After literally years of wanting to try growing a veggie garden, I made a feeble first attempt earlier this summer. I planted some herbs, a bell pepper, and a tomato plant in several containers. Most of the herbs and the bell pepper are doing great. The tomatoes were attacked by mealybugs and then surprise rain killed my harvest just as the tomatoes were starting to turn red. Ok...live and learn. But even this first unsuccessful attempt at veggie gardening reinforced the fact that I really wanted a "real" garden full of a variety of fresh, yummy foodstuffs.
After some recommendations from friends, I decided to check out Mel Batholomew's Square Foot Garden book and website. YAY!! His system basically takes out most of the "work." Once you get your beds built and filled, it's pretty much all about the fun stuff! Choosing plants, digging, observing, picking, and eating...that's all I have to worry about.
Getting started WAS kind of a pain, though. We have LOTS of sun in our back yard, so that's no problem. But we also know that termites live back there. You can't use treated lumber for food gardens (arsenic = not yummy veggies!), but we needed something more bug resistant than plain ol' lumber. After lots of searching, we were finally able to find some cedar that would work well for us. It was more expensive than we had initially planned to pay for our wood, but we figured if it'll last longer in our backyard, then the investment will be worth it.
Mel recommends a particular blend of ingredients to fill the boxes. After searching the internet, I read that John Dromgoole, a local organic gardening hero and proprietor of The Natural Gardener in South Austin, was testing out several different soil blends to see if any of them might work better in our climate. He hosts a segment of The Central Texas Gardener, and it just so happened that as I was reading up on square foot gardens, Dromgoole was reporting his soil test results, and he stated that Mel's mix yielded the most successful results.
I live in North Austin/Round Rock, and after calling lots of my local nurseries, I discovered that I could pay an arm and a leg for one of Mel's ingredients (Coarse Vermiculite), or I could drive to The Natural Gardener and save myself almost $10 a bag. Plus, the field trip would allow me the chance to check out their test square foot gardens and to pick up Dromgoole's Lady Bug organic composts for several dollars less than my local distributors charge. Win! I will wax poetic about the paradise that I found at The Natural gardener some other day. For now, let's just say that it's my new happy place and move on.
So, I got my vermiculite and some compost there, some Peat Moss (not organic, but SO MUCH cheaper :oP) at Lowe's, and the rest of my composts were purchased at Garden-Ville and McIntires Garden Center in Georgetown. (McIntires = happy place #2!) We opted to make one 4'x4' box and one 8'x4' box, so we ended up with 24 cubic feet of material to mix and put into the boxes. Once they were filled, it was time to start planting.
