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I love spring! The weather is getting warmer. The world is getting brighter and more colorful. It's one of my favorite times of the year. This year I am attempting to grow a garden. This is very experimental for me because I've never done this method before (I'm trying out square foot gardening) and I am not good with finishing projects. I am hoping this garden will a)help train me in diligence so that I don't abandon the task before the harvest season ends, b) give me an excuse to be outside and get some activity, c) force me to spend time away from the computer so that I am overall more productive with my time, and d) potentially yield some tasty organic produce for my family and friends.
So far I think I am doing ok. I have some early season planters that I am going to start soon. I plan on getting my broccoli and spinach planted this afternoon, and then start the carrots next week. To prepare the bed I made a frame, 4 feet by 4 feet out of two pieces of 2x10x8 non pressure treated lumber. I double dug the ground where I was going to put the frame, and then poured 3 cubic feet of compressed peat moss on top. This project isn't totally by the book since I don't know if I am going to fertilize and I opted to not get vermiculite. The book also mentioned using sand and limestone, but I didn't get those either.
I don't know if I did the best job mixing the peat moss in. I wasn't thinking things through initially and just dumped the spread out peat moss over the soil thinking it would be easy to mix in with a pitch fork and shovel. This turned out not to be the case. I have really clay-ey soil that had a lot of rocks in it. I got a lot of the rocks out, but I know that I missed some too. Hopefully the soil is friable enough that the plants will be able to grow well despite my errors. I am somewhat encouraged by the fact that last year when I planted broccoli it did pretty well considering everything it had to put up with. (I got too excited last year and wound up planting right before a frost. Then I lost track of weed control and didn't have a regular watering routine, so the outcome was basically rogue broccoli- a plant that was essentially growing wild in the yard.) I wasn't able to harvest any broccoli from those plants because they didn't get enough water, but perhaps with better care and a lower maintenance garden design I might actually have significant success.
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