Square Foot, Raised bed organic gardening

I’ve had enough.  The potatoes, which I planted dead center in the garden overshaddowed everything.  The few things that were growing, were growing straight up in an attempt to get sunlight.  The radishes?  18″ leaves with a root the size of a pencil. The lettuce and swiss chard were sickly, and the carrots basically quit growing.

So I didn’t just trim the potatoes – I massacred them.  Trimmed every one of them off completely, right to the ground.  Now the sun can get to the rest of the plants and hopefully we’ll get some harvest.

Next year, potatoes are going in their own garden, seperate from everything else.

Actually, I was discussing this with our local bookstore owner and she mentioned the tire method of growing potatoes.  You plant the potatoes inside soil filling an old tire.  Then as the plant grows, you add more soil and more tires.  The potatoes grow new potatoes along their stem, so this continued burial of the stem apparently leads to more and more potatoes.  She claimed 20-30 potatoes per plant.  I may try that next year, but I think I’ll build boxes if I do, not tires.  A stack of old tires in the back yard won’t fly with the spouse.

The potatoes have completely overtaken the garden and have stopped much of the other crops from getting any sun.  So I finally broke down and cut down the rogue potato plants.  These are the plants that grew from potatoes we had thrown into our compost.  I did leave untouched the potatoes I planted.  The radishes, carrots, and lettuce just weren’t growing.  So I trimmed the plants and put them into the composter.

Junior and I also put cages around the two tomato plants.  We crushed some of the branches because we left it too long.  Not to worry, my lovely wife and daughter went out later and fixed our mess for us.  No flowers on the tomato plants yet but some buds just starting to show.

As for the radishes, it seems to me that we should have had a bumper crop by now.  They’re so fast growing and we’ve had some almost ready to pick for a couple of weeks.  But every time I check, nothing worth picking.

I mentioned this over the supper table one night.  And surprise, surprise, we HAVE had radishes that were big enough to pick.  It turns out my 12 year old son (if you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know he checks the garden morning and night) has been picking them.  The radishes get big enough to pick, out they come, rub on shirt to get the dirt off, and pop into his mouth.

How about that?  Most folks have a hard time getting 12 year old boys to eat any vegetables.  I’ve got my 12 year old sneaking vegetables .

Sorry no pics recently.  I’ve got to coordinate my blackberry camera with the cord with my computer.  Right now the cord and the camera aren’t at the same location.  I’ll get that done soon.

And it needs to be done soon – the growth in the garden is startling.  It’s like a rainforest.  Everything is growing like nuts – particularly the potatoes.  They’ve taken over and are dwarfing the other vegetables – the garden is dominated by potato plants.  I’m a bit concerned that they may block the sunlight from some of the other vegetables – but then again this is still very much a learning experience.  So next year I may just not plant potatoes.  The potatoes are probably approaching 18″ high right now.

Still, everuthing else is growing like wildfire too.  Tomatoes don’t have flowers yet, but are getting bigger. Beans, peas, corn, squash and cucumber all growing rapidly.  The swiss chard is growing but was a bit sparce so we replanted some more of that.  And the radishes were a bit sparse as well so I put some more of those in the ground too.  I actually planted the next batch of radishes around the green peppers – the advantage of square foot gardening is that you can double up plants like that.

The second crop of radishes has already sprouted as well.  I planted them a lot less deep so I think I may have planted the radishes and carrots too deep the first time.  Lesson learned.

This week we’re going to buy some of those tomoato cages and stake the two tomato plants.  I’m also going to put a tomato cage around the peas which are starting to climb.  I had originally planned on building a small trellis for the peas, but a tomato cage seems like a lot less work.  So cage it is.

As for harvest – we’ve had some already.  Junior, who continues to check out the garden twice daily, has managed to find two radishes that were big enough to eat.  One last week and one the week before.  Out of the ground , rub on shirt, eat ( no problem because of course these plants have no fertilizer, herbicide, or anything else on them other than dirt and water – another advantage of doing this ourselves).  But here’s the cool part; how difficult is it to get a 12 year old boy to eat vegetables?  My 12 year old is anxiously awaiting more – looking forward to beans, peas, more radishes, carrots…and I personally can’t wait until we have sweet corn we can harvest and make a meal of.  If we pulled the vegetables from a can and put them on his plate he’d have to be pushed to eat half of them.  Now he’s pulling them out of the ground and eating them before anyone else has a chance.  You want your kids to eat vegetables? Have them participate in growing their own.

That reminds me of a story from when I was in university.  My buddy had planted – for no known reason – some peas in a planter at the end of the driveway.  We were university students, so odd behavior required little explanation at the time.  Anyway, the peas took off that summer and were dripping with pods.  We’d grab a couple every time we walked by and munch on them.  So, the doorbell rings one day and it’s the neighbour.  She’s holding a bowl, wants to know if she can pick a bunch of peas.  No problem of course but she explained further. Her youngster wouldn’t touch vegetables.  But those peas growing next door?  Loved them – he’d been pilfering some of them too.  So she harvested a bunch, and I guess her kid had a meal of vegetables that night.  So got a kid that won’t eat vegetables?  Get them involved in a raised bed garden/square foot gardening and watch them them act interested in eating vegetables.

Since we blended our entire compost pile from last year into the square foot garden, it’s no surprise that some unkown stuff is starting to sprout. Actually, given the number of eggshells in the compost it’s a surprise that there aren’t baby chicks sprouting.

Sure enough, a few days ago something clearly not a radish was starting to grow in the radish square.  I didn’t know what it was but it was reasonably substantial.  A tight wrinkled cluster of leaves with a strong root.  I thought perhaps it was something like a peach pit or grapefruit seed that had started to sprout.  I snipped it off and left it at that.

The potatoes have started to sprout as well.  Now I’ve had fresh dug potatoes and to be honest potatoes are one of those things where the store bought stuff is as good as anything you can grow yourself.  I planted for no other reason than to show the kids how to cut a seed potato.

So I was out looking at the potato sprouts, had a look at the radishes and the plant I’d snipped was back.  And I realized what it was.  It’s a potato plant in with the radishes.  And not one we’ve planted either.  It’s a potato plant out of the compost that’s taken root and is sprouting.  We’re going to have two kinds of potatoes now .

Radishes are growing intermittently.  They’re not nearly as dense as I expected.  Perhaps we planted them too deep.  And the carrots haven’t sprouted at all.  I’ll give them another few days, then we’ll replant some more radishes and the carrots if we don’t see any more action.

OK, about a week after initial planting we’ve got plants sprouting like crazy.  Radishes came out first, they’re growing fast.  Corn and squash sprouted next.  Corn plants are already 1-2 inches high.

We’ve got some swiss chard sprouting as well.  And yesterday the first two cucumber plants peeked through.  We’ve had a heavy rain the last two days so I expect there’ll be more growth when I get home tonite.

I”m surprised the Romaine lettuce and carrots haven’t sprouted yet.  And the beans and peas – I figured them for super fast growers.  Not surprisingly the potatoes haven’t sprouted yet – A lot more has to happen underground I think for them to sprout above the soil.

One of the things I noticed while putting this garden together is that we had picked up some organic seeds from OSC (Ontario Seed Company)

Personally I’m not convinced of the necessity for organic seeds. I’m not even sure what that means. I suspect it’s got some requirement that the products grown from it can be certified as organic. Personally, not something I care about for this. We’ll get all the ‘organic’ we need because we’re growing it ourselves and are thus in control of what’s going onto and into the plants and the ground. Keeping the inputs to the garden clean has more IMO to do with getting out better vegetables than starting with an organic seed. So, not to swipe organic seeds, but for a home gardener I think it’s more of a curiosity.

I did read a claim somewhere that genetically modified seeds (and I don’t know that organic precludes GM, I bet it doesn’t) have lower nutritional value because the nutritional value has been bred out. There’s something else I found doubtful. I don’t think that it follows that breeding plants for some genetic trait necessarily lowers the nutritional value or changes other traits. I suspect this is just a bit of GM hysteria. We don’t have to like everything, but let’s not let our dislike blind us from facts or lead us to drawing spurious conclusions .

One thing I DO detest about GM seeds, from what little bit I know (and that’s just about nothing) is the fact that for farmers much of their GM seeds are ‘mules’.  Grow corn from a GM seed and you can’t use that corn as seed for next year.  Farmers have to buy new corn seed from the GM seed companies next year.  That’s bad for the environment, bad for crops, and bad for consumers.  It keeps prices high and limits competition.  All bad things.  But I digress .

So now we’ve got an 8X4 foot raised bed garden filled with soil and some compost. We cordoned it off in square foot sections and now have to decide what to plant.

Here’s the high density part. We’ve got 32 individual squares to seed. That’s actually quite a bit.

I’ll reinforce again that my son is actively involved and excited at this point. I got some organic seeds from the class I took on raised bed gardening, but it’s not all that we want. He’s been pestering me to go to the garden center to get more seeds, talking about what we’re going to get, and just generally interested. So far we’ve managed to capture and keep the attention of a 12 year old boy. Pretty good, considering the alternative is Xbox. He’s also decided that he likes red onions so we absolutely have to plant a bunch of those.

In any event, here’s our grid of what we planted. This is subject to change once stuff actually gets growing and my memory gets corrected .

corn / squash	corn / squash	corn / squash	corn / squash	corn / cucumber	corn / cucumber	corn / cucumber	corn / cucumber
peas	swiss chard	swiss chard	swiss chard	potatoes	beans	beans	carrots
peas	romaine lettuce	romaine lettuce	romaine lettuce	potatoes	beans	beans	carrots
tomatoes	tomatoes	green peppers	green peppers	i forget	red onion	red onion	radishes

Square foot gardener

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why would someone as handsome and smart as yourself allow something as nasty as squash to be planted? Well, as it turns out my wife loves squash. So we defer to her on this. I won’t be eating any of it but there’ll be lots for her.

Here’s the rationale for all of this. We planted corn on the north side row because we want sweet corn. It’s tall, and if we planted it on the other side it would have shaded the garden.

Planting the squash and cucumbers is a spin on the native indians’ ‘three sisters’. This is their ancient practice of planting squash, corn and beans together. High density high yield vegetable gardens from hundreds of years ago! The corn grows high, the squash and cucumbers grow low. In addition, the vines planted on the edge row like that will allow them to spill over onto the ground.

Most of the rest of the stuff we planted because we like the vegetables. As I noted, my son likes red onions – so we planted to squares of those. I wanted spinach but apparently swiss chard is hardier and faster growing (and tastes pretty much the same) so we’ve got some of that. My family loves salads, so that explains the romaine lettuce. The rest of the vegetables are pretty much standard fare.

For the corn, in each square we planted 9 equally spaced seeds. About the same number of squash seeds were planted (I think that’s going to be way too many, but it’s our first year). Beans, about 15-20 seed per square. That I know is going way overboard but my son had the seeds out and in the squares before I caught it. For the carrots and radishes we did three rows in the soil with our finger then lightly sprinkled the seeds in. Potatoes were just seed potatoes cut up and about 3-4 eyes per square.

For the actual planting, my son and I basically laid the seeds out then stuck them in the ground by poking them down with our fingers. Not overly scientific but again I believe it’s not rocket science. Seeds in ground, some water and sun and we’re going to have vegetables. It’s pretty foolproof.

We also planted four marigolds, one at each corner of the garden. Apparently they are natural pest and insect deterrents. For the dollar I paid for them I figured what the heck – we’ll give it a try.

Oh yeah, the tomato plants, we planted about half way up the stem (not level with the root ball like you’d expect). It seems that planting them deep, halfway up the stem, it prevents some sort of rot. OK, I was told, I did.

We watered the plants (tomatoes, peppers, onions, and marigolds) and left the seeds unwatered as there’s plenty of moisture in the soil. Now we wait!

Here’s the next important principle involved in urban farming.  We’ve got a 4X4 or 8X4 or similiar sized box, filled with soil.  We need to turn this into a high density producer.

The main proponent of this type of high density vegetable farming is the square foot gardener.  You can buy his book and read his site, but here’s the general idea.  We take a small raised garden and divide it into 1 foot by 1 foot squares.  Each square is then fully seeded with a specific plant.  By taking advantage of the space in each square right to the edges, and by removing any rows in the garden it’s surprising how much you can pack in in the way of variety and volume of vegetables.

Now there’s two other things that came out of the course I took at our local bookstore on raised bed gardening.  First, we built our garden on the east side of the house instead of the west (for better sunlight).  That’s not relevant to this post but I wanted to mention that .  Secondly, you can double plant stuff.  So in addition to having high density plantings, in some cases we can double up or vegetables in each square.

Oh, the third thing I learned is that this stuff isn’t rocket science.  Use your head, if it makes sense, try it.  So some of the stuff we’re doing may not work but it won’t likely be a complete catastrophe either.  Give it some thought, if it’s reasonable, do it.

Let me drift mildy off topic for a second.  I attended a raised bed gardening class put on by our local independent bookstore who brought in a fellow who run a nursery.  A couple things I learned, one relating to fertilization.

Here’s the way he put it – we’re all taught this in grade 5, then proceed to forget it as we get older.  Plants don’t eat soil or fertilizer.  They make their own food from the sun – photosynthesis.  Yes, they need some trace elements that may be removed from the soil by harvesting, but that’s about it.  It makes perfect sense when put that way.  We know grass will grow in the cracks of concrete, and if you’re Canadian you’ve probably seen cedar and pine trees growing out of the sides of granite cliffs.

So my intention with this garden isn’t just to use organic fertilizer, it’s to use no fertilizer.  I’ve got soil and compost as described previously. I expect I’ll turn our compost pile into the garden each year as well.  But that’s it.

OK, so you’re in suburbia. Your house is packed in like sardines with everyone else’s and your backyard is the size of a postage stamp. Also, like me, you’re mostly disinterested in hard work.

Welcome to the idea of raised bed bed gardening! For folks like us without the pleasure of a tractor and acreage, raised bed gardening is a perfect solution.

Raised bed gardening is exactly what it sounds like. You create a framework of some kind (using inexpensive materials), fill it with soil, plant. Later, you eat. Pretty simple.

Here’s what we did. My son and I headed over to Home Depot (I wanted to go to our local recycling shop but they were closed) and bought some barn board. It’s basically rough sawn pine all knotty and full of slivers. The stuff is 12″ wide and comes in lengths of 12 or 16 feet. We had it cut into two pieces of 8 feet and two pieces of 4 feet (giving us an 8X4 foot raised bed). A few screws later and I’ve got an 8X4 foot pine box in our back yard.

Next I bought a yard of triple mix soil from our local garden center to fill it. That’s part of what’s great about this technique – no turning of sod, no weeding, no worrying about the soil blend. Build the box, fill with dirt, ahem,not dirt but ‘soil’. We filled the box about half full with the soil. Then we spread over the top the contents of our compost bin that we’ve been using for the past year. Nice thick black stuff, with the odd undigested egg shell and corn cob . Gave it a bit of a mix with the shovel, then filled it all up with the rest of the soil.

It’s worth noting that by this point my son is ecstatic and enjoying this thoroughly. We’ve got all the latest Xbox 360′s, they’re gathering dust while he’s outside helping build this – no cajoling required.