Square Foot Garden ready to be filled

Another weekend working on the square foot garden and this time building and putting in place the second of the two beds.   We have two beds, one 6×4 and the other is 6×3.    The smaller bed was finished off with waste wood from the house next door that is currently under renovation.  I was hoping to liberate more than I did, but when it came to it but I only found one plank that was pretty rotten at the end.  It just about did the job.

r.P1060010

I was a bit suprised to read in the book that the amount of spacing between beds should be a good 4 foot or so.  I can understand this as once plants are all grown it will all be pretty busy, but at the same time it is meant to be a garden scheme for a small garden and so it would seem strange that as much land that is used for growing is also set to do nothing.   As it happens, the amount of limited room we had meant the gap is only around a foot between the beds which even I think is going to be trouble later on in the year.  We shall see.  It is just wide enough to get a hoe in between to sort out any weeds and things.

For the bottom of the beds, prior to adding the soil, is the cardboard.  We have lots of this saved up over the years for some strange reason, I did have to climb through the garage over the top of the car (that I must say has not really moved out of the garage for about as long as the cardboard has also been stored).  Tom and Jack were very excited about all this and were more than happy to help.  It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for though as they got the cardboard and then spent the rest of the time playing inside them while they left me to do the rest.  Isn’t it strange that however old they are they still love to play in cardboard boxes, if only I had had the time too…

r.P1060022

The finished result this weekend is two beds all ready to be filled.  During the week I will ordering and buying the bits and pieces needed for “Mels Mix”, and next weekend we will be harvesting the worm compost from the wormary as part of this.  I have put down two layers of cardboard which should keep things at bay until the cardboard rots down.   The rose bush has been moved and the area around the beds have been sown with seed.   I was going to use turf, but the shop didn’t have any, so we shall see how we go with seed.   The flower bed in front of the new beds has also been reshaped, made narrower and edged with wood instead of bricks.   This makes the flower bed much more manageable and give it all a softer look with the wood edging, going from the wood of the decking to the wood of the square foot beds.

r.P1060025

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *