Square Foot Garden

An orphaned garden (weed) spot for a number of years was the perfect (hopefully) spot to create a square foot garden. I've wanted one for many years, but finally quit asking for assistance in building one. Until this year. It only took a day to build. 

We used redwood for endurance. I hope it won't be too long until it looks weathered.

A few years ago I bought the All New Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew. He has step-by-step instructions that are very easy to understand. IFA now carries his garden soil mixture, Mel's Mix, which is the perfect combination of 1/3 blended compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite. Purchasing the ready-made mix in bags was well worth the time and energy it would have taken to mix it ourselves. 

I was delighted to find brown weed barrier material. It won't show up as much when bark is put down.

Wood lathe was an inexpensive material for marking the square foot measurements.

I planted both seeds and plants: corn, radishes, beets, bush and pole beans, Sun Sugar (cherry-size) tomatoes and a few other tomato varieties, basil, crookneck and zucchini squash; pansies for some color. In SFG, several crops can be planted in one square. For example, one cabbage would take up one full square; bush beans - nine plants per square; whereas radishes would be 16 plants.