Gardening, Fitness, and Heath Series, part 1
Believe it or not, gardening season is quickly approaching and preparing for a garden NOW is what you need to do to have a successful garden!
Once I made the full decision to go “Primal” “Paleo” or whatever buzz word you want to use (which is essentially saying to eat natural meats and veggies), my interest in vegetable gardening began to reemerge. It seems logical, if you grow your own food, you know exactly what you are getting and putting into your body. Plus, conventional vegetables cannot even come close to the taste and vitamin content veggies from a home garden can produce. However, thoughts of spending hours and hours of pulling weeds in my parents’ garden when I was a kid gave me a stomach ache. I hated doing that and honestly, I can’t think of very many things I liked about gardening as a kid. It was hot and required a lot of work for what seemed to be little result!
But, the desire to be healthy and my desire to stop eating inferior foods consumed me so I started my research on the web. I ran across an amazing method called Square Foot Gardening. An engineer by the name of Mel Bartholomew developed this method in the 1980s and it seemed as though I had found a buried treasure. He even had a popular PBS show in the 80s about it. I was too young to know about him, I guess! This method met every single one of my requirements if I was going to pursue gardening in the city of Memphis.
- Must be easy to do.
- Must take out the hard parts of gardening.
- I don’t want to weed, period.
- Must utilize space to the maximum capacity.
- Must be as cheap as possible to get same or lower prices of grocery stores.
So, Square Foot Gardening takes care of all of these requirements! I strongly suggest you get the book for a great reference!
You quickly realize that the whole purpose of this approach to gardening is to eliminate the need to know if you have good soil to grow crops, maximizes space and efficiently, and allows you to focus on the best parts of gardening: growing and harvesting! Mel recommends that the person or family to focus on planting only what a person truly needs and uses. This means that if you only use radishes once in a while, don’t plant a zillion of them just because you can. Grow what you know you will eat!
The suggestion for Square Foot Gardening is simple: start small. Once you get a grip on things you can expand as you need. You can create a garden for less than $50 bucks including the soil and all!
What you’ll need:
- 2- 2X6 or 2X8 untreated 8 foot pieces of lumber cut in half.
- 3 inch screws (or 1 inch screws if using brackets)
- Weed killer cloth: 4 foot kind
- Staple gun and staples
- Optional 4 metal brackets
- Gardening soil (can be both locally or follow Mel’s Mix directions)
- Twine
I went to Home Depot and against my better judgement, bought the pre-made boxes for square foot gardens. I wished I didn’t because I spent $60 for 2 boxes I could have made for $8. Starting with one or two square foot boxes can be quick and simple.
Buy 2- 2X6 or 2X8 untreated pieces of 8 feet lumber to create one 4X4 box. If you don’t have a saw at home, ask the people at Home Depot or Lowe’s to cut them in half for you. NOTE: the lumber is actually slightly longer than 8 feet and ask them to take that into account. (They won’t if you don’t mention. They are nice, but they really just want to get away from you!) Urban readers with even smaller space, you can make these even smaller, say a 2X2 box! In fact, you can go super portable and simple by just using pots!
You want to put the boards together to create an above ground box. You have two options for putting the boards together. You could buy some 3 inch screws and put two of them on each board attaching them. Or, you can buy some metal brackets to place inside the boards to secure the garden. You’ll need one inch screws if you are using brackets. This is up to you. I have done both at this point and I favor the brackets.
Once your boxes are together, you want to eliminate the worst part of the whole gardening experience: weeding! On the bottom of the box, roll out your 4 foot weed killer cloth and cut off what you don’t need. (You’ll probably want to make more boxes later as you see how easy this is!) Leave a inch or two on each side if possible. Staple the cloth to the box so that the weeds can’t get in. After that, flip it over and that is your box! Find a place that gets at least 5-6 hours of sun a day to place your box.
Now the fun part: the soil! Note, you can’t buy this at home depot or Lowe’s as they only have Miracle Grow, and that isn’t organic stuff my friends! Mel has a great blend he uses and it involves 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost. Each component has a specific role. The peat moss absorbs moisture. The vermiculite keeps the soil nice and loose and the compost provides the nutrition the plants needs to grow. You can get this locally at Dan West Garden Center (http://danwestonline.com/). This is what I did on my first boxes and they are great!
However, I was not happy with the cost as the soil was just too expensive. This caused me to look deeper and sure enough there is a great option right here in Memphis! You know the leaves and stuff you bag and put by the curb here in the city? Well, there is a place that uses that to create a great garden mix. They are called Nature’s Earth (http://naturesearthproducts.com/) and the product you can use to replace this step is called “Garden Mix.” It is an excellent economical alternative and will be used in my next additional boxes. Call them and ask them the price for 6 inches of a 4 foot by 4 foot box. They’ll laugh because it’s little of nothing! 
You do have to pick it up.
The final part is creating a grid. Once again, I went the more expensive routine the first time and used wood. You really do not need to do that. You can buy twine to mark off your grid. Here is what you want to do: you want to create 16 square foot squares. With a tape measure, mark off the 1, 2, and 3 foot spaces on each side and screw partially in your 1 inch screws. Using your twine wrap the string from one screw to the other end. Do this for all marks and for both sides. The end result is you have 16 square foot spaces of gardening space to grow more produce than you could imagine! Here is the end result: (mine being the too much money spent version).
In the next part of the series, I am going to talk about the pot alternative to this and then starting of broccoli seeds, since they are the first things you want to start in January indoors before transplanting them to your outside garden!
Be Better. Have Some Adventure!
Dexter Tenison, MSS
See also:
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