Those are some expensive vegetables
We’re making our first tentative venture into the world of gardening by setting up a square foot garden. The principles seem easy enough: make a box, fill it with “Mel’s mix”, plant, water, weed, and viola, vegetables will appear. I hope it turns out to be that easy.
My son has built the box for the garden bed. We’re using a 4×4 box to start. We also invested in some chicken wire to give the dog the hint that he should stay out. So far the start-up costs have run me $126.33, although there are still a few things left to buy. We’ve gotten peat moss, mulch, deck screws, boards, chicken wire, a drinking water safe hose, and seeds. (Hm, that doesn’t seem like much for $126.)
We’ll be planting carrots, snow peas, sweet corn, and Roma tomatoes. At this rate they’ll cost us a lot more than they would have if we’d just gone and bought them at the store, but they should taste a lot better too, so I think it will be worth it. Future years’ costs should be dramatically reduced.
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March 8th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
This will be a great investment! Gardening is such a liberating skill, and it takes years of experience to master. In the meantime, it looks like the price of vegetables (particularly healthy, organic, local vegetables) will continue to rise until the Department of Agriculture changes its ways, so learning these skills and building those gardens today will probably save money in the long run.
March 9th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Even tho you are following Square Foot Gardening techniques, the wooden frame was not absolutely necessary. The first year we did it, we simply made the raised garden without, just mounded it up. We also asked around for some chicken wire for fencing. However, the next year we were able to scrounge some wood for the sides. By the way, I’m very short so we made our beds 3×6 so I could reach the middle.
You might want to check out John Jeavon’s book, titled “How to
Grow More Vegetable in Less Space”, or something close to that. He does the French Intensive (like Square Foot) gardening combined with succesive planting.
As far as taking years of experience to master – EVERY year you will master some part of the experience of gardening, even if it is to discover the difference between a weed sprout and a sweet corn sprout (just ask my husband after he ‘helped’ me weed the corn the first time!!)
Wishing you a bountiful garden year.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Thanks for the encouragement guys. I sure hope something grows :)