Starting a Square Foot Garden

A friend of mine mentioned that the square foot garden method didn’t require a lot of soil preparation.  For Bryan/College Station, that can be a huge benefit.  We have a lot of clay that makes it difficult to dig.  It requires fertilizers and emendations to make it suitable for growing anything.  I’m lucky and have a few big oak trees in my back yard that have been dropping leaves for a few years resulting in a nice black top soil similar to what I would find in the woods near where I grew up around Castroville, Texas.  The soil still isn’t all that great.

A good site for learning about the basics of square foot gardening is the official site of Mel Bartholomew, the author of All New Square Foot Gardening as well as many other resources on small footprint gardening.

[caption id=”attachment_13” align=”alignright” width=”225” caption=”Attached metal brackets”][/caption]

The first thing I did was put together a list of what I would need for a single 4’x4’ garden:

• 4 6”x4’ cedar boards (2 6”x8’ boards cut in half)
• 8 metal brackets (see photograph of them screwed in place)
• deck screws
• small screws
• finishing nails
• 25’ twine
• 4 cu. ft. peat moss
• 2 cu. ft. humus and manure
• 2 cu. ft. compost
• 2 cu. ft. top soil
• 4 cu. ft. vermiculite

I also purchased quite a few other things, like a shovel and a water hose, but they aren’t specific to gardening.  Mixing all of the soil components together resulted in a bit more than I needed (8 cu. ft. for a 16 sq. ft. garden), so I set some of it aside for a second garden.

I used the deck screws to put the cedar boards together.  When you do this, lay your boards out and put two screws part way through each one, all on the same end.  When you finish, each board should have two screws in one end and none in the other end.  Then, you can start putting them together making sure they are arranged so they form a square and not a rectangle (see close-up photograph below with the soil to see how they fit together).

[caption id=”attachment_15” align=”alignleft” width=”300” caption=”Structure and ground covering in place.”][/caption]

I cheated a bit on the ground cover.  You need something between your soil mix and the old ground so you don’t get a lot of weeds coming up.  Weeding every weekend takes some of the fun out of growing your own food, so you want to do everything you can to avoid weeds.  Unless you’re comfortable using lots of chemicals (I’d rather not use any — we didn’t use them when I was a kid), you will want a barrier.  I cheated by buying a commercial weed barrier, but you can get by with six layers of old newspapers.  Newspapers will degrade, but no before killing anything beneath them.

Once I had the barrier and boards in place, I mixed together the mixture.  I didn’t have any vermiculite when I started, so I changed the mix a bit adding the top soil and a bit more peat.  I was able to get a bit of compost from a pile some friends of mine had gotton in the morning.  They called over to Producers Cooperative and found the vermiculite (they’re also planning on starting a square foot garden).  I would suggest you call ahead to see if they have any.  They apparently get a shipment once in a while.

I mixed everything on the cover.  The vermiculite acts as a good indicator of how well mixed your soil is.  If it looks like it’s evenly distributed throughout, then everything else probably is as well.  If your compost and peat are like mine were, they will be very dry.  I watered them several times and mixed it up between waterings.  The vermiculite helps transport water, so you want to add that if you can (I had water pooling on top before I added the vermiculite).

[caption id=”attachment_18” align=”alignright” width=”267” caption=”Soil all mixed and watered.”][/caption]

The photo on the right shows everything in place except the vermiculite, dividing twine, and the plants. You should also notice how I joined the boards together to preserve the square: each board only has one pair of screws going completely through it.

Give yourself a full day to build your first garden without rushing.  It took me about seven hours to get to this point because I was running around town chasing last minute items and vermiculite.  I built a second square foot garden this morning in only a couple hours.

In my next post, I’ll talk about choosing the plants and where I decided to plant them.  Until then, let me know about your first experiences starting up a garden.