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Showing posts with label square food gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label square food gardening. Show all posts

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Fall harvest

I had a poll on the blog about what went well in your gardens and here is the results
8 people took the poll
What did the best in your garden this year?
Fruit trees 0
Squash 1
Tomatoes 5
Carrots and beets 0
Didn't have a garden this year 2
Green beans and peas 0

I thought for my own sake I would write things I learned this year in gardening.

1. Because my pear tree got fire blight disease I'm going to spray for that next year
2. I didn't get one apple off my two apple trees and my neighbor said her parents only get apples every other year. Lets hope that's true and I get apples next year.
3. I loved loved doing my garden in the square foot fashion because.... I hardly had any weeds. I kept track of everything and knew what every plant was. I loved assigning a few squares to my kids. They got to choose what they wanted to plant and then they took care of it. It was a really good experience for them and they enjoyed it.
4. Watermelons don't work growing up a trellis. I think because the stem is so thin it doesn't have the ability to carry that much weight. Traeden was devastated when his watermelon fell of the vine.
5. I can grow carrots! But getting them to germinate was a trick. I reseeded some squares 4 times and some still didn't come up. I think I need to water a little more regularly at first for these seeds.
6. Pumpkins grow great up a trellis. It was so cool to see this large pumpkin 4 feet off the ground
7. I need to do more green beans and plant them sooner.
8. Eggplant flowers were really pretty but we only saw one actually turn into an eggplant. (not going to do that again)
9. Definitely going to do more beets
10. Spinach was way fun. I'm going to try to spread out the harvest better by planting one square every week till it gets too hot.
11. Zucchini is always a huge producer. The trick is to harvest these every day so they don't get big.
12. Tomatoes--I'm only planting the early tomatoes. We hardly had any that got red before it froze. We just have too short a season.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Square Foot Gardening





Devin and I have been busy getting ready to garden.  I am so excited because we now have a garden full of beautiful beds Devin designed and made!  We are filling them with a great garden soil mix that is so wonderful to work with.  We bought the "All New Square Foot Gardening" book and just love it.  Devin is actually excited to help me garden.  The idea of square foot gardening is so neat because you can grow more in less space and less work.  I love how much little I weed and it's because I don't water the whole garden.  You only water what you plant.  So far we have planted onions, raspberry starts, concord grapes, and an apricot tree.  The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the last few days so I've been taking advantage of it and spending some time outside gardening.  The best was that last night we ate our first pick of asparagus.   Yum!  I love asparagus.  We like to saute it in olive oil with garlic.  I have some pictures to show you the bed that Devin build for me.  The metal is trellis' for pole beans, and our squash.  The beds are made from cherry rounds.  The joints are lap joints to make them stronger with a 3 foot rebar driven down into the ground to keep them in place.  I love the wood chips around all the beds so I don't get muddy when I garden.  Our soil is so clay and it really sticks to you when wet. I really have no experience in herbs.  Anyone have any suggestions of easy herbs to grow to start out with?