Square foot gardening is one of the BEST projects I have ever done. I cannot tell you how much joy it is to grow fresh herbs and vegetables with minimal amount of work! I have two, 4×2 feet garden beds along the side of my home. It is the only place other than our front yard that gets enough sun, so we were limited, but thanks to square foot gardening I can still grow an abundance of organic food for our family!
I built these beds 3 years ago, other than the initial work of building the beds and mixing “Mel’s Mix” (the KEY to square foot gardening & my gardening success), square foot gardening is one of the easiest things I have done. There is NO weeding. Watering is minimal as the Mel’s soil mix absorbs and retains moisture, and the only thing I do each season is add one bag of compost to each bed at before planting.
In this bed I have 4 tomato plants, 5 pepper plants, and a squash. Not bad for such a little space, huh?
My tomato plants are looking happy. I cannot wait for tomatoes straight from the garden!
My Avery was excited about this Patty Pan Squash plant. They look like little flying saucers! She has delighted in watching it grow.
Just 3 short weeks ago this squash plant was tiny with just a few little leaves. Now the leaves are as big as my head!
We eat a lot of bell peppers around here, so seeing the pepper plants flower makes me anticipate a great crop.
In my second bed, I have 2 types of lettuce, which is ready to harvest and will be replaced with swiss chard. I love using these greens in my green smoothies or juicing them. I also love going out right before dinner and snipping off a few leaves for a dinner side salad.
Beautiful leafy textures, showing off as light bounces off.
I grow a lot of basil every year. I use it in my simple spaghetti sauce, to make pesto, and my favorite…tomatoes on toast ,which is an easy version of bruschetta. I also use it in my creamy avocado dip, which is a $100 prize winning recipe, thanks to a contest I won with Avocados From Mexico.
Dill is one of my most favorite herbs. I use this on roasted potatoes and in a quiche.
Rosemary is such an earthy and beautiful herb. We love it on roasted vegetables, especially roasted potatoes.
Parsley is an incredibly detoxifying herb. I am growing a lot of it and will use it in juicing and to flavor just about every dish I make.
Do you garden? What is your favorite thing to grow? Have you ever thought about square foot gardening?
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More on Gardening From New Nostalgia:
Square Foot Gardening –Just beginning to grow
Harvest From Last Years Garden
Amy T
June 14, 2013 at 5:12 amHey Amy, Amy here again! I have two plots and a raised bed in our local community garden and though we started late thanks to our medical issues, we now have it going and I’ll have to send you some photos of our sprouted babies and what’s growing out there now. I just dried some sage this week and made “sage butter” (softened butter with sage ground into it in the food processor). I nixed the suggested salt and pepper that the recipe suggested and figured it depended on what I was using it for whether I wanted salt/pepper in it.
We just bought some basil plants today b/c we’re way late in some stuff. Our sage overwintered so I had big tall gorgeous leafy plants to harvest.
I planted herbs (parsley, sage, dill, sorrel…is that considered an herb or a leafy green?), plus have rosemary and thyme plants we picked up in march that have yet to be repotted. Then we have tomatoes (cherry and regular size) and are putting in some pole and bush beans (purple bush, yellow “soleil” filet bush beans, cortex pole beans)….etc. We have a bunch of lettuces, kale (dwarf siberian, red russian and scotch blue), various colorful swiss chards (bright lights, neon glow, rhubarb) and then we have some baby summer squash and zucchini plants growing now. We bought cucumber plant starts b/c we were so late but the squash and zucchini we seeded into starter trays and they’re growing so fast! It’s all magical isn’t it? I just love it and discovered it about three years ago.
It’s very healing and provides such intensely great time outdoors with the birds and various critters. I will send you some pics when I have time to take them!!
YOURS looks great and very very pretty lettuces!
Enjoy!