The Real Dirt on Dirt

Square Foot Gardening (SFG) is a proven method for growing a lot of food in a small space. To support such an intense production, the growing medium needs to be top notch.

Qualities Of Good Growing Soil
One of the reasons why SFG works is because Mel developed a formula for the growing medium that provides all the benefits that a successful vegetable garden needs:

• good drainage
• air circulation around the roots
• a steady supply of nutrients for the plants. 

No matter where you live in the country, the dirt in your backyard will not be sufficient for a successful vegetable garden.  You're dealing with clay, sand, rocks, and other lifeless stuff.

Mel's Mix
The first SFG book that Mel published contained a formula for building the needed growing medium. Mel suggested 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost.  Over the years, many people have had great success with this formula.  SFG'ers that have failed typically try some variation on this formula and mixing it into the existing dirt, thinking that clay, sand, and rocks are somehow still good growing mediums.  Bad idea.

Now Even More Convenient
Several years ago Mel started selling bags of Mel's Mix. This makes it easier than ever to start your vegetable garden with a successful growing medium. No more hassle of trying to find vermiculite in the small quantity needed for your first SFG.  The compost component of the Mel's Mix bags contains at least 5 different ingredients including bat guano, worm castings, and dried kelp. Why mess with any other brand of potting soil when you know that you're getting the proven vegetable formula straight from Mel?

The garden beds do not need to be deep, just 6" will suffice for most crops. So building a shallow raised bed and filling it with the proper growing medium is not an expensive venture.  A 4'x4' box just 6" deep is 8 cubic feet is volume.  Mel's Mix comes in 2 cubic foot bags, so 4 bags will fill your 4'x4' box.

The Cost
Building a 4'x4' 6" tall raised bed costs about $20-$25 in raw materials for a DIY project.  The expense of $15 per bag of Mel's Mix may seem high at first.  But consider this: The one-time investment of $85 will provide $150-$200 of food per year.  So with a 6-month break-even point, and a garden that will last several years, you will save 10 times the initial investment, not to mention the health benefits of your own organic vegetables that haven't been warehoused, trucked, and touched by countless germy grocery store customers before you.

Summary
If you've had a brown thumb in the past, make the small investment to start your SFG garden bed properly.  Learn what to sow, and when to sow, for your area. Follow this proven method of vegetable gardening and you will wonder why you waited so long.

Questions about your garden?  Trying things that are working? Not working?  Need to talk?  Am I asking too many questions?  Chat it up below ...

Extending Your Growing Season

Protecting plants from extreme seasonal weather changes is one of the best ways to extend your growing season.

If you have 4'x4' garden boxes, here is a simple way to build a PVC frame.  The materials should cost less than $20.

The Protection Frame:

Materials List

• 2ft rebar (4)
• 4ft PVC (5)
• PVC T-joints (2)
• shade screen (summer)
• painter’s drop cloth (winter)

Assembly

• Using a mallet, drive a rebar into the ground just outside each corner of the garden box. Leave at least 6" of rebar exposed.
• Place a 4' section of PVC on each rebar
• Bend two of the adjacent 4' PVC pipes towards each other and hold them together with the cross section of a T-joint. Position the branch of the joint so that it is pointing across the top of the garden.
• Repeat on the other side of the garden with the other two PVC pipes and T-joint.
• Put the last piece of PVC between the two T-joints.

In the summer, cover the frame with shade screen during the hottest parts of the day. During the Fall, Winter, and Spring you can protect plants from frost and snow. You can add an additional 4 weeks of frost protection on both sides of the winter season.

Here in Phoenix Arizona, our frost dates are December 15th through February 15th. That's only 8 weeks, meaning that we can grow vegetables throughout the winter here. For both Summer and Winter protection in Phoenix Arizona, I've used old sheets over the garden bed with great success.  

Other parts of the country may require a sturdier frame to support snow. Perhaps having loops every 2' rather than 4' would be sufficient. Or a second identical frame as described here, turned 90 degrees, would certainly be stronger. Another modification might be to add a center pole to support the 4' span across the garden box.

Summary

The benefits of building a protection frame like this will far outweigh the one time expense of gathering the supplies. I hope you consider extending your garden's growing season with a similar project.

How have you protected your vegetables and extended your growing season? Please share links, pictures, and comments below.

Here's The Poop On Compost

Maintaining a compost bin is one of the best things you can do for your garden. The pile does not need to smell if managed properly.  The benefits far outweigh any perceived hassle of making compost.

So let's jump into compost with both feet and talk about the benefits, uses, getting started, and ongoing maintenence of your compost.

Benefits of Compost
Finished compost can feed your plants with needed nutrients without too much risk of burning up the plants if managed properly. You can avoid using chemicals to fertilize your vegetables if you have compost on hand.  You'll also be doing your part to reduce the burdon on your community's land fill. If 10% of your trash is composted, you won't make a noticable dent in the city service.  But consider the impact if enough members of your community did their part to compost.  Think of all the organic food that your entire community could be enjoying if more people implimented a small square foot garden.

Uses of Compost
If you are growing vegetables using the Square Foot Gardening method, you need to provide a steady source of good food and nutrition to your vegetables.  There are two ways that you will use compost in your Square Foot Garden:

• As you are preparing a 12" square for planting after harvesting, you'll turn the soil in that square with a hand trowel, break up any clumps, then smoothen out the top of the square.  Next, you'll add a trowel full of compost to the square and work it in to the top inch or two. Now that you've "amended" that square, it's ready to be planted with a new crop. Remember to choose a different crop than the one you just harvested from that square, which is called crop rotation, and designed to keep from depleting too much of the same nutrient from the soil. 

• Once your plants are well established, you will feed them once a week with a "compost tea" besides your normal watering schedule. Make the tea by placing a trowel full of compost in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket. Fill the bucket with water and let the tea steep throughout the day.  In the evening, gently pour a measured cup of compost tea on each plant.  When you get to the bottom of the bucket, you can either put the compost sludge back into your compost bin or you can use it to top-dress a few of your heaviest feeding vegetables.  I stop feeding root vegetables with the compost tea about 2 weeks before their harvest.

Getting Started With Compost
If you started your garden with bags Mel's Mix, you already have a good compost built into that growing medium.  You will still want to start a compost bin so you can keep the vegetables fed on a regular basis.

For the city gardener, I suggest using plastic trash cans and a 5 gallon bucket for your compost system. One of the trash cans will have finished compost in it, one will be a "work in progress" and an optional third trash can will be used for turning your compost. The 5 gallon bucket is needed to make tea.

To give your compost system a quick jump start, purchase some finished compost.  I visit a few nurseries, purchase different types of compost, and blend.  Buy one bag of deoterized cow manure and a bag of worm castings. You may also want to add a bag of chicken manure.  Simply blend the purchased stuff in one of the trash cans and you're ready to go.

Ongoing Maintenence of Your Compost
In the second trash can, I begin keeping garden and kitchen scraps that are appropriate for making compost.  Any non-diseased vegetables and garden waste can go in your compost bin.  Keep used coffee grounds, banana peels, and hard-boiled egg shells.

Avoid adding any meat, fat, dressings and broths, uncooked egg, dairy, etc. to the compost.  Do not add your dog and cat manure, nor the grass cuttings from your yard if you have a dog.

Just about everything that I've mentioned so far that you can put in your compost bin is considered "green", even if it's dried out and has turned brown.  It all really is still green stuff that is simply dehydrated.

You will need to add about twice as much "brown" as green to your working compost bin.  Brown products include shredded paper towels and paper plates (again being careful not to include any animal products), cardboard, chip board, etc.  Think of it this way, if the compost bin smells nasty, add sufficient shredded cardboard to absorb the odor.  In a day or two, the pile will smell sweet rather than sour.  That's how you know if you've added enough brown to the pile.

It can be difficult to reach into a trash can and turn the compost, which needs to happen on a regular basis.  So I find that having an empty trash can available helps.  As long as I keep my working compost bin small enough to be able to pick up, I can dump it's contents into the empty trash can and the compost turning is complete.

You also want to keep the compost moist but not flooded.  It helps to drill small drainage holes around trash cans that you've dedicated to composting.  The holes also will help with needed air circulation. A good working compost bin is "aerobic" rather than anaerobic. Oxygen is required for the process to work.

Summary
So there's the poop on compost.  As a minimum, you need to have purchased compost on hand so that you can feed your vegetables organically on a regular basis.  I hope that you decide to create your own compost too.