Hello, friends! If you have visited my blog previously, you probably know that for the past three years since I truly started blogging about gardening, my focus has been flowers. From dahlias to David Austin roses, my heart belongs to flowers. But this year, probably because the pandemic has been permeating every aspect of my life since March, I decided to grow a a vegetable garden. I think part of my motivation is that, during this time, I also read about the victory gardens of WWII. Now, there is a story of how to successfully engage every one to support the same effort— victory! So around April, I took an online workshop by Dirt Academy just to learn a bit more about growing up a vegetable garden. By the way, if veggies are not your forte, I highly recommend this course.
After I decided to go ahead, it was time to determine how big I wanted to go. Even though I live in a farm and my husband is a farmer, I am the only one who loves veggies. I have always loved veggies, even before I started a plant-based diet. So, I knew I needed something that not only I could handle, but also that I could keep up eating it. After much thinking, I decided to do a ___ x ____ garden bed and planted using the square foot gardening method.
Square foot gardening is a simple method of creating small, orderly, and highly productive kitchen gardens. It was invented by backyard gardener, retired engineer, and efficiency expert Mel Bartholomew as a better way to grow a vegetable garden, and it became a huge hit when he introduced the idea to the gardening public in 1981 in his book Square Foot Gardening (Goodhouse Keeping). So basically you take a garden bed and divide it into square foo sections. You can use various methods to create the grid, but I went with 550 chord (parachute cord— I’m an Army girl, what can I say?) because it stands the weather beautifully, and I did not feel like making a wood grid (eventually, I will). My favorite thing about this method is that it is orderly and tidy— my OCD loves it!.
So far, I love that this seems like a great method for beginner veggie gardeners like me. It is intensive planting that will yield intensive concentration of veggies. I plan on doing a post at the end of the growing season to review how I liked this method. But so far so good. You may notice that I have some marigolds and some herbs planted in these beds. More than for harvesting, these are companion plants for the vegetables, as a way to deter pests in a natural way.
Also below, you will notice that the beds are fairly close (about 1 foot apart) from what looks like grasses and weeds. This is intentional and not me being lazy. :) This grassy area is the last bordering area of our land, and you can also see on pics below, that we planted grasses and native species as a pollinator haven. Over the past two years the pollinators and critters have increased, which is what we were going for, even if it means keeping an eye our for critters that will try to eat my flowers and veggies. But this is such a welcome addition to our garden. When I moved to Minnesota 5 years ago, I remember thinking “I live by farm fields but I have not seen any pollinators.” So I talked to my husband, who is a farmer and can go a little too crazy with the Roundup (ugh… that’s another story), and between changing his mind about pesticides use and learning about the importance of pollinators, we have increased the numbers.
In the garden bed: From top left to right: borage, rosemary, thyme, cilantro, sage, and oregano. Middle left to right: marigolds, ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuce, mesclun classic mix, romanesco broccoli, ‘Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach’ and more marigolds. Bottom left to right: calendula, ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuce and mesclun, romanesco broccoli, ‘Chinese Multicolor Spinach’ (it is actually a leaf amaranth), and calendula.
The far garden bed has peas, bush beans and carrots.
‘Easy Peasy’ peas.
‘Bloomsdale Standing Longleaf’ Spinach
My personal heaven.
"‘Chinese Multicolor’ Spinach
And there you have it— my little kitchen garden. So far everything is going good and I was able to harvest my first fresh salad ingredients, including nasturtiums, which I am growing on a container. There is something definitely more delicious about a salad you grow yourself. :) Have you tried square foot gardening? If so, how did you like it?
You may find me joining some of these fun link-ups: In a Vase on Monday, Harvest Monday, Mosaic Monday, Friday Bliss, Pink Saturday, Nature Notes, Thankful Thursday, Grace at Home, Weekend Blog Hop, Garden Blogger's Bloom Day (15th of the Month), End of Month View (31st of the Month), Six on Saturday, Love Your Creativity Link-Up