I’ve used the flickrrss widget to add my flickr account photos to the side of the blog for a visual update of the garden. I did find that with wordpress 2.2 you don’t need to install the automatic widget plugin as it is already built in, but you do need to create the widgets directory underneath the plugins directory and load the flickr-widget.php file into this directory.
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.
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.
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.
Last year at Thanksgiving, my parents purchased the All New Square Foot Gardening
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.