Square Foot Gardening, part 2

So, the jury's still out on this Square Foot Gardening thing... or really, just this "gardening" thing.

Since I last posted about SFG, we built a little 4x4 SFG according to the book. We planted several peppers,basil, lots of lettuce, one square of corn and two of pole beans. We also started 15 heirloom tomato plants in containers (the free nursery kind). We really wanted tomatoes, hence all the plants. The rest of the garden is based in part of expenditure (soooo much money spent each week on greens that usually go to waste!), partially on the timing of the season (a little late to plant, missed spinach season, etc) and also in part an experiment to see what would do best in our little homestead project.

Sadly, no sooner was the garden set when a deer strolled on by and munched its way haphazardly through. Most offensive was the fact that the deer ate some of our tomato plants!!! I thought those were poisonous!??!? We lost about 15% of the original planting. I bought some string and tin foil and used it to bolster the height of the fence around our yard. A week later, the deer returned, finished off the pole beans and peppers, took out two more tomatoes. :-(

I guess gardening is about learning and experimentation. The start-up costs have been significant and grossly outweigh any potential costs of buying fresh vegetables at the farmer's market. I'm hoping that by next year, it will be more equitable, since we won't have to re-purchase materials to make a box, add soil or deer abatement.

Thusfar, we're in the hole $265 in this endeavor.

$75 materials for box

$75 for soil mix ("Mel's Mix" of 16 square feet of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculit, 1/3 compost)

$75 for new deer fencing

$35 for plant starts (next year will have time to grow from seed)

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$260 --- that would be TONS of vegetables

Also, the hidden costs in this project is our time and all the water we're going to use to grow these vegetables.

We'll see how it all pans out by the end of this growing season... One of the advantages of the SFG method is that you can swap out mini-crops and therefore, grow through three seasons.

Square Foot Gardening

Frudgal Dad makes a great point on his blog that the drought in California is going to skyrocket produce costs this year, which should inspire many people to take up growing their own. This is the case for us for sure!

I've been reading up on making a square foot garden - a way of economically utilizing space and water resources to produce three crops / square foot. Again, Frugal Dad has a great article about square foot gardening, or "SFG" as it's sometimes called. I wish his site had more follow ups from his previous year's attempt, though!

A great resource for SFG is the Square Foot Gardening website, which has videos and books about the method, as well as lots of info on how far apart to plant certain crops, etc.