It is of no significance whatsoever, but this happens to be my 100th post on this blog! Hmm... One would think that I'd have written something of significance by now.
More importantly, last weekend I finally got the garden beds ready for planting. Here come the pictures!
I used peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and 4 varieties of compost to create "Mel's Mix", the planting mixture specified by Mel Bartholomew in "All New Square Foot Gardening". Actually, Mel specified that you use at least 5 varieties of compost, so that you can be sure of getting a little bit of everything, but I settled for 4. If the garden sucks, we can blame that as being the root of the problem.
Incidentally, coarse vermiculite is apparently somewhat difficult to locate. Lowe's, for example, doesn't carry it. I found it at Pleasant Nursery here in Springfield.
After opening the bags and dumping everything out on the tarp, here is what the peat moss (top left), coarse vermiculite (right), and 4 varieties of compost looked like. For a 4 foot by 4 foot by 6 inch bed, you'll need 8 cubic feet of stuff. That means 2 2/3 cubic feet each of peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and compost.
Peat moss comes in 3.8 cubic foot bales. However, that is 3.8 cubic feet compressed, which becomes 7.6 cubic feet uncompressed, so you really only need 1 1/3 cubic feet of compressed peat moss for each bed, which means about a third of a bale.
Coarse vermiculite comes in 4 cubic foot bales, so you'll need about 2/3 of a bale for each bed.
Each 40 pound bag of compost is about 1 cubic foot, so you'll need about 1/2 a bag from each of 5 bags (if you're doing 5 varieties of compost) for each bed.
It took a bit of effort, pulling the ends of the tarp back and forth to mix things up, but eventually the peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and compost was thoroughly mixed up (more or less). It's ready to add to one of the raised beds!
I made each 4 foot by 4 foot bed from 2-inch-by-6-inch cedar boards, screwed together with deck screws. I didn't remove the grass, but simply mowed it as short as I could, then covered it with weed fabric (overlapped by a foot on each side), with staples to hold everything in place so that I don't accidentally dig it up later! (I'll let you know if that turns out to have been a tragic blunder!) On the outside of the bed I spread cedar mulch in the aisles. Now it was time to add Mel's Mix to the bed!
I dragged the tarp partly onto the empty bed, then pushed, pulled, and lifted from all sides to dump Mel's Mix into the bed. I used the back side of a flat rake to do most of the smoothing, then finished up by hand.
Using 4 foot wood lath strips, I created the grid of 1 foot by 1 foot squares. (Thus the name "Square Foot Gardening".) Finally, the bed is ready for plants!
Square Foot Gardening might be easier than traditional gardening, but I was still tired!
Now, would you like to see what we planted? So would I! Unfortunately, we didn't get anything planted that weekend. I took a trip to Country Market on Tuesday to see how many plants they had in stock. (Answer: Lots!) I had hoped to get something planted on Wednesday, since I was taking the day off from work for other house-related stuff, but instead it decided to dump rain on us, so nothing went in the ground then!
We'll be out at the Illinois State Fairgrounds this Saturday at the annual Springfield Highland Games & Celtic Festival, but after that we should be able to finally get some stuff planted!
Comments