Square Foot Garden Progress

Our garden is doing remarkably well since it gets little or no attention from us. OK, that's not entirely true -- Maddie's new job is to water every day and she's been very responsible.

Here's our first few harvests:
The plants are growing tall and taller. Last year our zucchini and cucumbers just withered and died by mid-July. This year they've gone nuts! I'm worried that they're going to choke the tomatoes to the point that we don't get the bounty of red tomatoes I'd hoped for this year.

So, I decided to smoosh the zucchini down a bit in the hopes that the tomatoes could have a chance. Hopefully I haven't killed the plants:

I'm still stuck on what to do with the cucumbers. They're blocking all the sunlight on the right half of the garden.


We planted a few zucchini in normal dirt to see what would happen. So far, they are about 12 inches high and just have a few flowers. I think something has been nibbling on them, but I'm not sure.

Here's some of the hundreds of tomatoes that are just hanging out green and tiny on the vine. I'm hoping they turn red soon...

We are victims!

We have been plagued by blight this year. First, we lost the zucchini plant. Then the cucumbers. Now, the tomatoes are starting to succumb. It's so sad! We're going to have to ride it out and see what happens, because once your garden is infected, it's almost impossible to stop.

We've been loosing leaves from the tomato plants for a while, but were uneducated as to how brutal this was going to be. Today, this is how we found several of the tomatoes:

For those of you on the East Coast, you may or not be familiar with blight. It arrived in the area about 10-15 years ago, and has been destroying crops ever since. It is a fungus that develops well in wet, moist conditions. It survives in temperatures up to 95 degrees in the day and as low as 65 degrees in the night -- a perfect New England summer. This is the same disease that destroyed potatoes and caused the great Irish potato famine that resulted in the Irish immigration to America in the 1840s to 1850s. There are no real remedies for blight once it has arrived. Currently, there are no plants that are resistant to the fungus.

Learn more about blight here.

We picked about 8 pounds of tomatoes today, bringing our grand total to 37 pounds. Not bad considering the blight plague. We're hoping to get more, but it's going to be an effort to beat the blight now. I'm afraid it's going to take over.

All in all, our garden has not yet provided enough produce to have paid for it's construction. It cost about $350 to put together, plant and fill with the proper soil. We've probably saved about $150 in produce expenses. Over time, it will pay for itself I guess, but so far we're in the red. Hopefully next year won't be so moist.

All Right Garden!!!

It seems like we have really turned a corner in the garden. I've been able to get about 8 pounds worth of tomatoes over a 48 hour time period this week. I attribute it to three things:

• Time
• Not watering -- thanks Wendy!
• Heat - finally we have had a few sunny, hot days in a row

I did a lot of research on how to turn your green tomatoes into red ones. One of the basic tips was to only water every 2-3 days. I've been watering every single day. I didn't know they only needed water every 2-3 days, even in the heat of summer. So, I stopped watering this week. I haven't given them any water since Saturday, and we seem to be doing much better now. I'll probably throw on a little water today, but not too much.

If you're struggling like I am -- I live in fear of all those 200 tomatoes dying in the soon-to-come frost, there are additional ways to turn your tomatoes if that frost is headed your way. I've gathered a few from the Internet here. Now, I haven't tried these yet myself, but if we get closer to the first frost and I still have bunches on the vine, you can bet I'll start trying different things to save them!

• The ol' brown paper bag trick -- apparently this works on tomatoes as well as peaches
• Place them a box, in the dark, with an apple. The apple apparently provides the necessary chemicals in the air to turn them red. Who knew?
• Pick them and just let them sit on your counter out of direct sunlight until turning red.

To the Food Growers of America

To the Food Growers of America,

Thank you! Thank you for every ounce of effort you put into feeding my family. Thank you for choosing to support your families in a profession that is getting less and less respect. Thank you for working long hours in the hot sun to bring healthy fruit and vegetables to my table.

Until this year, I did not appreciate your valiant efforts. Now I understand how hard you must be working. I understand the acres of plants you must nurture to have enough crop to make money. I understand the sadness when a plant in your care dies. I now understand the amount of education and experience you must possess to produce enough crops to feed your family.

I thank you. For my garden has not produced enough to sustain us. We have enjoyed its fruits and hope to learn and grow to make it more productive over the years. You, dear farmers, have offered up your wonderful product when ours has failed to meet the demand. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

For those who may doubt the sincerity of my thanks, I offer you the evidence of my gratitude. After 4 months of service, our garden has produced these wonderful vegetables:

I'm grateful for what we have been able to grow, and I hope we continue to see more. But I am also very thankful for the farmers that will take up the challenge and produce the food I cannot seem to grow. Thank you!

Planting my garden

I'm still building my garden's framework, though it's almost finished. I'm hoping to have seeds in the ground before next weekend. We just have to figure out how to move the frame from the garage to the great outdoors.

This week I've been deciding what to plant in my 28 squares of my square foot garden. I have two rows of 14 squares each. In my research into different varieties and types of each plant, I've selected a small sampling. This is mostly so that I can learn what will grow in our garden. Secondary to that is to learn which varieties we prefer. I'm particularly interested in the tomatoes. My favorite tomato is the campari type. I can eat an entire plate full with just a little salt. I'd eat them at every meal -- even breakfast. Unfortunately, I can't find the plants available for purchase anywhere, and I'm not talented enough yet to grow them from the seeds leftover from dinner. Because my entire family feels the way I do about a tasty tomato, I've chosen to go with all indeterminate(means produces until the frost) varieties. We'll see how that pans out as the season goes along.

My garden has taken quite a bit of thought, and of course an Excel spreadsheet. I've copied and pasted things around in Excel for weeks trying to come up with the perfect combination. Because so much of what I want to plant will need to grow vertically, the entire back row will be trellised. All of the plants requiring trellis subsequently have to be placed on that back row. Good thing we went for a long garden!

Here are the intricate details:

The Back Row:

• Square #1 -- Cucumber(Marketmore 76) from seeds


• Square #2 -- Jet Star Tomato


• Square #3 -- String Beans -- Bush, Blue Lake 274 Beans from seed and Tendergreen Improved, Bush, Beans from seed
  
  
• Square #4 -- Early Girl Tomato


• Square #5 -- String Beans -- Pole Burpee's Stringless Green Pod and Kentucky Wonder, Rust Resistant Pole Beans


• Square #6 -- Better Boy Tomato


• Square #7 -- Peas -- Alaska Wilt Resistant Peas


• Square #8 -- Grape Tomato


• Square #9 -- Cucumber from transplant, also a marketmore


• Square #10 -- Beefy Boy Tomato


• Square #11 --Peas -- Little Marvel (dwarf) peas


• Square #12 -- Brandywine Tomato


• Square #13 & 14-- Zucchini

The Front Row:

• Square #1 -- Cucumber(Marketmore 76) from seeds


• Square #2 -- Lettuce -- Romaine(Parris Island Cos Lettuce) -- I'll be rotating the planting in this square. The first planting will be a transplant from the store. I'll also plant seeds at 10-14 day intervals after that for good crop rotation. I'm a bit worried about when the lettuce will go to seed because of heat. But, since I don't know when that will happen, I'm going to try to grow as much as possible until then.


• Square #3 -- Lettuce -- Salad Bowl Lettuce -- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.


• Square #4 -- Lettuce -- Great Lakes Lettuce -- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.


• Square #5 -- Lettuce -- Bibb Lettuce-- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.


• Square #6 -- Green peppers


• Square #7 -- Herbs -- small patches of cilantro, parsley & chives


• Square #8 -- Red peppers


• Square #9 -- Spinach -- Teton Hybrid Spinach from seeds


• Square #10 -- Jalapeno peppers


• Square #11 -- Spinach -- transplant from the store


• Square #12 -- Yellow peppers


• Square #13 -- Onion -- Spanish sweet and red onion


• Square #14-- Sweet 100 Cherry tomato

Square Foot Garden, Step #1: The Box

This is the first step to building your square foot garden. I should clarify at the very beginning here that neither my husband nor I have any carpenter's training. This is all from personal experience. Right or wrong, this is how we did it. :)

Our garden space is slightly unusual, but it's what we need for our yard. We'll be making a box that is 14 feet long and two feet deep. It will sit along the fence at the side of our house.

Because of where we live and the animals of our surrounding forest, we'll be building a fence around the garden. The instructions for the fencing and building the fence will be posted later. These are only the supplies needed to build the shell of the box. Here it goes!!!

Box Total: $25.60

Supplies Needed:

• Boards -- 5 wood boards measuring 2 inches X 6 inches X 8 feet. As you are selecting your boards, be very careful to watch for warping. We had to go back and get another because we forgot to check them at the hardware store.
• Wood screws -- one package of 3 inch screws

Tools Required:

• Drill
• Screwdriver

Step #1 -- Purchase supplies and have wood cut. While still at the hardware store, have them cut the wood for you. It's so much easier than doing it at home. You will need your five boards cut as follows:

• Board #1 -- Cut two feet off the end, leaving one piece six feet and the other two feet long -- this is one side of the six foot box and one end piece
• Board #2 -- Cut two feet off the end, leaving one piece six feet and the other two feet long -- this is the second side of the six foot box and the other end piece
• Board #3 -- Cut two feet off, then another two feet off and leave the four foot piece remaining. The two foot sections will be the end of the larger box
• Boards #4 and #5 should be left alone, you need them to be 8 feet long.

Step #2 -- Place your boards out as you intend the box to look. It will help you to see any mistakes in placement or warped boards. It is important that the two foot piece is placed on the inside of the larger pieces. If you don't you will not leave enough room for "square feet" in your garden. It will be too narrow.

You will be making two separate boxes if you follow these plans exactly --

• 28 inches by 8 feet (you get 28 inches by the 24 inch board plus two for each side board)
• 28 inches by 6 feet

Step #3 -- Pre-drill holes for the screws. You will be putting two screws at each joint, so you will need to pre-drill two holes starting on the outside piece of wood first. Be sure to drill all the way into the second board. It will help to pull the pieces together tighter when you place the screws.

If you plan on putting fencing around your garden, be sure to leave space for the screws that will hold the fence post up at each corner. You will want to put one post screw at the top and one near the bottom.

As for drilling the holes, over time, we learned that drilling the two holes for one corner, then putting in the screws at that same location was actually faster than pre-drilling all of the holes all at once.

Step #4 -- Put two screws at each joint. Place your screws into the drilled holes and either use the drill or screwdriver to attach the two boards together. Make sure that the two boards pull together to form a tight joint.

Optional Step #5 -- Attach the two separate boxes together. We placed three screws on the middle boards to hold the boxes together. We will be surrounding the two boxes with a common fence, so we didn't want them to separate later.

Yahoo! Your boxes are complete! Tune in later for making the fence, the dirt and actually planting the garden.

Find your Frost Date

This year we have decided as a family to plant a garden. Given my past history of killing plants, being allergic to plants and my overwhelming fear of creepy crawly things, this is a very big deal for me. I've been debating the pros and cons constantly for two weeks. On top of all of those personal hang-ups, it costs significant cash to start a proper garden here. I'll detail the exact cost sometime in the next week, but it is a staggering amount.

There is also a significant amount of knowledge required to start a garden. Luckily a wonderful woman at Lowe's stopped me from running out and sticking tomato plants in my garden two weeks ago. They'd be black and withered by now from the frost. Yeah, I should have known about the frost. In my defense, I grew up in Utah where gardening can be started earlier than in Connecticut. And, again, I have killed many poor plants in the past.

The Lowe's lady taught me about my "last frost date" -- the date that is the average date for the final frost of the year. After your last frost date, you are safe to plant many of the summer veggies. Also, seed packets often say, "Plant three weeks prior to your final frost." If you don't know when that is, you are setting yourself up to either kill your plants with frost or heat depending on the plant's required temperature. For a great reference site, see the Frost Date Selector to find your local frost date.

One other tip from the Lowe's lady -- every area of the country has a particular plant to watch. When that plant blooms, it's safe to put in your summer veggies like tomatoes. Cool, huh? Our plant here in Connecticut is Forsythia a beautiful yellow flowered shrub. When you see the yellow blossoms, go for it! Plant those tomatoes and bask in the sunshine they require! If you don't live in Connecticut, I recommend finding your own "Lowe's lady" to know what plant to watch for in your area.

Just a final note -- there is also a "first frost" date in the fall. That will also damage plants. So, when that time comes be sure to watch the weather so that you're able to protect your plants from the evil "first frost" and get a few more weeks of veggies from that mighty investment of time and energy you call a vegetable garden.