Square Foot Gardening

We started it already. Our garden is started. I have two squares. I need a little more compost for the second square and to get the strips to make the one foot squares.

This first picture the boys helped me take off all the grass. That was a lot of work. Of course, we stopped and took a small water break. Then we came back and finished it off. We mixed the compost, peat moss and vermiculite and filled the squares. Soon we will add our plants and on some squares we will be adding seeds.

As we added the different ingredients we talked about them. Vermiculite is a rock that is heated until it pops like popcorn and you get the end result that you can put in the garden. We also talked about compost and that not all bags are equal. In the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew he mentioned that we should have around 6 different brands of compost and mix them all to end up with a good compost mix. I was like...what??? It actually makes sense since some of these companies make compost out of different materials. Some use manure some leaves and other materials.

We have a good blend of compost in our garden. Tomorrow we will continue with the garden and get ready to plant before the rain comes which is supposed to be this weekend. Did I mention that I will be sore?