Solomon in the Garden

Here are a couple of pictures of Solomon I took while gardening.


Click on photo for a large version...

Watering the herb garden... well the fence really...

Glad someone can relax!

My Square Foot Garden

I now officially own two square foot gardens.


The official square foot garden is a box 4' x '4 with Mel's mix and a permanent square foot grid.  




Here is Box No. 1:

The four plants on the bottom right are strawberries. 

I planted onions in the bottom left squares.

The middle squares have cabbage and Broccoli.  

The top four squares have Peas in there. I will be putting a little support for the peas. 

The outer squares are filled now and will be used for carrots. 

Box one is going to be for winter crops and early planting. It has a green house attachment...

Box two on the other hand is equipped with a high trellis. This will be used for cucumbers, bell peppers and a melon plant. 

I also plan on planing bush beans, coriander and a jalapeno pepper plant. 

If you look behind the box you will see the trellis for the runner (pole) beans. 

That is it for now. Not much else will be planted until April. 

I notice that the Squirrels are digging up my garden already, probably trying to hide their nuts. 

This is a real problem as they could unearth any plants that are there. I guess I will have to use netting...

Anyone got a gun and wants to shoot some squirrels??

Mel's Mix

The time finally came to make some 'Mel's Mix'


I worked out the square footage I needed. 
Area: 4'x4'=16 square feet. 
Volume = 16' x 0.5' = 8 cubic feet. 


As there are equal amounts for each ingredient that makes it about 2.66 cubic feet (8'/3') for each part. 


So - for two boxes (which I have) it will be 5.33 cubic feet of each thing. 


This is what happened:

As you can see I got the Vermiculite from ULINE. 

It is used as a fancy packaging for chemicals. It was the cheepest place I could find. 

I think it worked out just over $20 for each bag. I picked it up to save postage. 

There was 4 cubic feet of Vermiculite in each bag. 

As for the Peat Moss - these bags were about $9 each. They had two and a half cubic feet. 

If you have never seen Vermiculite then here is a picture. 

It is flakey and shines like Mica but it is more soft and spongy. 

It is also fire resistant so has some good thermal properties. 

I think it is used for Mel's Mix to retain water.

So I have a total of 8 cubic feet of vermiculite. 

And 7.5 cubic feet of peat moss. 

All I had to do is match with 8 cubic feet of compost...

I got a bag of Moo-Nure as it was cheep and I could mix it up with my organic compost for that extra bit of rottenness that plants like. 

The actual compost pile I had been getting ready was wet the day I decided to use it. I thought it was a bit course - so I rubbed it through an earth sieve that I had made... 

If you have a spare wheely bin around then you can do this standing up and collect everything in the bin. 

The annoying thing was that there were loads of earth worms. I did not see them sometimes - so they probably got rubbed into the sieve... gross really....

Anyway - the left over stuff that did not get through the sieve I slapped into the wheel barrow - with all the worms I collected. I put this in the garden for the runner beans (pole beans). 

As you can see it was quite an operation. 

It probably took quite a few hours to get 8 cubic feet worth. 

The Finished Product!! it was quite a nice smooth fine compost in the end. 

I got some tarp out to mix this stuff on. This was a good move as not only is there no tidy up afterwards - but you can roll the earth right into the bed without having to shovel too much...

I used the universal measure of the Bucket. I started with five buckets worth off each ingredient and it worked out about right. It is not worth mixing too much as it gets too heavy (as I found out later). 

The reason why it gets heavy is that you are supposed to water the ingredients to stop them blowing away. It got windy - so I did water the stuff quite a bit. 

'In the mix'

If you want to see the finished result - then check out the next post...

Tomato Boxes

Well I have applied the square foot model to tomatoes.

I am going to separate the tomatoes from my 4x4ft boxes and grow them on a strong trellis in separate boxes. 

I was going to make four one square foot boxes - but found I would use exactly the same amount of wood for two 3ft by 1ft boxes - so that is what I did!

I purchased 8ft planks already - So cut them into 3ft and 1 ft sections. 

I used some long deck screws for the sides. I used a butt joint - nothing special here. Drilled a pilot hole and used an electric drill to screw in the deck screws. 

The finished product! I will probably put weed block underneath to stop any grubs or beetles getting in there. And crab grass...

They fit inside the trellis just right. I hope to grow two plants in each box. Hopefully they will grow 8ft past the top of the trellis. 

Just got to add the nets now! (and the soil and the plants...)

Water Butt - Reloaded

A vital part of square foot gardening is the water. 


Mel recommends  sun warmed water - so that the plants are not shocked by any cold water. 


It was about time I souped up my water butt - so here it is!


Blocks were added under the butt to aid filling up of watering can. 
The new tap fits a hose - so I can take water right to the garden via a hose pipe! Check out the side overflow pipe. Useful for filling up a bucket or something... 

Also note that I painted it black. Looks nicer than the bold blue. 

Also it will absorb more of the heat of the sun. Sun warmed water is the name of the game here. 

Check out the filtering options!

The first layer is a window screen. This is to keep the mosquitoes from getting in and out laying eggs in the water and so on. The last thing I want are more mosquitoes around - they are such a pain!

The second layer is some fence wire. This is in fact a earth sieve. This stops the leaves getting into the barrel and clogging up the tap. As you can see it is already working...

Actual Water Action!

Total butt makeover!

Bender

Square foot gardening is a very cheep and easy system. Much thought must have gone into the best and cheapest way to do things. 


One of the parts is vertical gardening for Tomatoes and melons etc. 


Mel suggests that 1/2 inch Electrical Conduit is used for the vertical supports. They call it EMT over here. 


I wanted to make a serious Tomato trellis this year as I did not have long enough poles last year and it was a pain trying to keep tying them onto poles all the time. The poles were 6 foot - but a foot of that was in the earth (at least). The plant probably could have gone up to 8ft if it was given the right attention. Instead the plants just flopped over. Then we had strong winds... that really messed things up - with plants falling over and being uprooted. 
I used iron rebars last year for the tomatoes, but this year I am going 8ft and I will be pruning a bit more aggressively also. Hopefully this structure will hold up to the winds also...


I also want to apply this to some pole bean plants I was to plant. 


Anyway - back to the bending. 


EMT is CHEAP! we are talking just over $2 for 10ft of 1/2 inch EMT - and it is pretty strong pipe. I am sure it is coated with zinc - so hopefully will resist rust. 
What is not so cheep is the corner fixings. For each corner I was going to buy an L Shaped corner piece. 


For what I wanted to build - that was about 12 corner bits. At over $4 each that worked out to around $50! Just on bends! Anyway - they had a pipe bender there for about $30. 


It was a no brainer - it was cheeper to bend the pipes myself - though a little scary as I had not done this for a while. And what if I messed up?


I am so glad I found some instructions online - as I was going to try and 'work this out' myself. 


I found some instructive vids on YouTube which helped me. I did not know I had to use my foot with the pipe bender!

The main Issue is knowing what the Arrow, Star and Tear symbols mean. 

I found some good instructions on line from Albany Tech College. 

For a back to back bend like above, it takes a little bit of math. By the way - the bit of pipe above is made out of a whole 10ft of pipe. Notice that the height of the frame is the same both ends? 

The width is 54 inches and the height is 3ft (36 inches). This is what I planned. 

If you add up all the planned values above, you end up with 125 inches. But with a ten foot bit of pipe - that is only 120 inches  - so where did the extra 5 inches come from? (I hear you ask!).

Well you gain 5 inches from the first bend. On the first bend I placed the arrow at the 30.5 mark (that is 35.5 minus the 5 inches I gain). I got 36 inches hight - including the pipe width.  

Now I had to balance that up against a wall and bend the other end hoping the first bend is still pointing upwards exactly straight.  I measured 54 inches and used the star marker on the bender. This gave me the other 36 inches for the second leg. 

I figured out you can be very accurate with a pipe bender once you figure out what on earth is going on. 

So I recommend the pipe bending method - as it is not only cheaper than buying all the L-Shaped bends - but it makes stronger structures. One bit of pipe is stronger that three bits of pipe with bends screwed onto it. 

Here is a photo of all my metal structures!

Square Foot Gardening Update

Well it is now March and getting ever closer to the time to plant everything.


Square foot gardening claims that it is only 2% of the work of traditional row gardening, but that has to be after the preparation work. 


The prep work has taken a lot longer than I thought. 


The longest part admittedly was leveling the garden, which I guess I did for my preference and esthetic reasons....


Anyway, here is my greenhouse square:

It has been quite chilly the last few days - so I am glad everything is protected under here. 

The plants seem ok so far. As you can see in the inside picture - I have cabbage, broccoli, a jalapeno pepper plant and a bell pepper plant. The hanging baskets will have Lavender in there (grown from seed). 

Here is the square foot grid!

This is just six bits of 47 inch by 1.5 inch wood. Probably about half an inch high. 

This is what defines a garden as a square-foot garden - the permanent square foot grid!

So - I am almost there....