Square Foot Gardening Comes To The Burnette Garden

Chris preparing one of the 5x5 gardens

For many years we had discussed square foot gardening. We have the book, Square Foot Gardening by Mel Barholomew and we had envisioned that one day we would give it a try. The time has come and we are excited!!! We had lots of landscaping stones leftover from doing our flower beds so we decided to put them to good use. In March, we started building our square foot garden beds. Chris did most of the physical labor. Steve and I built the vertical frames when he was home the last of March. We are growing our cucumbers, yellow straight-neck squash on the garden trellis netting and also using it to brace our tomatoes. Chris and his Dad built the long beds (8x2) two weeks ago (4/26/09). The long beds (against the fence) have netting attached to them where the tomatoes, zucchini and cantaloupes will grow vertically also. We found the garden trellis netting at Home Depot. We planted our tomatoes with banana peels in the holes and also put a cardboard tissue roll around the base to deter cutworms. (Recently I learned from a P. Allen Smith e-mail that you can also wrap the base of the tomato with aluminum foil until the stalk gets tough enough to prevent cutworms!!) We did not use conventional soil. instead we made up Mel's mix of vermiculite, peat moss and five different kinds of compost. If you go to Mel's website http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ it will further explain the idea of square foot gardening and give you information on his mix. We have red, yellow, green and banana peppers. We also have ichiban eggplant. We planted two different kinds of basil along with dill, oregano, thyme, tarragon, sage, parsley and chives. We have three large rosemary bushes in our front flower beds. We planted Clemson spineless okra (from seed) and Cajun Delight okra (from transplants). We planted Cherry Belle radishes and White Icicle radishes on 5/03/09. They have already broke ground. We planted two different kinds of carrots that only get to be 5 - 51/2 inches long. It will probably take another week before they are visible. We have a few squares where Bush Garden beans have been planted, they do not need to be staked. We also planted Red onions and Texas Sweet onions. The tomato list consists of Lemon Boy, Beef Steak, Better Boy VFN, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine and a hybrid Cherry. We have some Sweet 100 seeds that we may plant later in the season. We are planting asparagus in the round bed. I only wish that we had planted asparagus years ago. I have been told that the beds can last up to 20 years. Next week we will plant Florence Fennel and maybe some bush type butter beans. We need those butter beans to go with our okra!!
We will be planting ornamental gourd seeds in a few weeks. Hopefully they'll be ready in time to harvest for fall decorating.