6 boxes in the garage. These boxes would fit in my SUV so they were built in the garage and installed in the garden to help anchor down the weed barrier. These boxes needed a little extra consideration, since the material was 5/4 and had channels molded into them. To reinforce the corners and allow material for screws to bite into, I bought composite balusters and cut them into 6 inch pieces. You can see the details below. This method produced sturdy boxes that for a 6 foot length were adequately rigid and did not bow.

Building My SFG - Part I, Planning

The very first step, of course, was to plan the layout of the garden: the size and numbers of the boxes and the width of the paths. I measured the dimensions of the plot, then did the  planning at home on graph paper. I used the New Square Foot Gardening scheme devised by Mel Bartholomew in the book of the same name. Mel recommends 4’ wide paths between boxes, which would be nice if I had the space. But with a 15’ by 22’ plot, I had to make some compromises to fit in the number of boxes I wanted.

I took advantage of the particular location of my plot to maximize the amount of space for beds. Since I had wide community garden paths on three sides of my plot, I positioned the boxes 6 inches from the edges of those paths and planned to use the garden paths for access to my raised beds. On the fourth side, where I abut another garden plot, I also positioned the beds 6 inches from the neighboring plot. I figured I could use the paths within my plot to access the beds.

The first row contains two 3x6 boxes. The idea was to use these boxes for plants that take more space than a single square, such as summer squash, broccoli,and Brussels sprouts. These boxes were positioned 6 inches from the borders of the gardens, with two feet between them (rather than Mel’s recommended four). So far, this is workable while not ideal.

Next were two rows of 3 4x4 boxes. I skimped a bit (actually, a lot) on the spacing for these boxes. The plot is only 15’ wide, so paths between the boxes are only 12 inches. I figured I would be able to access squares in the boxes from the sides and only use the paths between boxes to get from row to row. What I didn’t consider is the vertical space taken by hoops for row cover and the trellises. When trying to squeeze between beds, my feet can traverse the foot wide space but my shoulders collide with the trellis supports. So I would recommend at least 2 feet between boxes if you can’t meet Mel’s 4 foot specification.

The last row will eventually contain two 4x6 boxes with 2 feet of spacing between them. These will be built next year and used for tomatoes trained up trellises. This year I just tilled the soil and used row cover to plant my tomatoes. So far they are doing great. Hmmm, should I really build the raised beds?

The next step was to look for suitable material to use for the boxes. The choices I considered were cedar or redwood dimension lumber, composite decking material, and standard framing lumber. Pressure treated lumber was ruled out. I did a tour of my local Lowes and Home Depot stores but found no cedar or redwood. I suspect they carry it or can order it, but I didn’t find anyone to ask. I found Lowes has its own brand of composite decking lumber that is fairly cheap if grey color is OK. I also considered pre-fabricated beds from various sources, but they were too expensive for my budget.

My final decision was to build the 3x6 boxes from composite decking, which comes in 12’ lengths. Three 12’ pieces are required to build the two boxes, for a cost of about $32 per box. Five of the 4x4 boxes were built from fir framing lumber at a cost of about $9 per box. I also purchased one 4x4 Suncast resin plastic raised bed from Lowes for $44 to give it a try.

Going Vertical with Cucumbers

In past gardens I have used the traditional hill method for my cucumbers, planting cucumber seeds in a ring around the top of a mound of soil. The mound was then enclosed with a cylinder of 4” plastic coated metal wire to act as a trellis and to contain the vines. This worked OK but made it hard to work inside the fencing.

For my raised beds I am using a trellis attached to the ends of the boxes. The trellises are constructed of 1/2 inch metal conduit connected with 90 degree ells. The bottoms are attached to each side of the box with a pair of conduit clamps screwed to the box. I attached 5’ wide nylon garden netting to the conduit using cable ties.

Ghost of Gardens Past

This garden is not my first experience with raised bed gardening. Back in 1986 I built some raised beds in my “back yard”, which is really just a clearing in a stand of Eastern white pine. Since the “soil” was a few inches of forest duff on top of a dense mixture of clay and pebbles left by the glaciers, I had to go with raised beds filled with peat and bagged top soil. With a half day of sun, these beds actually were pretty productive for about five years. Then the tree roots found the boxes and invaded. They sucked the moisture right out of the boxes and stunted my plants, so I abandoned the boxes.

This picture shows the abandoned boxes being reclaimed by forest. Note that I built trellises using 2x4s and strung them with either the 7” nylon garden netting (for peas and cucumbers) or with nylon cords that I twisted tomatoes around. I also installed white plastic tube in which I inserted hoops of plastic tubing to serve as supports for row cover or plastic. The black plastic hoops have been recycled for use in my new garden.

What is Square Foot Gardening?

Square Foot Gardening is a concept developed by Mel Bartholomew and first published in his book of the same title in 1981. In the 1981 book, Mel proposed a garden layout consisting of 4’ by 4’ beds with walkways between, a variant of wide bed gardening. Each 4’ square bed was divided into 16 squares which were the basis for planning the planting of the bed. Mel provided planting guides for different vegetables, based on the number of plants or seeds per square (foot). For example, beans were planted 9 seeds per square, but peppers were 1 per square.
Maybe it was just my engineering training, but in 1986 I found Mel’s book intriguing. It was an organized, highly efficient method for growing vegetables in small spaces. And since I was planning to build raised beds so I could garden on top of ledge, I was able to adapt his 4’ squares to 4’ by 4’ raised beds built from 2x8 lumber. I also added trellises at the sides of the boxes so I could train tomatoes, cucumbers, and pole beans to grow vertically. I had great success with the garden until I had to abandon it (the subject of another post).


So I have years of positive experience with “square foot gardening” and raised beds. When I started thinking about it for my community garden plot, I picked up Mel’s new book, All New Square Foot Gardening. The “new” concepts are raised beds (already there) and the use of a special soil mix, called Mel’s Mix. I did a lot of internet research and there seems to be widespread consensus that Square Foot Gardening is the way to go. It was definitely an investment of effort and cash to go with square foot gardening and I hope I’m right. I’ll let you know.

For more about Square Foot Gardening, see here.

My Square Foot Garden

My garden plot is located in the Bolton Community Garden (zone 6a). Plots are 15' by 22', there is a well with a hand pump for watering, and the garden is surrounded by a 7' deer fence with chicken wire buried 18" below ground. The garden opened three years ago, during that very wet spring. My plot was sodden and every time I tilled the soil to dry it out, we got a week of rain. Last year I moved to a drier and sunnier spot and had a good year. 

This spring, however, started to look like two years ago. In early May the garden was soggy and we had a lot of rain. Actually, the whole Eastern US was getting soaked. On our trip to St. Louis in mid-May, we saw flooded fields everywhere with the plant stubble from last year still unplowed. So I can't complain but I suspect food prices will be going up. That's all the more reason to have our own gardens to provide our families with fresh produce. 

Faced with the prospect of another possible wash out, I decided to go to raised beds in my garden plot. I used Mel Bartholomew's New Square Gardening design, based on 6" depth raised bed filled with "Mel's Mix," a synthetic mix of peat moss, vermiculite and compost. Most of the garden plot was covered with a polyester landscape fabric and the boxes were arranged on top, and then filled with the mix.