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square foot gardening?
Has anyone read or done this? Holy cow. I've just started reading it. It sounds great but the guy is also pretttty stuck on himself too. I mean, it's a smart idea and he's done a great job marketing it but how many proverbial pats on the back can one give oneself, ya know?
Also,he repeatedly talks about how easy it is to just whip up these raised beds with the extra accessories and uh... it'snot. To get a lot of this stuff home from a garden place, you'd need a) a truck and b) a couple people to carry all the stuff and c) someone willing to build it. Both my DH and I are the least handy people on this earth and DH has zero interest in this stuff so getting him to help me is a challenge (sigh).
I hate that I'm like this but I am so intimidated when I go into a Home Depot or Lowes and am looking for materials for this type of thing. I feellike a fish out of water and I haven't had the best of experiences at HD- ironically enough, mainly from the women employees there.
Oh well. anyway I'm going to try some of the approaches he mentions but maybe not the "official" grid-lined SFG pattern.
Re: square foot gardening?
I have! "Mel" does sound obnoxious in the books. I didn't use his "Mel's Mix", but I did make two 4x4 beds and used twine for the grids. His tips on spacing different plants are good too.
Other than that, I didn't drink the "SFG" Kool-Aid.
Mel is a hoot, but his book does simplify the process for you.
you can buy raised bed kits at HD/Lowes now that make building much easier. My dh built ours (we had the HD guys cut the wood to size for us since we only had a car to haul it) and it wasn't that bad. Just need to be able to use a powerdrill.
here are some kits on amazon, but check the garden section of HD/Lowes soon and you will find some.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=raised+bed+garden&sprefix=raised+bed+%2Caps%2C177
we used Mel's mix and it was hard to find 6 different kinds of compost, local garden centers were the best at Lowes/HD both carried the exact same kinds and we needed more variety obviously. Earl May had the vermiculite in stock, neither HD/Lowes carried it.
now we just add some new compost each year to enrich the soil. We used the grid the first year but removed it for our second year and it was just fine. Important for us was installing fencing as bunnies live under our shed. Some 2 foot chicken wire, metal stakes, and zip ties did the trick.
I looked back on my blog from the year we put them in, here are some posts that might help you.
https://pugsnotdrugs.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/plants-in-the-ground/
https://pugsnotdrugs.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/sfg-plan/
Gretchen Evie, born 7/8/2012 at 35w5d
Thanks for the info! I LOL'd at the SFG kool-aid.
I have a compost pile but it probably reaches max temperatures of 33 ?F in the winter time here ; ) I do not do the exact right ratio apparently.
Im REALLy excited to start it though.
Ditto pugz. I honestly love my Square Foot Garden. It is simple. I didn't build my own beds. I just purchased the Grow Beds from Gardener's Supply.
Like pugz, I just amend the soil each year with some pre-made compost from HD/Lowe's. The book also has a great guide for when certain crops can be planted. I could care less about the ego portion of Mel's writing. It's a great basic guide if you are just getting started.
This, exactly, except I did four 4x4 beds. I didn't read the book and just read tips on people's blogs. I like mysquarefootgarden.net