Square Foot Garden 2011

I spoke of my square foot garden in a past post.  I used the book Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew to create my vegetable beds in past years.  Back then, I used the square foot garden in raised beds and I got great results.  I wanted to make raised beds this spring but the cost of the wood and other materials was too high for my budget.  This year, I dug down 1 foot into my rocky, clay soil.  I sifted the soil through a 1/4" hardware screen removing all the rocks and large stones.  I then added general purpose sand, peat moss, vermiculite, and some other amendments I had in my garage.  Some of the amendments I added were blood meal, super phosphate, calcium, bone meal and a water holding material that is used when seeding slopes with grass seed.  I believe this material is a cousin of the water hog granules used in disposable baby diapers.  So the result is a 4' square bed of loose sandy mix level with the lawn.   The soil mix is not very different than the soil in South New Jersey, which is great for tomatoes.

There are some differences, though and I will write of them soon.

Ground level soil in 4' x 4' SqFt bed with black soaker hose visible