Foot by Foot - Forget Inches

I was asked a few days ago if I was doing a square foot garden. It is amazing how quickly you take everyday tasks for granted. It struck me as a great post. I won't go into why I fell in love with our house today, but I must mention that the design of our yard was created by previous owners. With two acres of land, there is an incentive to fill as much of it to avoid the expense of mowing that much land. Thankfully, there is a pond and woods to take up some of the acreage. One spot was a long strip of land covered by black paper. They had planted their garden there. No wonder! It is the perfect spot for sun, shade, drainage, and breeze. There was no way I could plant that big of a garden; so my husband kindly dug post holes for me and, with some fallen limbs around the place. created an enclosed garden. That first year we covered a 2'x8' section of the garden for $50. I was so disappointed! Here I thought I could have over 8 beds with a little path down the middle and instead a mere 2'x8' had cost us $50 for soil! Never again, I thought. That's when the chickens entered the story, but I'm getting off topic.

Lasagna Gardening, a book I came across was a fancy way of saying sheet composting. I took with the idea and ran. There was no way I was interested in weeding with a 6 month old and 5 months pregnant! We covered that 2'x8' bed with 6" mulch and I did not weed that bed once.

Young Tomato and Bell Pepper

I did water it once and we had so many tomatoes (they rotted because I did not know I should have kept them off the ground) and Bell Peppers; it was ridiculous. As you can see in the picture, a nice line of weeds grew up along the fence where I could not cover it with newspaper and mulch.

Back to the original plan for this post. I actively plan square foot gardening in my vegetable garden only. I don't know why....well, because it saves me from bending over too far, weeding, and countless hours watering. There is a higher yield with what little I plant and less maintenance (as I already mentioned). As for the my other gardens, they are not square foot layouts. Instead, the other gardens are haphazard messes of color. I have a suspicion my husband would appreciate them more if they were organized square foot layouts.

Ok, let's try one more paragraph to address this topic before going on another rabbit trail! My square foot plan is as follows:

• Six 4'x6' beds of compost sheeting material.
• one narrow cardboard walkway between the beds (right now it is a large walkway because I have yet to put in the last two garden beds).
• Chicken wire fencing nailed to tree limb posts, encircling the garden.

I just want to mention this fencing is buried under the ground a few inches. It is not a tall fence, maybe four feet tall? I have never had a problem with wildlife eating my garden. The rabbits do bite off whatever hangs outside the fence.