Sqare Foot Garden

I got inspired yesterday. I was thinking about a garden for our deck and started reading about square foot gardening. I decided to give it a try. I went down on the beach to find my materials, and was much more successful than I had anticipated. I located enough edge boards for two or three plots. I loaded these and a bunch of driftwood onto my backpack -with about 120 lbs of 10 ft lengths of wood I must have been quite a sight walking down the beach- and hauled them home. I first constructed the trellis. Next I put together the walls of the bed and assembled them on a piece of 3/8" plywood to size for the base. This I raised with a few stray pieces of driftwood.


I filled the bed with a mixture of different soils I purchased (the expensive part of the project). I added 90 L of a mix of equal parts loam, manure, and peat moss, 30 L of peat moss, 30 L of sheep manure, and 50 L of "potting soil." I would have made up "Mel's Mix" but could not find vermiculite. I figured I would get adequate mineral components in the potting soil and loam portion of the tri-mix.


After loading the soil into the planter and mixing it together, I added the dividers to make it formally a square foot garden." Now to plant and see how things actually grow.



In the end I spent about $35 CAD on the soil and plywood, and less than eight hours of my time and ended up with this beautiful set up.



I am hoping to add a net to the portion of the trellis that won't block the view from inside.

Just in case you are curious, the pictures are all taken with the camera pointing roughly due west.