I am seriously behind in updating you on the progress of my Square Foot Garden! It has been another great year of watching tiny seeds and seedlings become big beautiful plants full of heathy goodness for my family. This process never ceases to amaze me, especially when I am quite the neglectful gardener.
Square foot gardening takes so little work. The soil mixture is super absorbent which is quite forgiving of my infrequent watering. It also takes just one bag of compost each season, which gives my plants all the nutrition they need for the season. I don’t fertilize at all. Oh..and weeds? They do not exist in a square foot garden. There is no room for them.
I ate the above tomato on my favorite Tomatoes On Toast. The cucumber is going into this Sweet & Sour Dilled Cucumbers recipe…one I cannot wait to try!
The last time I wrote about gardening, it was spring and my garden looked like the above pic.
Now…it looks like this:
Whoa, right? Amazing. Those tiny swiss chard plants have been growing leaves bigger than my head. They are great for juicing, blending into green smoothies. Basil is sitting pretty right next to it, and will be made into pesto this week. There is dill in there, taller than my waist. My cucumbers are super happy and just keep growing up, up, up and producing much fruit. I used a pallet as support for my cuckes and it has worked great. There is a pepper plant in there…which is hard to see. I replaced kale with baby pumpkin after the cool weather growing season of spring.
Speaking of kale…I grew a ton of it, but was very disappointed that squash bugs got to it. This is my first time dealing with squash bugs and they are nasty little things! They lay a bazillion little eggs to the underside of leaves. I spent a few evenings out there with duct tape, dabbing at those dumb eggs. I won the battle without insecticide, but they ate most of my kale and one summer squash plant before I won. They have tried to get to my baby pumpkins, but I was not having it and drowned the few adults I found and then went after their eggs with my weapon of choice–good ol’ duct tape.
The above picture is my second 4×2 bed, full of spring time plantings of kale and chard.
I replaced the kale with tomatoes, pepper, more swiss chard and a squash plant. All have done beautifully except my squash plant. May he RIP.
I planted just one cucumber plant, and it has kept us in supply of cucumbers for all of July and August, and it is still producing.
My tomatoes are not as productive as last year, but still holding their own and doing just fine. Ahhh…I’m so gonna miss the deliciousness of a still-warm from- the- sun, vine-ripened tomato. I just made freezer salsa, which made my entire family very happy!
So much leafy beauty and texture! The red veins of this Rainbow Chard is just breathtaking.
The vine of mini pumpkins is just going crazy and taking over my deflated wheelbarrow. I can’t wait to use them as fun fall decorations in a week or so. I envision large glass vases full of mini pumpkins adorning my dining room table.
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What about you? Are you a gardener? Do you want to be? What flourished in your garden this year? What bombed?
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Monica
August 30, 2014 at 4:09 pmI love your garden! I will be trying my hand at gardening this fall and your pictures are very inspiring!
Amy T.
August 28, 2014 at 8:59 pmI could send tons of pics of my garden efforts this year. We have a membership to our local community garden and rented two plots and a raised bed. We have had produce all thru the spring and summer. What’s ready to pick tonight is our pole beans, tomatoes (cherry and bigger ones) as a start. I will try to grab some pics for you tonight. We have chard and kale still, cucumbers galore, then we have some acorn squash growing nicely. One looks almost ready and the others are starting to be cute little tiny gourds.
Problems in mine have been early spring we had those little roll poly bugs whatever they’re called nesting in the raised bed and got into my early spring spinach and toasted it. I had later problems mainly with the powdery mildew that I get annually on my zucchini, summer squash and now it’s hitting my cucumber plants some. I tried to battle it one year with natural remedies but I have given in to it being a natural process here and I can’t battle it naturally. I might give it another try next year on some test plants.
I got some awesome beets and have a handful more to pull up if the underground critters haven’t had their way under there. We’ve had critters (voles) get into the root crops in the past so I didn’t even bother growing carrots this year. I had awesome dill early in the season and wish I’d planted more.
For herbs I have basil galore, both sweet basil and thai basil. Then I have sorrel which has been parceled out to my ukrainian caregiver who makes her own green borscht with it for her husband. lol Then I have parsley that I want to chop out soon and make tabouleh with. I am going to make pesto again. Made one batch so far and we loved it. I have to get some nuts which I forgot. Ohhh and we planted potatoes which we’ve had fun unearthing and eating some of so far. We planted a few types which I’m glad for and got the best out of the old school russet potatoes this year. Last time I planted potatoes it was those red ones (name I cannot remember) and yukon golds. Both were very good growers here in Seattle area. I don’t know what area you’re in but looks similar. Then I have small plants of oregano, mint, some chives, and a few bunching onions that I planted around the beets in hopes of warding off the voles but it didn’t work. LOL. I love seeing your plants and hearing what you’re making with the results. I used swiss chard one time mixed into a lasagna mix in place of spinach lasagna and it was pretty good and also used it mixed with mac n cheese but it sort of separated the pieces of mac n cheese (it was homemade which I had just learned was easy to homemake).