Square Foot Gardening

When I say this is my 2.5th  year of SFG, I mean that the first year, we moved into this house in July, but were living in a hotel in town in June, so I prepped my soil in June (before we actually closed on the house), and then planted some broccoli, pumpkin and tomato plants in July. I didn't use a grid, or box, just amended existing soil, and hoped for the best.I used info I found online to know how many plants/square.

Here's a picture from that year, 2008:

I know, you're thinking WOW, that's one SEXY garden. Well you see, I planted and then went out of town for a couple months. We came home to that. So, with no watering for 2 months, I still would have  had good broccoli, tomatoes and pumpkins--if we had been here to eat them. That works for me!!  I based what I did on the info I found online about the SFG technique.

The next year, last year, 2009, I bought the SFG book, built  2 boxes, spent a fortune buying the ingredients for Mel's Mix, and planted a mixture of seeds and store bought plants. I planted the 2 4x4 boxes plus the 4x4 patch of ground from 2008. Everything did really well, except my pepper plants were complete failures and the tomatoes had blossom end rot. I grew but didn't eat many of the onions, radishes, beets, lettuce...but they were fun to grow. The broccoli flowered too fast and I missed eating them at the  yummy point. They were so yucky that I fed them to the dogs. The flower pots had potatoes, pansies and nasturtiums. One was supposed to have carrots but that was a big mess.

Here's a pic from a main harvest day, before a big frost/hail was expected:

My next  post will be on my 2010 SFG!