Raised Bed Box Gardening and the Square Foot Method - Box 1

Today was a great day...I was able to set out the first transplants of the season and direct seed some vegetables into my new box gardens.

As you can tell from my prior post Getting the Garden Ready for Spring there wasn't anything spectacular about my garden area this past spring. I had debated on whether to go back to box gardening and the square foot method in particular. My most successful gardens at other houses we have lived in were box gardens. Sometimes they were difficult to till as the dirt would spill onto the pathways and there was never the option to change the layout of the garden. Because of that, I have hestiated for the past seven years to put in box gardens here. There was also the part of me that thought a rural home needed traditional row gardens, but since I'm over that now, I'm finally ready to get serious about maximizing my space with these new beds.

I also had a hard time considering growing your own vegetables to be frugal minded if one had to go out and purchase frames and dirt for the beds. My husband likes to create things for posterity - including garden beds - but I was able to convince him to just purchase cheap boards and call it good. With the four-way garden soil purchased at a local landscape supply and the wood from Home Depot, each of my four 4' x 4' raised garden beds cost a total of $12 each. These frames should last several years and are not so large that if I got a hankering to move and rearrange them that I could. Based on the amount of produce that I intend to get out of them, they seemed to be a good way to go.



I have some of my warm season vegetables - tomatoes, peppers, squash, and the like - growing under flourescent lights in my garage. I also tend to start my peas in 9-cell starting containers as I seem to have better success that way. So today my pea starts went along a fence line, some cilantro and parsley went in about four of the squares, broccoli and cabbage starts took up eight more, and in the last four I direct seeded green onions in one, mesculin mix in two, and spinach in the last.



I have three more boxes to start working in next. The basil will stay indoors under lights for quite awhile more as will the pumpkins and zucchinni. I'll probably plant radishes, carrots and beets in this next bed, as they'll do well in our still cool and wet weather conditions.

We have room for many more boxes but didn't see the need to try to build and fill them all in the same weekend. I'm also anxious to bring my gardening to a new level by trying out PlanGarden.com which allows you to create, track, and view production results on line. Their 45-day trial offer will let me figure out whether I will benefit from this or not.

Check back soon to see our progress, and leave me a comment. I'd love to know what you think of raised garden beds versus traditional row gardening and if you've had experience with the Square Foot gardening method.

Next up...to figure out howto keep our free-range chickens out of the garden...