Plants in the Ground

Ileana and I installed string to define square-foot boundaries and built the trellises today (5/30/2011).  We're largely using the gardening method described in Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book.  I haven't gardened this densely in the past, but we're giving it a try.  We stapled the string to the wood frame to define the 1-ft x 1-ft grid (roughly, since the inner dimensions of the bed are slightly smaller than 4' x 6').  We constructed the trellises using 1/2-inch electrical conduit, conduit right-angle joints, rebar, and nylon garden netting.  We used 3-foot x 1/2-inch rebar hammered into the ground as anchors for the conduit.  Cable ties hold the netting to the conduit frame.  Short pieces of conduit set on angles form a triangle at the base of each trellis to hold it upright in the occasional brisk Colorado wind.  Hose clamps hold the conduit angles to the main trellis structure.  This garden was clearly being built by an engineer (break out the level and the micrometer)...

Our garden plan calls for a dense population of vegetables.  Here is the layout (click to enlarge).  The numbers in the squares indicate the number of plants in each square foot.

Garden plan updated 6/25/2011.

All plants we installed today were seedlings except for the beans and carrots, which we planted by seed.  We haven't planted the garlic yet.  Here are the the seedling tags:

After a full day of construction and planting, the garden looks like this:

Garden Kickoff

On May 14, we began digging our raised garden bed.  Actually, we began digging 10 garden beds with a group of volunteers who are helping to create the first community garden in the Willow Brook condominium/townhouse community.  Our plot is 4' x 6', quite a bit smaller than I was used to a decade ago when I gardened in my backyard in Virginia.  However, I am optimistic that we will have an abundant harvest for what we will use, and we will spend much less time maintaining the garden because we will be forced to be efficient!

On May 15, we used recycled 2" x 10" lumber from ReSource (Boulder) to create the raised bed.  We lined the bottom of the bed with Weed Block Pro landscape fabric and stapled it to the lumber to keep weeds from growing up from the soil underneath while allowing water penetration (it's an experiment).  The soil mix we chose was:

1. 4 bags (4 x 1.5 cu.ft.) Eko Compost Original organic compost
2. 5 bags (5 x 1.5 cu.ft.) Miracle-Gro Organic Choice Garden Soil
3. 1 bag (3 cu.ft.) Peat Moss
4. 2 bags (2 x 2 cu.ft.) Vemiculite
5. 2/3 bag (0.67 x 2 cu.ft.) Perlite

 We added the soil componets a little at a time and mixed in layers so that we could get an evenly distributed mix. 

The garden will be completely organic.  No more Sevin or pesticides, as I used a decade ago (before moving to Boulder, go figure).  We'll try organic options:  Dipel and Thuricide (thanks Mom), and good ol' manure to raise our plants.