Absoblogginlutely’s Square Foot Garden

The SFG made the night with no creatures digging up the soil mix or cats pooping in it. I nipped out this afternoon to put the cross slats on to make the square foot sections. As the book mentioned, you do need to drill pilot holes for the screws in the slats or otherwise they will crack as you screw through them - woops!

The soil stinks of manure at the moment, so in the hot weather it wasn’t the greatest of environments to be working in.  Hopefully I’ll be planting the seeds tomorrow and making a chickenwire cover to keep the birds, chipmunks and rabbits away.

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Whilst my parents were here in November we purchased a lot of the materials to make the project but didn’t purchase the base or the ingredients to make “Mel’s Mix”. I wasn’t in a hurry as I knew the frost date was the 15th May (and sure enough we had a cold spell the day before) so I didn’t have to rush to get my garden outside. So - it has taken 7 months to start the project!
Getting the 4″ square piece of plywood for the base back from Lowes was not fun. It was chucking it down with rain and the wood would not fit in the car - I had to wait for my father in law to come with his suv to get the wood home. The last piece of the holdup was getting Mel’s ingredients. Obtaining Peat Moss was easy, Vermiculite was only available in medium and not coarse grade and it is practically impossible to purchase compost around here. Most of the garden centres only carry one type of compost (if at all) and Mel’s calls for a variety of mixes. The local nursery that I asked just told me that he uses soil from the garden - not very helpful when I *need* compost. Today I finally managed to track down some compost, potting soil and cow manure that I am going to use as the compost portion of Mels Mix.
So…..today I went to start making the box only to find the battery on my cordless set is flat - so it is currently charging and I am creating this blog.

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Last year at Thanksgiving, my parents purchased the All New Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew and I took a look and decided that it would be a fun project to do. I have no gardening experience whatsoever apart from planting radishes in my parents allottment when I was about 7 or 8 so this really is a beginners blog. The comments are purely my own opinions and thoughts and in gardening terms may be completely inaccurate - if so, feel free to correct me (hopefully before it is too late.)
The design of this website will change as I play around with Wordpress themes, widgets and stuff - this is my first Wordpress based blog for my own use so this project is also going to be used for learning wordpress. The installation took about 5 minutes using the “one click” install from my hosting company which was very handy.
If you want to learn more about Square Foot Gardening then read Mel’s book, look at the official square foot gardening website or take a look at the blogroll that will be populated with other growers.

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