We started a small garden today. Now, some will say that July 4th is too late to start a garden. Normally, that might be true. But here in Georgia, the average date for our first fall freeze is the first week of November. That means we have nearly 18 weeks left before the frost begins. That is as long as some entire Northern outdoor growing periods!
We sit on a little over an acre of land. About 1/3 is covered with trees that buffer the road and the small horse farm behind us.
The soil itself is almost nonexistent in places, as erosion has removed the topsoil leaving red Georgia clay.
My grandfather has had a garden in town for two years, and it has been back breaking work for him getting the soil up to par for gardening. He has shipped in trailer loads of raw manure and has created tons of compost.
I don’t have that much time, nor do I have the energy. So I spent the last few weeks doing what I do best, surfing the net. My target search was urban gardening. When we were living in NYC in 2004, we same lots of window, patio, and rooftop gardens in the Hell’s Kitchen area. So I knew that small scale gardening could be productive.
I came across the Square Foot Gardening method by Mel Bartholomew. I read the free information on his website and then read the first edition of his book Square Foot Gardening on Google Books. I quickly realized that this would be ideal for our needs and would allow us to utilize the space we had on the property.
I ended up running down to the local Barnes and Nobles to pick up a copy of his newest edition, All New Square Foot Gardening. It have a ton of charts that were redacted from the Google Books version and had some method changes.
Went to Home Depot and bought enough material
s to build 2 4×4 boxes. Took about 30 minutes to cut the boards and build the 3 sections. We are planning to plant some root vegetables, so needed a section that was deeper than six inches. You will be able to see that addition in some of the photos below.
Anna and I actually stapled the weed ban clothe to the bottoms of the beds. This made it much easier to precisely place the beds.
We mixed up one batch of Mel’s Mix. Managed to get one of the beds filled with before the skeeters started to dine on us and the sun went down.
The taller half of this bed will hold the carrots and potatoes.