Square Foot Gardening

Well I have been just so busy! Starting Seeds, building beds, hauling manure, building trellises and buying plants.
I know it sounds like I'm complaining but the kids and I are having a blast.


In one of the many books I borrow from the library I discovered Square Foot Gardening.  So the kids and I thought we would give it a shot.

We first bought cinder blocks 12 for each bed $15.00 per bed ($1.25 each)
I bought some planting soil about $5.00 per bed
We went to a horse farm and got a truck load of horse manure FREE

Trinitys dirty hands from stirring the top soil and compost together

We filled each of our beds with manure and topped it off (4 inches) with the top soil mixture.  When I say we I mean Alex and I...Trinity was making sure the dirt was stirred REALLY well.

Trinity's break, telling me how hard she is working.  I believe her don't you?

Once the beds were full Alex drove rebar into the north side corners of the bed.
Rebar 1/2 X 24 $1.52 each. $3.04 per bed.

We then laid out the grid each space is 1 foot square...Almost.
For the grid I used an old blind.  The blind was just under four feet wide and already had holes in it PERFECT! Alex used the wooden food sticks from the kitchen to hold down the grid.

This was a great math lesson for Alex

But wait we are not finished yet.  We built a trellis out of  PVC
9 five foot lengths of PVC $1.64  each - 3 per bed $4.92
6 PVC elbow $.34 each - 2 per bed $.68
2 trellis netting 4.97 each - $3.31 per bed

The netting wanted to slide up the PVC so we cut metal coat hangers and my hard working boy hammered them into the ground.
Our total cost per bed $37.35
We have already planted leaf lettuce, peas and sweet peas in our beds.  We decided to inter plant flower vines with our veg vines just because we think it looks pretty.

The next project for the beds is to make a frame that we can cover with plastic (to protect from freeze) and cheese cloth (to protect from egg laying insects)