Confessions of a Square Foot Garden Gnome

It’s happening pretty quickly here – the first fruits are appearing.

The bell pepper transplant I planted had no flowers on it when I planted it, already has a nice little pepper growing out. It’s about 3/4 inch long here. It’s already starting to make the plant lean to the side – so I think cages will be in order soon.

Also, my shisito pepper plant has also sprung a pepper. It’s only about 1/2 inch long. It’s hard to see but on the right side. I can’t wait to fry this up with some sea salt!

The pole snap beans I planted from seed sprouted faster than expected. They came bursting out of the ground and unfolded immediately a good 2 inches out of the soil!

With the beds fully built (minus the trellises), I’ve decided I’d better get moving and plant my garden. It’s late June, after all. I might not even see any harvest before the temperatures start going down in fall. But I’m hoping that living in Los Angeles will give me an extended growing season.

To transplant or to seed? That is the question.

Mel offers his own recommendations for starting from seed vs transplanting for everything. I’ve decided to take his advice and start with some transplants I picked up from my local nursery as much as possible, given my late start date. I also figure this might be easier as a newbie. After the first season ends, if it was remotely successful I may try more from seed next season.

It took me a week of research to decide what to plant.

• First, determining if it’s an appropriate crop for summertime. If it’s a cool weather crop (like Kale, which I love!) it probably won’t grow well in the heat of the summer.
• Second, deciding on the location. Is it a vine plant? If so, place along the north edge where my trellises will be. How tall will it become when it’s mature? Place the taller plants at the back (north) side of the boxes, so they won’t block the sunlight for the shorter plants.
• Third, incorporating companion planting – interspersing squares of specific flowers/vegetables that act as natural pest control plants. Did you know French Marigolds repel nematodes and whiteflies? Also, plant specific herbs/vegetables near others to boost flavor and productivity.

After careful consideration, I decided to go against the rules (Yes – even for my first try at this!) and reserve one raised bed for cool weather crops to plant now. There is a material called a shade screen/fabric that you can buy in various blocking strengths that will keep your temperatures down by up to 15 degrees. This may be enough to keep the cool weather crops from bolting in the summer heat. (If you’re eating your plant/leaves, you generally do not want it to bolt. Bolting means it changes to a flower/seeding plant, signaling that it’s moving towards the end of its life. The leaves will then become tough, woody and too bitter to eat.) I will also plan to water that bed often to keep the soil temperature down, and select bolt-resistant varieties if I can find them. We’ll see how it goes.

To make it all easier while I was planning my garden, I used GrowVeg (a website garden planner). I was able to drag and drop the veggies and flowers I wanted to plant into specific squares, where it would give me plant spacing information (along with a host of other super useful things, such as plant scheduling based on your local frost date). They have a 30 day trial – more than enough time to decide if you like them or not. I can see it being useful for future seasons as well as this first planting, so it may be something I actually renew.

After all the planning, a trip to my local nursery is all it took. I was able to find a number of transplants, and what I didn’t find, I picked up seeds for. I planted everything with Mel’s spacing advice in mind, gave it all a good water and went inside to rest.

When I came back to the garden a few days later, I noticed that the vine crops were already growing pretty quickly, so decided to put up the trellises now as well.

Here is my garden fully planted, in all its glory.

In the far left bed: Strawberries in the middle, bordered by green onions and borage in the corners.

In the far right bed with trellis: 3 varieties of tomatoes, pole beans, 2 varieties of eggplant, 4 varieties of peppers, carrots, 2 varieties of basil, parsley, borage, french marigolds and petunias.

In the near right bed with trellis: Cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, radish, oregano, carrots, corn, beets, 2 varieties chard, catnip, cilantro, zinnias and dahlias.

The near left bed is my summer bed, soon to be covered with shade cloth: Bok Choi, 2 varieties of kale, watercress, arugula, micro-greens, 5 varieties of lettuce, 3 varieties of spinach, and beet-berries. I will be adding carrots and radishes here interspersed with the other crops eventually.

A total of 64 square feet that will produce a boatload of fresh vegetables and fruit!

Some initial confessions about myself before I begin this blog:

1. I am not a writer. My focus growing up was always on music and dance; I was never all that interested in writing. If you are here, you’re probably not interested in seeing if my grammar is perfect or if I can inject humor into my gardening tales. So please, lower any expectations you may have right off the bat and we should be good.

2. I am not a gardener. Pretty much every houseplant I have tried to grow in my life have usually died from lack of sunlight, to little/too much water, or who knows what.  They all met their end within a few months of their assimilation into my home. So sad.

Knowing this, why on earth would I write a blog about gardening? I’ll tell you.

Some of my hobbies in the past have been just reading about a particular interest/hobby. Not actually participating or doing the hobby. Usually, after spending a lot of time gathering information (and learning a lot in the end), just reading about doing it was enough.  I didn’t need to actually do it. This was the case until my most recent  hobby, square foot gardening. This one I turned into a real hobby.

I think my interest in gardening started when my sister bought me a book on “Self Watering Container” gardening along with a self watering stacking pot. I had lived in a condo that had a 3×3 foot balcony, and the stacking pot would be perfect for it. With the pot out on the balcony, there was still enough room for one small chair. No standing room. I right away planted some herbs (small transplants) in it and waited for my harvest. Unfortunately that never came. Shortly afterwards, a bird made a nest in the top pot and laid two eggs. She needed some privacy, so the herbs were left to die.

Then I moved to a house where I had a bit more space outside, so I started thinking of container gardening. I could plant some veggies in flower pots, I figured. After reading a couple of books on that, still in the “reading” stage, I discovered Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening book. His method, which uses raised beds and a grid on top, ensures a more productive harvest with much less weeding and watering than a traditional garden. “Sold!”, I thought.

And now we get to the point of all this rambling; I finally decided to turn my “reading” hobby into a “real” hobby and set out to create my very own square foot garden, by following the method outlined in his book, and blog about it along the way.

Trials and Tribulations of a (newbie) square foot gardener. And confessions..there will be confessions. And gnomes? Well, we must pay homage to the gnomes…they take care of our garden when we’re not.

Welcome to my square foot garden!

Mika