The square foot garden is doing better than expected. I still keep it covered with the sunbonnet each day and the microirrigation system helps to keep it watered. Both of those changes were necessary to adapt to the hot, intense Florida sun. The okra and eggplant are doing especially well and the peppers are beginning to bloom. I’ve added a few herbs, Thai basil and boxwood basil, in the place of the radishes. I think it will gradually become the herb bed rather than vegetables. I’ll move the vegetables to a more sheltered area. In the long run, that will be more successful for the veggies.
Tag Archives: square foot garden
Square Foot Garden Sunbonnet
In the last post I said my square foot garden was not successful. I believed the seed packages that said the plants needed full sun, so I placed the square foot garden where it would receive several hours of sun each day. That was a mistake. The Florida sun is too intense and temperatures too hot. I couldn’t keep the soil miost enough for the plants to grow.
To try to solve the problem, I made a sunbonnet for my square foot garden. I bought sunscreen fabric at Lowes that cuts down on radiation reaching the plants and reduces the temperature of the soil. Since my husband had made a cover out of chicken wire attached to a wood frame to keep out animals of the garden, I stapled the fabric to the wood frame on one side, stretched the fabric across the chicken wire to the other side, and stabled it in place. I’m not sure what will happen if we get a storm. Strong winds might lift it off the bed. I’ll have to figure out a solution for that potential problem. It might be as simple as cutting a slit or two in the top, so the air flows through it.
The sunbonnet isn’t very pretty but it works. On the basis of a single day’s results, I was happy. The okra and eggplants each grew several inches in a day. I couldn’t believe the growth. It finally feels like the money and effort to develop the square foot garden were not wasted.
Between this crop of vegetables and the later crop that I will start in the fall, I will probably move the bed to a more shaded spot in the yard although that will be a lot of work. In the meantime, my garden will wear its sunbonnet.
Square Foot Garden Woes
My square foot garden is not successful. In my earlier post, I said I had to water it more often than I anticipated. As the weather warms, it is impossible to keep the bed watered enough for the plants to do well. I’ve tried spinach, okra, three kinds of peppers, eggplant, chives, and radishes. Other than the basil leaves and 2 okra, we haven’t had anything productive from the garden,
The problem is the location. I placed the square foot garden where it would receive full sun most of the day. In Florida, that is too much sun. I can thoroughly water the plants only to find that the soil is dry an hour or so later. I am sure the problem is the location because my modified version of the
square foot garden is doing well. I bought several plastic containers that are approximately the same volume as a square foot (144 sq in). I filled them with the same soil mix, Mel’s Mix, and only filled it to a 6-inch depth. I placed beans, peas, and eggplant in the containers, but put them against the house, so they only receive direct sunlight for 1-2 hours a day. These plants are flourishing. I only have to water them once day, and just a small amount of water, not the long soaking, I give the square foot garden.
It is too hot to think about moving the square foot garden. It would require emptying the box and moving too much soil. Instead, I’m trying to determine how I can create shade for the square foot garden to see if that helps solve the problem. I’ll experiment tomorrow.
My Square Foot Garden Experiment
I have grown plants in various climates and conditions, but I have never tried a vegetable garden before this year. Every time I explored a veggie garden in Florida, I ran into problems to solve. The Hillsborough County extension office provided loads of handouts to provide solutions to some of the problems, but planting and maintaining a vegetable garden still seemed daunting.
- A garden starts with good soil, but I knew I couldn’t use the backyard without bags and bags of topsoil and compost to add organic matter to the sandy soil. I knew that would be expensive.
- Starting a garden meant that a yard full of weeds had to be removed first. I had spent weeks clearing the front yard of weeds last summer and didn’t know how I was going to get all of the backyard done.
- I knew about nematodes, those round and unsegmented worms found just about everywhere, but 4 different types that infect and kill vegetables in Florida added another negative note to the countless insects and diseases that abound in the hot, humid climate.
In my online research, I found reference to the Square Foot Garden method for developing a raised bed. That was an “aha” moment for me. The concept is simple and starts with a garden box that is only 4 foot square and 6 inches deep. My “Iowa frame of mind” imagined a vast garden with long rows of vegetables. I had done enough yard work in the Florida summer heat last year to know that a large garden in the summer in Florida would be difficult to maintain. By reducing the size, it instantly became more manageable. I might end up with fewer vegetables, but that seems an acceptable compromise for a starter, experimental vegetable garden.
I had asked several people the needed depth for a raised bed garden. Did it need to be 8, 10, 12, 18 inches? I got various answers. Does it work to plant vegetables in only 6 inches of soil? That seems very shallow, but the comments from a number of gardeners on Twitter seem to say “yes” it works. I’m still waiting to see. Somethings are doing very well, some are not. I think I got the spinach and arugula in too late for the climate, so the fact that they didn’t do well probably has nothing to do with the garden method. Most plants are doing OK. I’m becoming aware that I need to water more often than I anticipated. The photo above shows the garden as I was starting to put in seedlings and seeds. As you can see in the photo, the plants are wilting. If I don’t keep an eye on them, that is a regular occurrence. That would have been true even if I had planted in the ground rather than in the raised box. In fact, the plants might have needed even more water since the soil is so sandy and porous.
The box is sitting on weed mat, so in theory, the weeds and the nematodes will not get into the soil in the box from underneath. Insects and other pests and diseases are still a problem, but that just means keeping an eye on the plants to watch for problems, and that means keeping those extension office handouts close to diagnose problems as they appear.
The “soil” was the most expensive part of the garden. I described the soil mixture in the post, My Soil is Mel’s Mix. A 3 cubic feet bag of peat (sphagnum) moss cost $27.00. A 4 cubic foot bag of vermiculite cost $25.00. Prices varied on the different bags of compost. The recommended mix is 1/3 peat moss to 1/3 vermiculite to 1/3 compost. My husband built the box and the chicken-wire top to keep out the squirrels and raccoons. The total cost for the box and top was around $30.00. Both Lowes and Home Depot have boxes of the same size that can be put together for around $40.00 but they don’t have the squirrel top.
The box is sitting right beside the patio, so we are all participating in admiring the growth and the progress. We love our little 4-square foot garden.
My Soil Mix is Mel’s Mix
We decided we wanted to grow vegetables, but I couldn’t decide how to grow vegetables in the sandy soil in my yard. On Twitter, I saw a link to a raised bed method of gardening that intrigued me. I visited the Square Foot Gardening website, and ordered the book.
The basis for the garden is a 4-foot square raised bed that is only 6 inches high. The bed rests on either a solid base or on weed mat to discourage weeds and nematodes from entering from underneath the bed.
The website, and enthusiastic gardeners using the method, claim vegetables really will grow in such a shallow bed if the soil composition is the right mixture. Mel’s recommendation on the website and in the book is that the soil mixture be 1/3 compost, 1/3 sphagnum moss, and 1/3 vermiculite. The compost provides the nutrients to the plant. Mel recommends at least 5 types of compost, but I could only find 3, so I used what I could find – mushroom and 2 different cow manures. The sphagnum moss retains the moisture; vermiculite allows the soil to drain properly. The photo shows a 1/3 to 1/3 to 1/3 mixture of each before it was thoroughly mixed. It took a few weeks to find vermiculite so the garden didn’t get started as early as it should have, but okra, radishes, basil, various peppers, and eggplant seem to be doing well. According to the book, when it is time to replace plants with other vegetables in the garden, all that is necessary is to add a little compost and the seeds.
