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Square foot gardening
Apr. 28th, 2015 11:12 amThe weather is getting better and we are outdoors most of the time, reshaping our garden and getting it ready for the summer. I want to do some swuare foot gardening to the side of the house and I really wanted a tiny lawn where I can hang laundry on sunny days, where we can sit and read or let the future children play on the ground without scraping their knees. Eduard did most of the hard work, like carrying the sand in and creating paved paths to the back of the yard. I on the other hand dug out the plants we wanted to keep, told him where things were supposed to go, replanted when neccesary and took trips to the garden center. I regular gave him something to eat/drink and made him dinner after he slaved away for hours.
This traditional rolepattern seems to be working fine for us.
Last weekend the paths were finnished with left over pavement stones we had lying around. Eduard build two 1.20 x1.20 m raised garden beds (that's...4ft by 4 ft I think) and two smaller raised beds, roughly 50x50 cm (1,6 ft x1.6ft). He build a trellis for the bean stalks and I researched soil, where to get it, and I bought 200L of garden soil. Which was not enough to fill one of the big raised beds so we're going to need another 600L I think. If people tell you gardening is inexpensive, I will laugh them in the face. The raised beds didn't cost much (repurposed pallets and repurposed sandbags for the lining) but good soil is expensive. We are making our own compost but it is hard to keep up and produce enough for the garden.
The next step is getting some better seeds. I've been working with the seeds we got at the supermarket, but the seedlings are just not up to par (only sweet pepper is doing well, the rest is on the tiny, scrawny side). We received seeds as a gift for our wedding so we are good when it comes to pumpkings, courgette, beans, lollo rosso, radish, corn (very nice biological seeds), endive, radish, tomatoes and sweet peppers. We could do with carrots, rhubarb, unions, potatoes and cabbage. Or base soil is clay but the raised beds are filled with the good stuff so I don't think that'll be a problem.
The biggest problem? Upkeep and watering contantly for the next six months. Thankfully we live in a country with a lot of rain, and we are not planning on going on holiday anyway since we're getting dormers on our house in two weeks or so. The municipality licence came through and the contracter dropped by this morning to retake the sizes for the window frames. Not much gardening for us next weekend, we need to clear out the attic and sit out three weeks of the contracter building stuff in our house. I took those three weeks off because I need a break, we'll see how much naps I can fit in while they are working upstairs.
This traditional rolepattern seems to be working fine for us.
Last weekend the paths were finnished with left over pavement stones we had lying around. Eduard build two 1.20 x1.20 m raised garden beds (that's...4ft by 4 ft I think) and two smaller raised beds, roughly 50x50 cm (1,6 ft x1.6ft). He build a trellis for the bean stalks and I researched soil, where to get it, and I bought 200L of garden soil. Which was not enough to fill one of the big raised beds so we're going to need another 600L I think. If people tell you gardening is inexpensive, I will laugh them in the face. The raised beds didn't cost much (repurposed pallets and repurposed sandbags for the lining) but good soil is expensive. We are making our own compost but it is hard to keep up and produce enough for the garden.
The next step is getting some better seeds. I've been working with the seeds we got at the supermarket, but the seedlings are just not up to par (only sweet pepper is doing well, the rest is on the tiny, scrawny side). We received seeds as a gift for our wedding so we are good when it comes to pumpkings, courgette, beans, lollo rosso, radish, corn (very nice biological seeds), endive, radish, tomatoes and sweet peppers. We could do with carrots, rhubarb, unions, potatoes and cabbage. Or base soil is clay but the raised beds are filled with the good stuff so I don't think that'll be a problem.
The biggest problem? Upkeep and watering contantly for the next six months. Thankfully we live in a country with a lot of rain, and we are not planning on going on holiday anyway since we're getting dormers on our house in two weeks or so. The municipality licence came through and the contracter dropped by this morning to retake the sizes for the window frames. Not much gardening for us next weekend, we need to clear out the attic and sit out three weeks of the contracter building stuff in our house. I took those three weeks off because I need a break, we'll see how much naps I can fit in while they are working upstairs.
