Square-Foot Gardening

This year we started our first foray into "Square-Foot Gardening". (I suppose that here in South America it should be called "Square-Metre Gardening", but that just doesn't roll off the tongue as well.)

Following a good friend's suggestion, I had foregone purchasing a book (gulp) about the process and had instead visited the Square Foot Gardening website, read through all the info, and made my plan. Then I had to pull out my dictionary - the Spanish-English dictionary, that is - and look up all the words I might possibly need before making the trip to the vivero. I looked up 'peat moss', 'compost', 'soil', 'vermiculite', 'moisture-retention', 'weed-barrier', and so much more, jotting the words down in the little notebook I keep in my purse for vocabulary, braced myself with a dozen or more deep breaths, and off I went.

I walked through the entire store first, hoping to just find the things I was looking for without too much difficulty. And for the most part I was successful. I found the peat moss, compost, and garden soil, but still I needed help with choosing which variety of those would be best to purchase. The woman working the counter was helpful, allowing for my halting Spanish as I tried to explain what I needed, and guided me to the right items, telling me prices, too, since many things didn't have prices on them.

I got out my pen and turned my vocabulary list into a price list so I could report back to my Dear Man before purchasing.  Costs approved, we made our purchases a couple of days later.

My bale of peat moss - turba - We almost didn't go through with the project because of the cost of this one item.

My Dear Man had already constructed the ground-level frames we were going to use, so  now the whole family was ready to set to work.

Brown-Eyed Boy helps me lay the weed-barrier.

Two planters ready for the triple-mix.

Brown-Eyed Boy and Little Man mixing up the triple mix. (We altered the proportions slightly because of the cost of the turba, but it should be okay, don't you think?)

One planter filled with triple-mix under the approving eyes of our neighbours' dogs, Linda and Pongo.

(See the lemon on the right? A bumper crop of lemons on the tree this spring, then our landlord pruned it and it'll be a while before the new fruit is ready to pick!)

The first planter was string-divided into 9 sections, each roughly (you guessed it) one square foot in area. Each of the children was given a row of three sections to plant as they chose. All three went for plantas de frutilla (strawberry), and girasol (sunflower) for two sections, and their third sections were zanahorias (carrots), marones (peppers), and lechuga (lettuce). The seeds went in a couple of days after the planter was ready.

All of us were eager to see what would come up, and how quickly. With the exception of the frutillas, all were started from seeds, and we hoped that, living here where there are no pesky squirrels, we might have some nice results with the girasoles (unlike the attempt that My Girl and I made at 'building' a sunflower house several years ago).

Sadly, however, the leaf-cutter ants quickly discovered this new food source, and completely wiped out the leaves and buds from the frutillas as well as the early sprouts of the girasol in Brown-Eyed Boy's center square.

Early sprouts

Frutilla - a great harvest crop... for the leaf-cutter ants

See how those nasty ants have completely removed the leaves from the ends of the stalks, not to mention chewing away some of the stalks themselves? Nasty ants.

We decided that we weren't going to take the ant-attack lying down and went to the store to find ant killer of any kind, as long as it was POWERFUL! The single treatment we gave did the trick, and we haven't had such an attack since.

The frutillas made a come-back, and the later girasol sprouts not only survived, but thrived, although only in two sections; My Girl's girasol square is still completely empty as a continual reminder of the sad day when the ants were discovered.

All the initial prep and planting was done September 10 and 11, with the early sprouts and ant attack occurring in early October. Since then I've also planted my own planter with peppers, carrots, tomatoes, and lettuce, and the kids have added peppers, carrots, and lettuce (I think!) to theirs, filling in open sections where plants didn't come up.

Here's the progress so far:

Two tall sunflowers - the one on the left is Little Man's, the one in the centre section is Brown-Eyed Boy's. Behind them you can see the strawberry plants filling out nicely - all three of them!

My planter

 

A couple of pale berries that will be candidates for picking very soon!

Brown-Eyed Boy has been the most diligent of all three children in terms of watering, although even his efforts have been sporadic. We don't have a watering can, so we're using one of the plastic pots with holes in the bottom that the flowers from our front garden came in, which involves making multiple trips to the tap in order to water both planters. 

We hope to see some nice growth from the new sprouts (photos to come later) in the other crops, and to be able to pull fresh carrots, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes from the garden soon.

This Year's Crop

Our front boulevard garden attracts many looks, smiles and comments. It's surprising to many that the plants aren't disturbed by passersby, but somehow, I'm not surprised, and I credit our little city for being a friendly place for boulevard gardening!

We have cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, plum tomatoes, and regular tomatoes, as well as some peppers and beans this year.

We've already enjoyed nibbling on the beans, fresh from the vine, as well as many tiny tomatoes, rich and flavourful!

The peppers are "hotter than jalapeno", so I'm not quite sure what we'll do with them, as the little Ones I Love aren't very much interested in spicy foods! If you look closely you can see some of the very narrow peppers that have already ripened to red, while the larger ones are still green and growing.

Gifts From The Ones I Love

Tonight, as I was getting the table set for supper, Little Man asked me for a small jar. He saw a small vase on the counter and asked if he could use it. When I asked what for, he said he was going to pick some sunflowers.

This is what he brought in a few minutes later:

He was so pleased with his gift, that it inspired Brown Eyed Boy to run out and do the same.

I don't think there are sunflowers I'd enjoy more than these!

Spring Garden

Last fall The Ones I Love and I made our first venture into planting bulbs. My Girl and I spent a lengthy time at the local garden centre selecting a mix of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths of various heights, colours, and blooming times. Then we went to work in the garden. We dug. We added new soil. And we buried those bulb in four different areas around our home: The little circular garden around our young maple in the front, the bed directly in front of the house, a small patch beside the front walk that has always looked scruffy, and in My Girl's garden in the back yard.

Within minutes of covering over those bulbs, the squirrels were out, doing their own digging! So we found some chicken wire and laid it over the bulb beds, pinning it in place with whatever we could find: sticks, tent pegs, etc. But by then we weren't sure how many bulbs were even left, as there was a big hole in My Girl's garden and several smaller ones in the front.

This spring we waited for the snow to melt, for the ground to soften, and for the first green tips to poke out of the ground. When we saw what was coming up, we were overjoyed! There were many little plants growing, and we were able to begin identifying them right away by the leaf shapes and sizes.

Given a bit of time, this is what our gardens held at one point of their production:

The bottom photo, at the tree base, is one of the many faces the little garden showed this spring. It went through a white and yellow phase, then this one with orangey-red added in, then the white and yellow were gone and replaced by purples other colours. I loved the changing colours of this particular bed, and, while the growth was a little spotty (thanks to the squirrels), I am pleased with the results of all our efforts in the fall.

Here is this year's boulevard garden, complete with several varieties of tomatoes, peppers, beans and peas:

We expanded it to double the size of last year's plot, so it's almost 4' long. Can't wait to see what it produces!

And in one of My Girl's emails to me while I was in North Carolina for the ChildLight USA Charlotte Mason conference earlier this month, she told me that the clematis had a blossom. Here's the photo she took of it that day:

I'm learning to enjoy gardening, but it's still a stretch because of my small knowledge base. I'm sticking with the basics and going from there.

Transformation

While I was in North Carolina, my backyard went from this:

to this:

Isn't that beautiful? (See me, in your mind's eye, smiling broadly?)

Dear Man and the rest of The Ones I Love worked hard to roto-til the backyard just before I left home, and then, while I was away they laid sod, put in pea gravel under the spider web, layered stone dust over the field stones that had been placed before I left, re-sanded the sand box, AND poured a new concrete floor in the garage. The concrete now extends several feet forward onto the driveway, the rest of which is gravel, so the children have a fantastic surface for ball bouncing, skipping, chalk, and more!

Here are a couple of the photos My Girl took of the process:

And one parting shot of the yard, just to leave you with a glowing impression of how wonderful my family is:

Killing Plants

I love this:

If you are not killing plants, you are not really stretching yourself as a gardener.

-- J. C. Raulston, American horticulturist

But, then again, maybe it simply doesn't take much to stretch me!

One Thousand Gifts

I was looking back through my journal and realized that there were many gifts I had not yet recorded here.

These ones are from early October, when I made my first foray into planting bulbs in the garden.

181. Soil's blanket of warmth protecting newly planted bulbs from frost.
::
182. Time of rest, strengthening, growth within.
::
183. Willing service.
::
184. Life enclosed in a small package, awaiting spring for fulfillment.

I'm excited to see what will happen with these bulbs. We carefully selected a mixture of tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and snow drops in a variety of colours that we thought would buoy our spirits when spring drew them from the ground.

Hours were spent in the front and back yards, digging, mixing in nutrients, and planting the bulbs. And then, that very evening and the next couple of days, we had to chase squirrel after squirrel out of the garden. They were digging, too, but in a counterproductive way, removing bulbs from the homes we'd given them.

Dear Man and My Girl located some unused chicken wire in the garage and pegged it securely over all the bulb plantings. That seemed to work to keep the squirrels out, so, now we wait for spring to arrive to see what the results of our efforts will be.

As I've written before, this year has seen a tremendous amount of snow - almost 250 cm of snow already, and we're only half way through January. I can guarantee that, by the time these blossoms show their heads, we'll be ready for them!

Wouldn't You Know It

I did it. I stemmed, skinned, and quartered my tomatoes, just like the recipe said. I covered them and cooked them for 10 minutes until they were tender, just like the recipe said. I set the pan into cold water to cool, just like the recipe said. It all took less than 25 minutes. Simple.

We all sat at the dining room table, the children to colour with felts, and me to read aloud from Sterling North's "Rascal".

Little Man went to the sink to wash his hands. I said, "run the tap into the big sink, because the tomatoes are cooling in the little sink." And he did! Simple.

Then, a few minutes later, I noticed the sound of the tap again. I stood up, looked in the sink and saw a used dishcloth in the pan of stewed tomatoes. I looked closer and saw another used dishcloth beside the first. I broadened my view and saw Brown-Eyed Boy standing at the sink, washing his hands with a third cloth, one edge dangling in the pan, the other carefully rubbing the felt pen marks from his fingers. And I saw that the fill level in the pan was inches higher than I had left it with only stewed tomatoes. Now it had approximately three cups of water in it as well. Ruined.

At least it had been simple.

If it had been complicated or labour intensive, I might have had to cry. As it was I just took a couple of deep breaths, sat back on my chair, closed my eyes for a moment, whispered a prayer for grace, and went on reading Rascal to the children as they coloured.

Simple.

Summer Bounty

Little Man's tomato plants have been producing steadily, as have my own patio and cherry tomatoes. But now My Girl's crop is beginning to ripen and there are just too many tomatoes for us to eat as is.

Lovely reds in Little Man's square foot boulevard garden

Strong stems supported by cages. A neighbourhood animal pulled over one of the cages last night and I found 3 lovely, large, green tomatoes on the ground. Sad.

My Girl's tomatoes beginning to ripen. Do you see the green one on the left? Right below it, hiding behind a bright leaf is another orange one, waiting its turn for harvest.

What do we do with tomatoes too plentiful to keep up with but not plentiful enough to can using the recipes that I have in my books?

Produce brought into the house in the last 2 days.

I've decided to try stewing and freezing them as it seems to be the simplest way to handle them, and I'm all for simple!

I'd love to hear more small batch preserving ideas, things that I can do a bit at a time as the crop becomes more than daily food. Any ideas?

The children have loved watching their plants grow, flower, and produce; now it's time for me to do something with them that we can enjoy later in the year.

One of two peppers growing in Little Man's garden.

My Girl's garden next to the playhouse. Her peppers aren't producing yet, but the cucumber is twining itself through the tomatoes.

One of the two cucumbers. We're watching to see how much it plumps up at the top!

Just for fun, a shot of my butterfly garden. I'm so pleased with the colours and textures!

In the Garden Again

I'd been doing the bare minimum in the garden lately (which really just means watering when there hasn't been rain), and it had begun to show. This morning Little Man, Brown-Eyed Boy, and I tackled the garden right after our morning chores were finished. They helped me water everything thoroughly. That progressed to pulling out the weeds. Most were little baby maples that had sprouted from the not-raked-up maple keys that fell over the late spring, but there were also some thistles, clover, and an unidentified vine through the day lilies. From there I went on to thin the lilies. They are one of the plants that seem to flourish, even under my inept care, to the point where they are overtaking the garden alongside the garage. So I dug my shovel deep into the earth and pulled out somewhere between eight and ten huge clumps of them from the roots. It did seem that there wasn't much of a dent made, but maybe when I go to look later I'll see that it's better!

The lilies are coming in to bud.

Only one blossom so far.

Then it was back to the front yard where I began thinning the shrubs. Why do I always get carried away with that job? Sure they were overgrown, but now they are, well, skimpy. It's okay. It's still early in the summer. I know they'll fill out again.

Tiny tomatoes are beginning to appear. Oh the dreams of plump red juiciness.

All in all it was a good morning. Physical activity is so good for me, yet I shy away from it. Gardening isn't as hard as I often think it is, although a little more knowledge and experience would be helpful!

When I went out to get photos this evening, this little mosquito was sitting on the leaf. I'm glad I saw him first!