The Method (with apologies to British Andy)

I've tried a few times before to start a garden and the biggest problem for me has always been the soil. Specifically, I didn't (still don't) really understand the whole soil Ph issue, and the thought of putting additives into the soil in specific amounts, then testing and re-testing the Ph until it hit some optimum demanded too much time and expertise. I did some initial exploration and discovered that our soil here in Central Texas is very clay-ey with a high (alkaline) Ph, so I figured that any soil enrichment would be a real pain in the ass.

By way of a solution, my mom suggested Mel Bartholemew's "Square Foot Gardening." The raised beds eliminate the whole soil Ph issue (because you just fill the beds with a specific soil mix), and the grid design maximizes space for crops, especially as opposed to rows. It sounded good to me, so I went ahead and bought Mel's book and decided to build the beds.

Lettuce in square foot beds at Austin Natural Gardener

By way of exploration I went to Austin Natural Gardener here in town to see what they had to say and, as you can see from the above picture, they had a few cool square foot gardens laid out. At my mom's suggestion I also checked out The Garden Girl, which turned out to be a pretty cool website. She uses the square foot gardening, but she also has some type of apparatus she puts over the beds to allow her chickens to pick bugs out of the soil and fertilize the beds when they are not in use. I would like to someday do that (it's apparently quite popular, thanks Don). One obstacle: the feral or semi-feral cats in our neighborhood. I'm sure the tyrannosaurus-sized one (judging by the piles of shit it leaves in our backyard), would be overjoyed to add chickens to whatever the hell else it eats.

eat mor chikin

Next: Building the Beds