The plot thickens. Week 1 in the vegetable garden

The raised-bed vegetable garden with strings delineating square-foot plots.

The seeds I planted in April have germinated. I have peas, lettuces, radishes and spinach growing in my new square-foot garden.

Thursday would have been the perfect day for planting, while today is the perfect day for buying plants. Unfortunately, the weather has set things back.

On Thursday, which was warm and sunny, I bought tomato plants, eggplants, broccoli and peppers. My plan was to get them into the garden today. Today is rainy. It’s too wet to be planting. So I’ll wait.

Still, there is action in the garden. Peas are up about 2 inches. Radishes, lettuce, arugula, mesclun and spinach have sprouted. I planted these on April 21. Earlier this week I planted seeds of beets and bush beans.

Peas have sprouted in my raised-bed, square-foot garden.

Building a raised garden bed with scrap lumber

Last fall I relocated the vegetable garden to a sunnier spot in the back yard. Neighboring trees were casting too much shade on the previous vegetable plot. That’s not beneficial for a productive harvest.

I had some scrap lumber in the garage, so I built a raised bed measuring 4 feet by 12 feet. That’s 48 square feet for those keeping score at home. It’s about 8 inches deep.

Seedlings of mesclun and arugula. Strings define one square foot.

Filling a box that size required more material than I had realized. It’s 32 cubic feet, by my calculations. Here’s how I filled it. First I covered the  sod with newspapers and laid sticks on top. I figured the sticks would create air pockets in the soil to prevent compaction. Then I emptied out my compost pile, added shredded paper and dumped in six 48-quart containers of horse manure I toted home from nearby stables. On top of all of this, I added store-bought garden soil. That broke down over the fall and winter.

Years ago, I raised a variety of vegetables, but over the years I cut back to tomatoes and green beans. (I grow herbs in containers.) Now, with a new plot in full sun (plus  having more free time since I retired), I felt I could be more ambitious in the garden.

Laying out a garden in square-foot blocks

There was a copy of Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew in the bookcase. It was my dad’s copy, perhaps given to him by one of his sisters. I say that because written on a bookmark I found in the book is this message: To John, From Ann. Happy, happy birthday. Maybe the bookmark was for this book; maybe for a different one. At any rate, I have a souvenir of my aunt’s handwriting.

I knew of this concept of laying out a garden in square-foot blocks but had never tried it. This is the year. I drew a grid of my garden and located plants in each grid, according to the book’s guidelines. The tomatoes will border the north edge of the plot so that they don’t shade the plants to the south. On the southern edge of the plot I’ll sew seeds of annuals and perennials with the goal of attracting pollinating bees and butterflies.

The weather forecast shows warmer and drier days ahead. I’ll get the plants in the ground then.

I invited you to come back to this blog every week for updates on what’s growing in my garden.