When I first got my raised beds in 2020, I scoured Pinterest for ideas of how to make the most of my little garden plots. I discovered "square-foot" gardening. If you haven't heard of it, it's a gardening method developed by Mel Bartholomew. Essentially, with the right soil and the right plan, you can maximize the amount of produce you grow in a limited space. Want to know more? Check out: https://squarefootgardening.org/
For my first year of raised-bed gardening, I drew out plans for my 3 beds following what others had done. Pinterest is a treasure-trove of graphics showing you how many plants can go into each square-foot of garden space. I didn't put in Mel's Mix (Mel's recommended blend) because my beds were new and came with really good composted garden soil (enriched with mushroom manure).
Here is the original plan, in 2020, for the 2 4'x8' beds plus the ground level bed in front of my raspberry patch.
Along the way, I discovered the Planter App. It allows you to design your square-foot garden in the app using icons. You can add in notes about planting times and anything else related to planting your crop. It's like a gardener's journal in app form. There is a fee to use it but so far, I have found it to be worth the small amount I paid. It also helps me to see and change my plans from year to year so I have an archived set of blueprints for my beds.
Here is what actually happened with my beds:
Bed 1- Peas and Beans trellised (on both sides) in one row. Carrots were overcrowded and barely produced anything. Celery, broccoli, and cabbage were HUGE! I definitely needed to spread those out. I planted way too many tomatoes and they took over the front half of the bed. Did you know that you can pinch off a sucker and stick it in the ground, you can grow a whole new tomato plant? Well, I definitely tried that! Hence the overcrowded garden bed.
It started out fine...
...until it was a jungle.
For Bed number 2, I moved the corn to the back of the second bed and added onions and strawberries at the front. The strawberries did not do well there, so I moved them to hanging baskets that I hung on the fence. They did much better there. The kale took over and got infested with aphids. I think it was too moist and crowded for them to grow properly. My peppers didn't do well at all so I will move them into containers on the deck where I can space them out and the heat from the wood will help them grow.
For the third bed, a friend gifted me 4 spaghetti squashes which I planted where the corn was supposed to go. I planted potatos in bags so I could move them around as things grew bigger. I had no idea what to expect with the potato bags but they were awesome. I bought them off of Amazon. My zucchini loved that location and I learned about training them to grow up a pole. My zucchini were huge! Definitely only needed one plant to feed all of us. My cucumber did not love where they were. I also planted cucamelon on that trellis and neither did well. I think it was too shaded from the deck. The plan for the next garden is to move them to the raised beds and trellis them there.
The spaghetti squash grew everywhere! I had so many I didn't know what to do with them all! 4 plants was way too many and it crowed everything else out. Somehow the zucchini and pumpkins produced but nothing else made it.
My 2021 garden plans started out on paper again. I expanded the garden significantly with two new raised beds.
The pandemic was hard on my teenaged son who hated online learning, not having sports as an outlet, and being stuck at home. I came up with projects we could do together. He took woodworking in school and is handy with power tools. So I designed a new strawberry planter and built it with his help. It was built to look like Chichen Itza in the Mayan Riviera- a place we have visited and loved and were missing at the time.
It is essentially a set of stacked frames, all open in the middle. Each frame has 4 support legs to keep it from sinking when there is soil loss. We love how it turned out.
I filled the planter with the strawberries I had removed from raised bed 2 and added in some barerooted everbearing strawberries that I bought off of Facebook marketplace. The first year the yield was small and I concentrated on rooting the runners so that I could fill the planter. Tip: put square seedling pots in the dirt between the plants and fill those with water when you water the planter. It ensure that roots get watered properly and the plants love it!
Year 2: I learned about companion planting. Strawberries love to grow alongside onions. I purchased some green onion bulbs and planted them in the planter between the strawberries. We had the best yields of both strawberries and onions. The strawberries are everbearing so we get two crops during the summer.
I also added another U-shaped raised bed to the mix. Another pandemic project completed with the help of my handy son.
My original plans, I did on paper again. I colour coded the squares by the planting dates. I follow the West Coast Seeds Company regional planting guide because they are from my area and so their times are pretty accurate.
The left-hand side of the U: My corn grew and I harvested it. It was supposed to be super sweet Jubilee corn. This corn is a later variety that grows really well in the Fraser Valley. What I got was the equivalent of cow corn. I honestly wouldn't even have fed it to the cows. It was so starchy. The stalks got used in my Halloween display. This is the second year of not great results from my corn so I think my next year will be cornless.
The middle of the U: Once again, my carrots failed to thrive. I wand watered and I think my inconsistent watering was the issue. The beans did ok but were better in last year's location. The zucchini did well, producing lots for me to share. The celery was slow to grow but that could have been because the tomato and corn plants nearby.
The right-hand side of the U: the peas loved being along the back of the planter and grew over 6 feet tall. The lettuces and radishes loved being on this side of the planter as there is a bit of morning shade from the cedar hedge and so the temperatures were a big cooler than other parts of the garden.
For my other raised beds, I added a trellised arch in between so that I could grow my squashes up rather than taking up precious room in the garden bed.
The left hand side contained my broccoli, cauliflower, celery, along with a variety of squashes and beans. Lessons learned. Too many squashes means that some make it and some don't because they are too crowded. My delicata squash and my cucamelon did not produce well because they were buried. My butternut squash, cucumber, mashed potato squash (which cooks up exactly like mashed potatoes!) did well. My carrots did not do well so I added in some tomatoes by replanting some of the suckers as the season went on. You can't have too many tomatoes, right?
The right hand side housed my garlic, which I planted in the Fall. They did very well and I liked overwintering them for bigger bulbs. I didn't realize how big the cabbages can get. I planted both purple and green. The bottom leaves were massive and definitely took up 4 squares of the bed each. My onions also did well. I experimented with starters and with bulbs. The seeds I planted the year before did almost nothing but the bulbs were definite winners. I will only plant those going forward.
Delicata squash
Mashed potato squash
Spaghetti squash
Loofah
Lessons learned:
Planning takes patience and time.
Do your research if you want to maximize your yields using the square-foot gardening method
Plans change. Be flexible.
Treat each year like a science experiment. Try new things like mashed potato squash!
Some plants I started indoors. Others I planted directly outdoors. Both faired well as long as I planted them outside at the right times. Use a seeding guide for your area to help you.
Use good soil. I topped up all of my existing beds and filled the new ones with really good composted gardening soil. I added in crushed eggshells as well to help feed the plants. When needed, I added some Miracle Gro Shake and feed fertilizer to help them along.
To assist with planting, I discovered a planting square! It's a nifty tool to help with spacing. My second year planting, I meticulously marked each square with twine. Don't bother. The lines snapped and interfered with watering, staking, and the plants. This tools makes everything so much easier. It has a guide, a planting tool and is colour-coded so you always get it right. Find it here!
Happy Gardening! I am really looking forward to planning my 2022 garden and sharing it with you. Share your plans and ideas with me! I would love to hear from you. Go to my home page and share a comment.
Comments