Adding Grids and a Drip System.

It's almost time to start planting in the square foot gardens!  Our average last frost is March 16th.  I plan to plant outside on Saturday the 20th and I have materials to construct green houses over the gardens.

In order to get ready for this big event, we need to do two things - 1.  add square foot grids and 2. add a drip irrigation system.

I looked at different materials to form the grids.  I was planning to use wood lattice, but after pricing it out I decided to use laundry line instead.  It was much less expensive and it doesn't take up as much surface area as the lattice.

I simply used a staple gun to attach the lattice to each side of the wood frame.  The laundry line is nice and bright and is not supposed to sag with sun or water.  If it doesn't work, I can always replace it with something else next year.

Here's what one of the boxes looked like after being gridded out.  The squares aren't perfect, but they're close enough.



Here are two of the gardens.  Notice the trellis behind the closest garden.  I'm going to string my tomatoes into that.   It is simply two long fence posts, hammered into the ground with fencing attached.  I'm also going to install another trellis behind two of the other gardens to grow other vining plants vertically.



After installing the grids, it was time to install the drip irrigation system.  In Mel's book, he suggests that you water by hand.  It gets you out into the garden, as a result, you end up being more aware of pests and other issues early.  I agree with Mel.  Unfortunately, however, I live in Texas.  It's hot in Texas.  The soil dries out really, really fast in the summer time.  One of the problems we've had with gardening in the past, is that due to work, a weekend away or just a busy schedule, we might miss one or two days of watering.  If you do that in Texas, all your hard work will be for naught because your plants with wither and die.  We have a drip irrigation installed in our corner flower garden and so I decided to extend it to the square foot gardens.

Initially, the lead line to the garden was 1/4" (like what is leading to each of the individual drip heads) but that wasn't enough to carry sufficient water so I replaced the lead line with the 1/2" tubing and then 1/4" tubing leads out to only 4 heads.  Each of the individual heads have an adjustable spray diameter and can be turned off individually.

My source for drip irrigation supplies is www.dripirrigation.com.  Their stuff is SIGNIFICANTLY less expensive (in some cases more than 75% less) than what you'd pay in a big box store.  I've found their order processing to be extremely fast (one recent order was placed on Wednesday afternoon and I received it on Saturday via normal US Mail shipped from North Carolina to Texas).

Here's what one of the drip irrigation systems looks like installed and functioning.

Sowing seeds.

We started our indoor sowing.  We planted the tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupe, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts and artichokes.

The tomatoes sprouted first followed by the cauliflower/broccoli/brussels sprouts.

This is what the sprouts looked like a week after planting.



LESSON LEARNED - when I set up the plants, I only had a florescent desk lamp to put over them.  I also placed it way too high.  I learned later that you should use certain kinds of florescents (I now use one that is labeled for plants) and with seedlings you need to put the light right down near the plant.  Otherwise, the plants get really leggy (this is the problem I now have with my cauliflower/brussels/broccoli).

After the first week or so, I rigged a new shop light under a card table (I didn't want to pay for a special light rack).  This is what the new rig looked like and what the sprouts looked like after 2 weeks:

Time to mix soil!

I found a vermiculite supplier so I'm now ready to mix the soil.  For those of you not familiar with square foot gardening, the suggested growing medium is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 course vermiculite, and 1/3 a mix of at least three kids of compost.  For those in the DFW area - you can get the course Vermiculite from Marshall Grain and Feed Company.  They have a store in Ft. Worth and a store near the DFW airport.  I bought all the other components at my local big box hardware store (which refused to order course vermiculite for me).  By far the most expensive component is the vermiculite which ran about $22 per bag but it never degrades and once you've paid for it once, you should never have to buy it again.

Here is what all the packaged soil components looked like for my four 4X4X1 gardens:



I decided to mix approximately 2 cubic feet of each component (peat, vermiculite and compost) in each batch.

On the first mixing attempt, I laid each component next to each other on a tarp like this:



I then lifted the tarp back and forth from each corner trying to mix it.  This was a really hard way to mix.

Here is what it looked like after mixing:



For the next batch, I piled each component on top of each other with the driest ingredients on the bottom.  I put the vermiculite on the bottom since it was the driest material and the easiest to distinguish to make sure it was mixed through.  Like this:



I then got on my hands and knees and mixed it by hand.  This was much easier than moving the tarp back and forth.

After each batch, I pulled the tarp over to the garden and emptied it into the garden.

This is what one of the gardens looked like after the two batches (this means one 4cu ft. bag of Vermiculite, one 2.2 cu ft bag of compressed peat moss, one 2 cu foot bag of regular compost, one (approx.) 1 cu foot bag of mushroom compost and one (approx.) 1 cu foot bag of composed cow manure):



This is what two of the gardens looked like after all of the materials were used up:



The amount I had purchased for the four gardens was just shy of perfect.  Each garden was full to about 1/2 in. from the brim.  When it rained the next day, however, each of the gardens settled about an inch.  I brought in some more compost to bring them up to level with the top.

Prepping the square foot garden area.

The Christmas snow has melted and I'm getting anxious so I decided to start prepping the garden area.

I removed most of the weeds, got the area relatively level and laid down landscaping fabric to keep weeds from surfacing.  The plan is to put pebbles all around the raised gardens.

Here is what the area looked like just before laying the fabric:



Here is what it looked like after placing the frames and laying the landscaping fabric:



Now, I just need to find somewhere that sells vermiculite and I can add the growing medium.

Winter Planning

We completed construction of the frames for the square foot gardens in October.  They sat dormant through the winter while we made garden plans for the spring.

Through the winter I ordered seed catalogs, downloaded information from our local extension service on which varieties of vegetables grow well in our area, made excel spreadsheets with schedules for plantings, and charted where everything was to be planted in the garden.

Here is what my year-long planting schedule looked like (the two shades of blue depict planting seasons for seeds vs. transplants and the green indicates harvest periods).  The schedule is based on the average last and first frosts for our area.



Here are the planting charts of the four gardens:



After basically deciding on which vegetables and varieties we were going to plant, I scoured the various seed catalogs and websites to find those varieties and price purchases.  Here's what my resulting spreadsheet looked like (I've omitted the names of the various seed companies).:



Some of the plants we've decided to use are experiments.  We have also probably a little ambitious about how much we're packing into the space.  But this year is all about trying it out and learning.  Good, bad and ugly.  You'll see it all here.

Constructing the frames for the Square Foot Gardens.

We've decided that we can fit four 4' x 4' gardens in the Strip Garden area.  My father-in-law was in town this week and he helped me to build our frames.

Mel's book says you only need a 6" depth and that you can stack boxes in order to grow plants like carrots that require deeper soil.  We decided that we didn't want to deal with that so we bought 12" deep two by fours.

Here's what the frames looked like after construction.

I didn't take a good picture of the construction, but here's what the frame looks like empty.

The mid-before picture.

Here is a picture of what the Strip Garden looked like after it was cleared but before the construction of the square foot gardens.

At the far end is the blackberry bush and the strawberries.

In the middle is the Bradford pear (which will probably have to come out before it gets too big).  You can see our very sad, sad tomato plants that didn't like the Texas clay soil even after we mixed in several cubic feet of compost.  We grew herbs in the container gardens.

In one of our container gardens we grew parsley.  Come to find out, black swallowtail caterpillars love parsley.  Over the course of the growing season this year, we found several caterpillars, put them in our caterpillar nursery and nursed them into butterflies.  Here are pictures of one of our successes.  Next year we're going to plant a bunch more parsley.

Adventures in backyard gardening

Inspired by sites like urbanhomestead.org and the book “Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew, our family has decided to see what we can grow in one small section of our backyard in Collin County, Texas (north of Dallas).

We have very little experience as gardeners.  We thought it would be fun and informative to document our journey with this blog.

First a little on our backyard and what we started with.

Our house has  a southern exposure.  Our backyard is basically square, with a garage wall running along the eastern edge, a patio in the south-eastern corner and a playground in the north-western corner.  We have a large trampoline that takes up a little less than 1/3 the width of the backyard, and a little less than a quarter of the available open space.  Here's a satellite photo of our backyard before any improvements (photo is facing south):



When we moved into our house in November of 2006, our backyard was a shambles.  There wasn't anything other than a jungle gym and half-dead grass (with St. Augustine grass competing for dominance with Bermuda grass).

This is what our lawn looked like when we moved in:



Over the next two years we slowly nurtured the lawn back.  In the summertime, when the lawn isn't dormant, the St. Augustine has basically been resurrected to cover the entire backyard.  Not too long after we moved in, my father-in-law and I built a sandbox that now sits next to the patio and the back wall of the house.

Two years ago we decided to plant some trees in the yard.  We planted a cherry (we didn't think it would last, but wanted to try), a Bradford Pear and a peach along the western fence line and a Fuji Apple in the northeast corner.  The cherry didn't make it through the first summer.  The peach made it a year and then died in the middle of last summer.

Last spring we decided to try to grow more than grass in the backyard.  We removed a rounded corner of sod in the northeast corner of the yard (bottom left of the picture above, the Apple tree is in the middle of this area) and about a five foot-wide strip along the western fence (the right side of the picture above).

I started removing the sod myself and quickly learned how difficult it is.  We hired our lawn service company to finish the job.  Unfortunately, we didn't hire them to haul away the sod, thinking that we could dispose of it over time in our recycle bin.  That was a bad idea.

Eventually, we borrowed a friend's truck and hauled a whole truck load of sod to the dump.  That was a HUGE pain - literally.  If you decide to remove sod from your yard, and can afford  to hire someone to rip it out for you, make sure you also hire them to haul the sod away.

The plan was to plant a flower garden in the rounded corner garden (the "Flower Garden") and a vegetable garden in the strip of ground along the western fence (the "Strip Garden").  We borrowed a friend's truck and brought in several cubic yards of compost which we mixed into the soil in the Flower Garden and the Strip Garden.

We planted a blackberry bush and some strawberry plants in the northern corner of the Strip Garden and 4 or 5 tomato plants along the rest of the Strip Garden.  We also planted climbing roses and various other flowering in the Flower Garden.

Here's what our Flower Garden looked like last summer:

The blackberry and strawberry plants did alright, but the clay soil did not work for the tomatoes.  They suffered all summer long.  This experience made us realize that Texas clay soil is not conducive to vegetable gardens, and that we weren't prepared to spend the time, energy and money necessary to bring our existing soil up to snuff.

That's when we found the two resources listed above and decided to give raised bed gardening a try.