Absoblogginlutely’s Square Foot Garden

I was just building a standard 4*4 garden so I was going to need 4*4*0.5 =8 cubic feet which is not very helpful when dividing by three for the three main ingredients. However in order to dump the ingredients onto the tarp I needed a box to measure the appropriate quantities and the cardboard box that I had lying around in the garden just happened to measure 1.3 cubic feet which meant 2 boxes per ingredient. As I have previously mentioned I found the compost really hard to get hold of, but the one bag that I did find and the cow manure bags were both 40lb bags and both filled the cardboard box nicely, so my final ingredients list was 2 vermiculite, 2 peat moss, 1 cow manure and 1 compost. However after mixing all this and pouring it into the bed I still had a fair amount of empty space as the watering of the bed compacts the mix down so I had to mix another box of vermiculite, peat moss and potting soil. So, when shopping make sure that you always buy more than the standard calculations (in my case a third more). In the case of vermiculite and peat moss I have loads left as I purchased the large bags although I think I used more than a half of the vermiculite.