Do-Over

Back in January I sketched out a plan for what I wanted to plant in which square. Of course, you know what they say about best-laid plans. Because I had a good number of seedlings die off and because some of the early/late crops either didn't work out or I figured I could do them in the same square, I had to do some rearranging. This is the new grid, followed by a picture of the actual garden (everything is planted, except the yellow corn, which will be planted in a month or so).


And, how it looks as of today:


Ive trimmed down the spinach and the mesclun greens and pulled one head of buttercrunch lettuce. I'm trying to get the strawberries enough light, and I'm also concerned that the yellow bell pepper might not get enough light. Its bracketed by the onions, the potatoes, and the peas on three sides.

I've got two closeups from the box. First, the massive cherry tomato I've raised from seed:

Next are the four snow peas:


I put a bamboo rod in the center and tied twine from the corners of the square to the notches on the bamboo to train the peas to climb.

I also have a little natural experiment going down at the bottom of the yard. Throughout this whole process I've had excess plants, seedlings mostly. First, I had the peat pots which didn't sprout, or the leftover seedlings which didn't make it into the nursery pots or the garden, or which were not as promising as the others who came out of the same hole in the box. Instead of throwing them out, I've just stuck them in the ground down at the end of the fenceline. I've also been dumping soil and throwing out peat pots down there. Its been pretty interesting. Ive got about four pea plants, a bunch of seedlings and some pretty vigorous tomato plants (I have no idea which kind), and today I planted some excess pepper plants I had. I don't water these plants or anything. I essentially want to see what will happen just by the process of nature, versus being in a tended garden with special soil.


The peach tree has set fruit also. There are probably about 30 of these little guys all over the tree:


In addition to the peach tree, the pomegranate (which I thought was perhaps dead) and the Mexican plum are both blooming.

Finally, I added two links to the section at the right. The first is the show "Central Texas Gardening" and the second, "dissertation to dirt," is by a former PhD student who now interns or something at Johnson's backyard garden (our CSA).

Planning the Squares

Before things actually go into the ground I wanted to spend a little time planning out which veggies go in which squares. There is the issue of bigger veggies (corn) shading smaller veggies, but I also don't want everything to come up at once, i.e. I don't need 40 ears of corn on June 20th. I want to stagger my plantings so I can have certain types of veggies ripening throughout the year.

I simply chose which veggies my wife and I like to eat. We are members of a local CSA farm, Johnson's Backyard Garden, which we are a huge fan of, except that they don't really discriminate in what they grow. There is a cool quality to it because you get exposed to new stuff and learn about how to cook it, but you end up getting really weird stuff, like kohlrabe, swiss chard, or more eggplant than you could ever eat for literally months in a row. So our planned crops are pretty normal. I've got 25 squares and 21 planned crops:

seeds...I haz em

• Sweet corn
• White corn
• Snowbird peas
• Greenbeans
• Buttercrunch lettuce
• Mesclun salad mix
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Cucumbers for pickling

I also have a bag of red potato slips and red onion slips, strawberries, as well as the peppers and tomatoes I am starting indoors:

• Cherry Tomatoes
• Roma Tomatoes
• Beefsteak Tomatoes
  
• Habanero Peppers
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Pepperoncini Peppers
  
• Bell Peppers
• Hungarian Wax Peppers
• Chile (Anaheim) Peppers

So here is a draft layout of the crops. The tallest crops are in the top right (the sun goes up the left side of this box):

I will likely swap out the late carrots with the pepperoncini peppers.

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!