Papaw's Genes

Reaching as far back in my memory as it will go, one thing I always remember about my grandfather Papaw is his backyard garden. If I remember correctly, every year he tilled up the entire backyard and planted row after row of vegetables. I think his yard must have been huge! I remember shelling peas and snapping beans (or is it snapping peas and shelling beans?) on his back porch, and pulling the silk off corn ears.

After getting a taste of real gardening this summer with Bill's peppers, I realized I do have some of his genes after all! Sadly, what I don't have is a giant yard. Bill's new house does have a small strip of land on one side that gets full sun. Lucky for me I ran across this book, Square Foot Gardening, which pretty much turns on its head the old theory of backyard vegetable gardening. It used to be that conventional wisdom required a gardener to first till, and then amend, existing soil. A lot of work! Conventional gardening also required long rows and 3-foot aisles between rows. Because you had tilled up and then fertilized an entire yard, you are constantly required to weed. Not to mention the waste of space and seeds in planting long rows.

The author of this book claims to take all the work out of gardening by building square boxes, making your own soil on top (no need to till and then analyze and amend your own soil). He says most plants are totally happy with just six inches of perfect soil to start out with. See his website here. He gives instructions on building simple 4 foot by 4 foot boxes, with sixteen squares for planting, and mixing the perfect soil out of a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost.

So Bill and I decided to try it. We're a little late in the game for the fall vegetable planting---typical recommended planting is in August, and obviously we've missed that window. But yesterday we built our boxes (fairly easy for novices like us) and tonight we'll plant our seeds. I'm going to post a series of pictures of the materials we used to build our very own Square Foot Garden!