So, this is the post I’ve been promising. I’ve been mulling this over for weeks and weeks, but I finally decided that I’m going to plant a garden this year. And not just any garden, a square foot garden. I got the book on this technique last year, but it was really too late to give it a go, plus we moved in August. I’d almost decided to not do it again this year, but one thing finally changed my mind. It was the state of the very back of our yard:
Here’s a better look at the disaster that was the waist high grass:
It was a true eyesore, and the stuff growing back there wasn’t really even grass. It was the accumulation of a few failed gardens and a lot of weeds. I just thought it would never look good if I was only mowing it. So, I bought all of the stuff to make 3 garden boxes to take up some of the space. But first, we mow:
Much better, right? Then it was time to actually build the boxes. Those of you that know me well also know that “building” isn’t exactly my strong suit. It doesn’t come up in my list of strengths in any of those fancy tests you take that tell you what you’re good at doing. But I didn’t do too badly:
Drilling
Anyway, they turned out pretty well! The hardest part of this entire process was mixing the soil. This was also the most expensive part of the entire endeavor, so I hope this stuff is as awesome as advertised. Here’s the pile of ingredients:
The white stuff is perlite, to help with drainage. This stuff also contains a ton (well, it felt like a ton) of peat moss and almost 8 cubic feet of compost. It was HEAVY. Mixing it up took forever, but we ended up with some great looking soil. Here’s the almost finished product:
We also put grids on these so they were true square foot garden boxes. It was too dark when we got to that point, so I’ll try to get some pictures of that tomorrow. We also bought some plants to put in these boxes (it was too late to start from seed).
I was going to track stuff like exactly how much we spent on this and see how we did in terms of yield as the year went on, but you know what? I’m way too tired to do that right now. In total, we spent around $250 to get this off the ground. I don’t think we’ll really save money on this stuff this year, but we might next year when we really don’t have to buy any supplies. However, it’s not really about that anyway. It’s about having something awesome in our yard, and growing at least some of our own food, and just trying something different. I’ll keep posting about it as the season goes on so you can see the progress. Here’s hoping for awesome tomatoes in a few weeks!
- Breakfast: Everything bagel with cream cheese
- Lunch: Almost nothing. I had a few bites of macaroni and cheese (leftover from that restaurant last night), and some hummus with veggies and pita chips
- Dinner: Three bean burritos, no cheese from Taco Bell
- Drinks: Coffee, water, and beer
The Dude's Story 