Placing the Boxes

While Square foot gardening basically makes the whole question of soil a non-issue, you still cannot get around the question of sun exposure. Basically, the rule is to put your garden in an area where it will get +/- 8 hours of sunlight daily. Though the box I made is, technically speaking, portable, once its filled with a couple cubic yards of dirt it will pretty much have to stay where it sits. So I've been watching as the sun goes through the sky and paying attention to which areas of the lot get sun and when.

To the right is a schematic of the layout of my lot and the path of the sun. It's a rough drawing, but hopefully it can help y'all (and me) visualize the duration and type of sunlight we get throughout the day. In addition to my kick-ass Microsoft Paint diagram, I also took some pictures of the side/backyard and backyard throughout a sunny day to see which areas get the best light. Here is the side/backyard:

9:00 AM

11:30 AM

1:30 PM

3:30 PM

5:00 PM

And, the backyard:

9:00 AM

11:30 AM

1:00 PM

3:30 PM

5:00 PM

One problem, which I freely admit may bite me in the ass later, is that because its winter all the trees are bare. I haven't been here in the summer (we bought the house in November), so I really don't know the shade/sun balance when the leaves are on all the trees. I seem to have a corridor for the sun which shouldn't be impacted too much by leaves, but who knows.

I also have plans for some fruit trees and bushes (more on them later) and will also have to take into account available sunlight for those, but because the box is going to be my highest yield project its going to have to get the best amount of sunlight. As you can see, the current location of the box (in the side/backyard photos above) gets pretty much constant sun, so that is where it will go, more or less. I'll have to take shade into account when figuring out the layout of the crops within the boxes so big, tall veggies like corn get the sunlight they need but don't end up casting their shadows (well there you are!) over the rest of the box.

After deciding where to put it, the first step was to dig up as much of the area under the box as possible (Riley is in the background, supervising):


Next, I took some ground cloth and laid it over the excavated area. It took me two strips overlapped about 2" in the center. I used some stakes to fasten the cloth to the ground, and I made sure the stakes would be covered by the finished frame:

Ready for dirt!