Gardening in buckets, square-foot style, has been successful. My favorite harvests were: tomatoes, Swiss chard, Tuscan Kale, Russian Kale, and bush green beans. In the past, I have had good luck with cucumbers, this year not so much, I will try again in the early Autumn or Spring, but will choose a different variety.
The million dollar question: Will I continue to plant this way in the future?
ABSOLUTELY!
Square Foot Gardens are a terrific choice for gardening in small spaces. After planting Square Foot plots for several years I gave them up to grow a beautiful rose garden. With food shortages looming, and prices skyrocketing this Spring, I decided the time was right to grow a few vegetables again. I didn’t want to dig another garden into the yard, and wanted to try something temporary. I’ve combined Square Foot with container gardening and it is growing well in the first days of June.
The garden needed a border; the largest expense was the fencing. This keeps the area neat and also helped in laying out the proper measurements. Dollar store buckets, two and a half gallons, were an inexpensive choice for the containers. I created drainage holes by thrusting my spading fork once into the buckets as they sat on the grass. The holes were perfectly spaced, and my lawn aerated a bit too. Garden fabric cut large enough to cover the area keeps the grass from growing up between the pots. Filling the buckets with a mixture of organic container soil and vermiculite was easy using the wheelbarrow to mix it.
Swiss Chard, Kale, and Bok Choy have been very plentiful. Steamed with carrots, mixed with a little butter, and ladled over Jasmine Rice, oh my, so delicious.
The tomatoes already need watering every day, their stems appear more like small tree trunks than normal sized garden plants. I have them in the back of the gardens, braced against trellises for support. Small palettes between the plots keep the grass down also. I’m growing a large variety of vegetables to take note of how each plant performs. Too early to know what will succeed as of now, but the green beans, four plants to a bucket, are getting small beans after flowering. I’ll update as the summer progresses.
So far, the only antagonist to my garden joy is the yellow squash. There have been many flowers, and several small squash, but all developed blossom rot. I’ll read up on this problem and apply what might help. If I find a solution that works I will post the results. Here’s a photo of another squash, white squash, I am hoping it will perform better.
PS Between the time of writing the first draft of this post, and now, the small green beans grew large enough for a first tasting. Delicious! Food grown in a dollar store bucket: an achievement that might come in handy if the world keeps spinning toward higher inflation and food shortages in the future.
A sampling of my garden library:
While walking through the Longwood Garden’s conservatory I came upon this amazing raised bed planting box. It brought to mind Mel Bartholomew and Square Foot Gardens. I didn’t see any labeling of the box, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Square Foot Gardening technique was what the gardeners had planned. The box held a magnificent display of swiss chard, brussel sprouts and parsley. If I ever have a big greenhouse you can be sure I will grow vegetables throughout the winter in just this way.
To read more about Square Foot Gardening check out their website and visit all the links. Square Foot Gardening
Yesterday, after visiting Roork’s in Elmer, New Jersey, we began mixing the growing medium for our first square foot garden. Setting these gardens up is a bit pricey. For one 4 x 6 raised bed we spent about 75.00. The good news is that this expense is a one-time occurrence. In coming years we will only need to add a bit of our own compost to the bed. These raised beds need no fertilizer or additional amendments.
Mixing was easy in an old children’s swimming pool. We mixed half the product at a time. Joe did the mixing, I did the clump-busting with a metal garden rake.
We used four different types of humus, the book recommends five, but we decided four was enough, two types of manure, one mushroom soil, and bucketfuls of our own compost from the bin.
We used a whole bale of peat moss as the book, Square Foot Gardening, recommends.
A bale of vermiculite was next. This was the most expensive item. It does look much more natural than perlite though, so in the long run we know it will be more aesthetically appealing.
All we need now is a bit of fencing to keep the rascally rabbits, the curious cats, and the mischevious chipmunks and squirrels out of the bed. Today I might work on making some scary looking owl replicas out of old CD’s. Fun.
MINDING MY P'S WITH Q 