Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Square foot Gardening

To keep up with my recent efforts to be a better wife, mother , homemaker I've been trying to do a better job of housekeeping, more home cooked meals (from scratch), more time outside, and most recently to further domesticate myself I decided to plant an organic garden. One problem: our ground is like rock, our backyard is unfinished, we're having our patio poured, block wall done soon and there was not a place for our garden. Or, so I thought! I recently read a thread on on of my message boards about square foot gardening using raised beds which are divided into square feet. You don't use your own dirt(I guess you could though). You use a mix of potting soil, mulch, peat moss, etc.

So last night Sean and I headed off to home depot. 2 hours and $180 later we came home with a bunch of plants, dirt, and wood. In the dark at 10 at night we built our planters and filled them with the dirt mix. This morning came the fun part. Planting with the kids. We ended up with (2) tomato plants, (2) green bell pepper, (1) red bell pepper, (1) artichoke, (1 cilantro), (1) rosemary, (2) bunches of red onions,
(2) strawberry plants, (2) onion chive plants, and some seeds, (1) Habanero pepper,
(1) Jalapeno pepper, (1) banana pepper, (1) pumpkin (it has a 4'x2' area for one plant), (2) cucumbers. Without further ado here are some pictures from this morning.
Planter divided into square feet with twin

The kids eager to get started

Caden helping put a plant into the ground.

The girls taking their turn.

Emma putting dirt around the Bell Pepper Plant (I love this picture!)

Lily concentrating on the task at hand.

Caden pouring it in slowly.

Emma, missing the mark. A+ for effort.

The final result!