Alpacas in the Field: Square Foot Boxes!

Square Foot Garden

It was a long process, but I finally fulfilled my vow to have a proper Square Foot Garden this year. As Mel Bartholomew, the creator of Square Foot Gardening says, "Square Foot Gardening is a simple system that adapts to all levels of experience, physical abilities, and geographical locations. Grow all you want and need in only 20% of the space of a conventional row garden. Save time, water, work and money!"

Above is the result of my month long handiwork. I know Mel says it will save time, work and money but the initial outlay requires a lot of all three. Next year I will already have my boxes in place and it will be fairly effortless to plop seeds and seedlings into the awaiting boxes. This year, not so much. Let me take you down the garden path to get to these stunning results. Ha! Garden path, get it?

I started with my found lumber (remember my post Free, or Not?). I had an assortment of 2x10's that need to be cut into 2, 4 and 6 foot lengths.

Lovely treasures awaiting their destiny.

Which I proceeded to do. I want to let you know that the weather on this particular day was not very cooperative. Surprise, surprise. So I worked in the garage.

My materials and tools prior to work.

I like to create messes. It's more fun that way.

My cut boards.

I wanted to make two 4x4 and one 2x6 foot boxes. For the 4x4 boxes I cut four equal length 4 foot boards per box. For the 2x6 box I cut two 2 foot and two 6 foot boards. Mel suggested using 3 deck screws per side to assemble the boxes.

3 1/2 inch deck screws.

Because of the size and weight of my boards I went with a
3 1/2" deck screw. An exterior or deck screw supposedly won't rust.

The pencil is pointing at the line I drew.

I then took a scrap of the end of a board and used it to draw a line on the end of all of the boards to mark the amount of working space I had to drill the holes in.

The 3 holes I drilled within the line.

I drilled three holes between the line and the end of each board. By marking off the width of the 2x10 I know that when I go to screw the boards together the screws will hit the middle of the board instead of the edge.

The boards are staggered .

I arranged the boards so the end of each board with the holes, was perpendicular to the next board's end without the holes.

Then I proceeded to drive 3 screws into each of the predrilled holes.

Mr Tibbs supervising.

The 3 finished "boxes" on the deck.

I choose the sunniest location in our backyard for the location of my boxes. Our property receives a lot of shade throughout the day and I want to make sure the garden will get a good eight hours of sun. I arranged the boxes about four feet away from each other so it would be easy to walk between them and cut the grass.

I layed weed barrier underneath each box. I did this directly on top of the existing grass.

Box with weed barrier. A fun task. Not!

The next step was to create the "filling" for the boxes. Otherwise known as Mel's Mix. It consisted of equal parts of compost, peat moss and vermiculite.

The tarp with Mel's Mix ingredients.

Mel suggests dumping all the contents of the bags onto a large tarp, the easier to mix it with. To mix the ingredients, in theory you take a corner of one side of the tarp and walk it over to the other side, thus "mixing" the ingredients. Suggestion, this would best be accomplished with assistance. Trying to do it by myself accomplished frustration. It was too heavy for me to move and obviously I couldn't move both corners at the same time. In the end I grabbed a shovel and manually shoveled the ingredients from one side of the tarp to the other until I felt it was sufficiently mixed. Mixing on top of the tarp was helpful, preventing loss of the valuable ingredients even though it didn't help me accomplish the mixing task.

Ta Da!

I then filled the wheel barrow up with the mix and dumped into each box.

I grabbed a utility knife and trimmed the excess protruding weed barrier away from each box.

In order for each box to be a proper Square Foot Garden, it must be divided into square feet. I had purchased eight foot pieces of lath that I had cut into two, four and six foot lengths. Silly me forgot to take any pictures of this process. I will try to describe it sufficiently to understand. I arranged the lath over each box in a grid pattern and drilled a hole at each intersecting piece. I also drilled a hole at each end of one piece of the lath so I could firmly attach it to the box. I then inserted a bolt into each hole from the top and secured it from the bottom with a nut. I then drove a screw into the predrilled hole at each end of one piece of lath, securing it to the box.