Trying Out Square Foot Gardening

I’ve decided to give gardening another try even after last year’s abysmal results (about 4 small zucchini, a couple of beans, and 3-4 tiny tomatoes).  The soil at the house sucks and the previous owners did very little to care for the overgrown yard.

This year, I’m going with a square foot garden. The concept is that, rather than rows of the same plant, you plant in raised beds, divided by a grid into 1-foot squares.  Each square is planted seperately with different plants.  It’s all described in this book:

The other big shift is that you don’t try to fix your soil.  Instead, you fill the 6-inch deep beds with a 1:1:1 ratio of vermiculite, compost, and peat moss.

It’s a bit of work to build the beds and mix all the soil ingredients together.  Also, the soil is expensive (Vermiculite is $21 for a 2 cu/ft bag here), but those should be one-time outlays.

I got the beds placed today and planted some of the early start seeds like peas, beets, spinach, etc.

Here’s what it looks like so far:

Hopefully all the investment in soil and building the beds will pay off.  Now if I can just get the lawn to grow.