My first attempt with SFG

When I assembled my first box I documented my progress, so that's what I'm going to share in this blog.  Underneath each picture are some comments about what I was doing.  At the end I'll make some comments about mistakes I made or things I learned from my first attempts and what I would do differently.

Cleaned up the yard and started removing grass from the area under where the box will go.

Box constructed with 2 X 8 spruce.  Dimensions of the box is 4 feet by 8 feet.  I rotated the corners per the instructions in Mel's book (my bible).  All the grass has been removed from the inside and I made sure the box was level.

I laid landscaping cloth on the inside of the box to prevent grass and weeds from growing up through my precious dirt.   I left lots of room on all sides so I could easily get around the box for watering, weeding and maintenance. 

Mel's Mix!  Equal parts of peat moss, vermiculite and compost.  The vermiculite was very hard to find in large quantities.  I finally found 4 cu ft bags at Cobblestone Greenhouses in Calgary.  They ran about $50 and I used 2 to make up enough to fill my box.  I also used several kinds of compost as Mel recommends at least 5 kinds.  Altogether it cost me about $200 to build the box and make the Mel's Mix.  In future years I'd only need to add compost so it really is just the first year that's expensive.  I used a tarp to blend my Mel's Mix (per the book).  I did it in two separate batches since I had a lot of volume.

Mel says a garden without a grid isn't really a square foot garden.  For my grid I took a suggestion he made in his book and used wood laths which are pre-cut to 4 ft lengths.  I used melding plates in the middle to make it into an 8 ft length where needed and small L-brackets to attach the laths to the sides of the box.  I also used nuts and bolts at each intersection to hold it all together.

The assembled box full of Mel's Mix and ready for planting.  Not only is it functional but also very attractive in my opinion.  More pictures to come showing it all planted up and throughout harvest!

So now a few comments about what I learned.  First, a 2 X 6 piece of wood is only 5 1/4" wide, so if you're growing root crops it isn't very deep.  Mel recommends 2 X 6s but he also says the dirt should be at least 6" deep.  (Yeah, he contradicted himself a little bit.)  I recommend using at least 2 X 8s (7 1/4") or 2 X 10s (9 1/4") or even 2 X 12 (11 1/4") for construction.  Also, by rotating the corners you lose 1 1/2" (the depth of the wood) off your interior dimensions.  Then each lath is also 1 1/2" wide which means in my case that my squares ended up being about 10 1/2" square instead of true square feet.  In future blogs I'll explain how I modified my new box to get past this issue.  Ultimately I recommend getting out some graph paper and writing down measurements before buying wood and assembling a box.

Ok, so in my next blog I'll show some pictures from planting right through harvesting.

The function of this blog

A couple years ago I read the the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.  I was absolutely fasinated by the ideas he suggested for building garden boxes using a square foot grid and his special soiless 'Mel's mix' instead of dirt.  He explains how it is possible to use a very small space to have a huge crop of vegetables.

Last year I built my first square foot garden.  It was 4 feet by 8 feet and was extremely functional.  I was excited during the entire gardening season about how it worked.  It was so easy to water and I never had to fertilize because I had used Mel's mix.  This Spring I moved to a new townhouse and decided to leave my box behind.  I did however dig up all my Mel's mix because it was quite expensive to originally make.  I've now made a new box in my new backyard.

Once again I am very excited about gardening this year and in particular, my square foot garden for my vegetables.  In fact I even started working at a greenhouse over the summer to see what hints I might pick up from other people.  I really would like to share the progress of my square foot gardening, hence this blog.  Maybe I'll get some cool comments from people out there who share my enthusiasm!  In my next post I plan to share some pictures and comments about what I did last year.  After that I'll plan to share what's going on with this year's garden.  Maybe I can get more people interested in what I think is a truly phenomenal way to grow a vegetable garden!