Rispon Avenue

Vegetable gardening has always been a challenge around our home. The garden always starts great. Hours go in to tilling and preparing the soil. Sore muscles are created when the rows are laid out. And plenty of money is spent seeding each and every row.

The first couple of weeks usually go well. The weeds get hoed out of the garden and the seedlings get watered regularly. The garden is tended with love and concern.

Then the summer heat arrives.

The weeds over take the plants, the ants hide under the weeds and the vegetables rot on the vine because no one will risk their life to get them.

This year we are experimenting with a square foot garden. It takes less energy to prepare, less seeds to plant and less time to maintain. We have built up three 4 x 4 beds. Each one of the beds has been divided into a grid with the spaces 1ft x 1ft.

We have lettuce, carrots, radishes, a squash plant, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, some herbs, and cabbage all planted in the small space. There are plenty of seeds left over for future planting (and we keep them viable by storing them in the refrigerator).

Today we spent a grand total of 10 minutes watering and weeding all of our vegetable garden. I think that even with the heat of summer this is something that can be managed. It looks like the square foot garden is one that is going to stay.

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We are a family of gardeners and it doesn’t help that we live on a large amount of acreage. Our garden is only as small as the tractor (driven by my father-in-law who does not consult with me) turns over. Last year it was a whopping 100 feet by 75 feet. Too big, too much work, and too little consistency means we all usually give up on the garden before the end of the season. There has to be an easier way to garden.

I’ve heard about square foot gardening, but I’ve not researched it as much as I should. Just looking over a website online was enough to convince me this is the direction we will be going in the up coming season. It was motivating enough that I’m seriously considering a fall and winter garden.

The hard part won’t be building the raised beds or even filling them with soil (we have a bucket on the tractor that will do most of the work) but it will be convincing my father-in-law that this is the right path to take. He’s a firm believer of “we’ve never done it that way before.”

It would be nice to only have to work what we plant instead of having to worry about a huge pot of dirt that only produces five cucumbers. It would also be nice not to have to fight the crawling grass that loves to invade our garden.

If this works out well, I might be moving my flower beds in to the raised position.

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