First Planting

Seeds are planted. Three squares each of three kinds of lettuce, red onions, peas in the back half of the back four squares, and chard sharing the other half of those squares with the peas. Looks like we might have to do that second box after all. Hmm. What if it were 3'x3'? I could use some of our old planters for herbs.

Last weekend, I asked a friend for advice on planting lettuce. Answer: Just broadcast it over the area. It's not tidy and the plants clump together, but you always eat what gets thinned out. This sounded very appealing. But in the interest of sticking to the plan and testing the SF method, I opted to be more orderly and reserved about it, poking little holes in the soil at two-inch intervals and carefully dribbling 2-3 seeds in each. Let's call it controlled broadcasting. It took a long time, was hard on the eyes, knees, and neck, and made me feel silly. 

In contrast, planting peas and chard was really straightforward. Hole, seed, fill. Onions? Probably shouldn't even by trying them by seed, but what the heck. I look at it as a test of patience, one that may run until the end of summer or beyond. Or, watching three square feet of no growth for a month or two. This is an area I need to do some more studying in. Heading for the forums...

Grid Setup

Staples and twine

I set up the grid for the Square Foot garden. Mel Bartholemew recommends wood strips for the grid. I used twine, attached to evenly spaced galvanized staples, hammered into the sides of the frame. The twine is thin, so I think the chic-wire cover will sit more securely on top of the frame than it might on slats. It's also cheaper, about five bucks for twine and staples. By looping the twine through one side I can tie off the other side with a square knot and get a very taught grid. If that matters.

Using slats would also have cut off access to six 1.5-inch strips of planting space. The box is already less than 4'x4' in workable area as a by-product of the method of box building.

I'm starting to wonder about that wire cover. With the trellis in place, the cover will not be usable, whether the trellis is attached inside or outside the frame. I'm going to have to noodle a while on that.

Local Vermin

Cute

It's still raining, but good weather is forecast for the next few days. The new soil in the frame settled only slightly. I haven't set up the "required" grid yet, but I did come up with what has to be the most efficient way to do it short of not doing it at all — staples. More on that later.

There will be no putting off the construction of a wire barrier to protect the crop from nibblers. The deer pictured here is the smallest of the largest uninvited guest. Pic taken last summer. The other 24/7 crew includes worry-worthy chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, cats, and birds of all kinds and sizes. I've seen woodchucks, water rats, foxes, and coyotes, but I have no recall of any garden destructive tendencies from them. Deer, rabbits, chipmunks are the biggies.

My barrier will keep out all but the chipmunks. I bought the chicken wire instead of the hardware cloth, and may yet exchange it for the latter. Ouch. Harder to cut, expensive, but also more durable.

Filled to the Brim

Soil mix in place

Yup, it’s full. And there’s some left over to top it off after it rains tonight. That’s assuming the whole thing will settle a bit.

I used a one-bushel bucket for a measure. Two batches were just about right. The suggested method of dumping it all on a tarp and tumbling it to mix by lifting alternate edges of the tarp worked very well. Unfortunately, I added a couple one-inch slits to the tarp by dragging it from the lawn to the box. Patches forthcoming.

Most of the compost component came from the bins we’ve kept over the last 20 years. The stuff is dark, rich, and dense, but it still seemed to disappear into the peat and vermiculite.

If the rain breaks tomorrow I’ll get the grid in place, and maybe even seed.

Total to date on project expenses: $97.08

Full Disclosure

I've finally caught up on the journal. I hope that from this point on the gardening will get more of my time than the posting. The seeds arrived, and on Saturday, weather permitting, I'll be back in the yard. Still much to do.

What to Plant?

Inexperience divided by cool vs. warm season vegetables, multiplied by proper companion plantings, minus the phases of the moon, all to the power of crop stretching equals confusion and despair. I need some rules, something like:

Keep it simple.

Grow what you like.

Don’t worry, this is only a test.

I’m here to learn. I can't know it all in advance. I won’t know it all in October. But by then I’ll have a base of experience on which to build next year’s choices, adjustments, and experience.

We’re big on salads around here. Big salads. Variety of lettuce, herbs. Let’s do that. Celery?

It’s nice to have a pile of sugar snap peas and carrots around.

Beans, broccoli, onions, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, chard.

Potatoes?

I’m starting to get that I’m starting late. Starting seeds indoors would have been smart in some cases. In others, we’ll be getting nursery plants no matter what. I’m ordering a mess of seed from Home Harvest Garden Supply. They have good basic varieties and an irresistible 40% off on Ferry Morse seeds, which puts all this experimenting within an affordable reach.

Basic Box Building

4x4 frame

I constructed a 4x4 foot bed frame from two eight-foot 2x6 white pine boards. Now — where to place it for maximum sunshine delivery?

Su and I were debating about which end of the bed to use; neither gets a full sun coverage for as long as one would like. The question was settled when Su suggested that we repurpose an old green-wood sandbox as a second 4x4 frame. “Put one at this end and one at that end.” She never believed that one box was enough. I just thought one was enough for a first-year learning experience. I’ll have to build up the bottom of the box with sand a bit so as not to have to use unnecessary additional, expensive, soil mix.

I’ll have some transplanting to do now. Day-lilies, Gooseneck Loosestrife, Burnet, Asters. The Forsythia bloomed late last week, so I’ve removed the rose collars and the dry leaf mulch from all the Roses in the yard. The Serviceberry  trees are budding.

Expensive Dirt

One of the compost components

One of the first challenges turns out to be finding the ingredients for the soil mix that Square Foot (SF) Gardening author Mel Bartholomew specifies. Mel’s Mix, as he calls it, is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 mixed composts, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite. The coarse vermiculite is especially problematic. There are only a few Web sources that come up in Google searches, and shipping a 4 cu.ft. bag to Chicago costs as much or more than the product itself. I see numbers totaling 40 to 50 dollars.

Turns out there’s a forum on gardenweb.com for SF gardeners, where many posters asking for local sources for vermiculite are often instructed to search out sources for hydroponic growing suppliers in their communities. At first, I didn’t get far with that. Then by some coincidence that I don’t recall, the subject came up at Easter dinner at my mother’s house, and my daughter and son-in-law-to-be, avid home brewers, told me about Brew & Grow in Chicago, a supplier for home brewers and hydroponic growers. Eureka, they have what I want, at the right price.

The rest of the ingredients will come from our own home compost pile, and maybe from a bag each of Bat Guano and Earthworm Casings, also sold by Brew and Grow.

What’s not to like?

My Site

Garden site, looking east.

Pretty grim in April. The Redbud on the left has nine lives; probably on number four now. Two main trunks died off, one last summer and the other over winter, leaving one misshapen on whose days are numbered. Numerous shoots await their turn to shine. I should find out how to prune and train them properly.

We're looking east, and when the afternoon sun is behind us the Redbud will shade a bed placed in that general area behind the bird bath, but plenty of sun comes in from the other side all morning. I'd guess about five hours. The other site it down at the other end beyond the day-lilies and this side of the compost been. That spot would get two or three more hours of sun. Sold.

More Sun

Garden prep begins with clearing a sunny spot for the raised bed. A 30-year old Buckthorn tree was marked for removal. Buckthorns are regarded as evil, invasive, eco-system wreckers in these parts. 

Last year I bought a homeowner’s chain saw (PoulanPro 18” for ~$159) and did a pretty nice job of trimming and thinning the Buckthorn. At the end of our yard is the middle fork of the north branch of the Chicago River. A local organization, Friends of the Chicago River, of which I’ve been a member on and off, encouraged me to finish the job and take the tree down completely. Part of their mission is to organize volunteer cleanup days every year, in part to root out invasive plants along the watershed. I’m setting up a date to make the last cut on the stump with a FCR representative on hand to apply an herbicide to the freshly cut stump, preventing further growth.

I won’t figure in the cost of the saw as part of the vegetable garden, but it’s fair to include the purchase of a replacement starter-pulley kit, chain, and a quart of chain oil this spring. Cost: $42.87.

I’ll keep a running tally of expenses for the project and report it here.

Start Here

My life long approach to new idea is: head for the library. It’s not quite that direct, of course, having evolved in the las ten-plus years first researching reader reviews on Amazon of books on the subject, making a list of what looks interestin, and then placing holds online through a huge suburban library network. Heading to the library then means picking up books as they arrive at my local branch. These are most of the books I brought home:

Companion Planting Made Easy

Burpee : The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener

The Kitchen Garden Grower's Guide

Rodale's Vegetable Garden Problem Solver

The Postage Stamp Garden Book: Grow Tons of Vegetables in Small Places

All New Square Foot Gardening

The Vegetable Gardener's Bible

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times

Two books appealed to me most, “All New Square Foot Gardening” and "The Postage Stamp Garden Book.” I liked the novelty and simplicity of the SF approach, and the disposability of the whole thing should this next-big-idea fail. Both books also directly address the amount of garden space I have available. The PSG book provides lots of guidance for choosing varieties, alternate planting methods, companion planting, harvesting and crop stretching.

Go.

Chives. Sadly unappreciated.

I’m planting a vegetable garden this year. I have many years of gardening behind me — perennials, annuals, roses — but growing for the table? Only casually. Stick a tomato in here, some basil over there, thyme between the pavers. A clump of chives dependably arrives in April, hears our promises, ever unfulfilled, to chop some into a salad, then flowers and flops as the summer heat washes in. Then the accidental tomatoes make their entry. I humor them with a cage or two.

We had weekly co-op deliveries for two summers with mixed results, mostly great, occasionally horrible (what do you do with a dozen radishes a week?).

Vegetable garden. Why now? Probably for all the usual reasons:

We've come to love them, and they are at the center of our meals rather than the side.  •  Hey! Vegetables are good for you — really, really good.  •  Store-bought produce quality can be dicey.  •  We can grow what we like.  •  Get outside, get active.

Maybe I’ll elaborate on those later, but for now, I think you know what I mean. And all I'm looking for here is an easy way to keep a journal, a convenient record so later I can retrace my steps, reconsider my choices, gather experience, and tweak the plan next year.