Square foot gardening.

[rabbit]

Never panic, it's supposed to be a pleasurable experience not a stressfull one. Just enjoy & learn from any mistakes you make. Believe me, I've had a lot of learning to do.........

I see where youre coming from, I havent started this to add stress to my life but the timings of the sowing is really messing with my head. What stuff in is in pots indoors, when it gets hardened, goes in the soil, which is sown out when, yada yada, I have no idea how this is going to work. I don't know how to grow any of this stuff. I hate slugs! If I think about it too hard I start to miss my 12ft square garden!

[veggiechicken]

Sounds like you're having a little crisis of confidence, Rabbit. Don't - there's no exam at the end of it - just lovely homegrown veggies.
Watch the "What I did today" thread on here and you'll get some ideas about what to sow, when. Many of your veggies can be sown direct anyway and thinned out if too many come up. Don't worry about it, it'll come good! Once you're eating your own veg, you'll wonder why you felt stressed

[Sheneval]

I see where youre coming from, I havent started this to add stress to my life but the timings of the sowing is really messing with my head. What stuff in is in pots indoors, when it gets hardened, goes in the soil, which is sown out when, yada yada, I have no idea how this is going to work. I don't know how to grow any of this stuff. I hate slugs! If I think about it too hard I start to miss my 12ft square garden!

Funny I have been thinking exactly the same thing regarding sowing seeds - the advice re. sowing outside contained in the seed packets I have collected seems fairly straightforward with only early carrots being sown outside in February and the rest from March on, but the whens and whats of starting off indoors and eventually transplanting outside, or sowing under cover without a greenhouse is still a bit of a mystery - hopefully VC is right and the previous versions of 'What I Did Today' will cast some light on the best way forward.

Certainly the onion sets I started off outdoors back in November, protected by environmesh, are progressing really well, said he with fingers crossed

[rabbit]

Sounds like you're having a little crisis of confidence, Rabbit. Don't - there's no exam at the end of it - just lovely homegrown veggies.
Watch the "What I did today" thread on here and you'll get some ideas about what to sow, when. Many of your veggies can be sown direct anyway and thinned out if too many come up. Don't worry about it, it'll come good! Once you're eating your own veg, you'll wonder why you felt stressed

bless you veggiechicken (hiya, I am a veggie rabbit!), I am finding it all so complicated, thanks for kind words I dont want to hijack this thread but I have been subscribed to 'what I did today' and it both helps and panics me more I guess it'll be fine, if the slugs don't get it all! Now don't even get me started on compost, the more i read about it the less I understand,...

[veggiechicken]

Don't worry about hijacking this thread - I do it all the time Many of us here like to bend the rules a bit - sow earlier or later than the packets say - to see if we can beat the system. Why don't you list the things you want to grow, as in your plans, look at the seed packets for the sowing dates and write those down and follow those. You live in the south so you don't have to worry too much about the cold weather. Once you get started it will all come together. If a few squares fail, it doesn't matter, you can always put something else in there. Even though you have a plan, you don't have to follow it rigidly - its a guide, that's all. I promise you that this time next year, you'll look back at this and laugh

[Bigmallly]

Shen - I think the only thing you may have to bear in mind is that you may be a couple of weeks behaind the sarf when it comes to planting out......check out your last frost date.

[Sheneval]

Thanks - I think it is round about the middle of June brrrrrrrrrrrr

Seriously, I normally don't plant out my bedding plants till near the end of May as I have been caught in the past. However I have plenty of environmesh and as rabbits are a problem will be using it to cover quite a bit of my veg as they never bothered the kid's plot which was totally protected - I also have plenty of fleece and am happy to put overnight cover over all the beds likely to be affected if/when frost is expected.

AP might be able to give me a bit of guidance as being on the east coast and further north he is more likely to get later frosts than I am on the west coast.

[Stonewaller]

If I had the option, I would not grow squash in a SFG bed. If you want to grow them vertically, play safe and fasten a structure to a wall if poss. Just throwing my 2penneth in.

I have no wall space near my veg beds so I guess it's not going to happen.

Apart from that though, if you grow onions as suggested, what sort of size do they get to? If I had a block of say 4 squares with 9 onions in each, aren't they really crammed together underground? Or should I randomly space my 4 squares throughout the bed so the onions are surrounded by other things that don't develop underground so much?

[Aberdeenplotter]

AP might be able to give me a bit of guidance as being on the east coast and further north he is more likely to get later frosts than I am on the west coast.

We can get frost here in mid June matey.

[Bigmallly]

I have no wall space near my veg beds so I guess it's not going to happen.

Apart from that though, if you grow onions as suggested, what sort of size do they get to? If I had a block of say 4 squares with 9 onions in each, aren't they really crammed together underground? Or should I randomly space my 4 squares throughout the bed so the onions are surrounded by other things that don't develop underground so much?

9 onions per SF will be fine, they are fairly shallow rooted so will be ok . I personally wouldn't put them in adjacent squares. I would plant flowers & other crops between them mainly to confuse the beasties......(Companion Planting).

[Doive]

Finally started planting up some of my veg today, concentrating mostly on onions and garlic this early in the year. Have made up a handy little 1sq ft plywood template, with nine 2" holes bored out of it. Using this and my thin hand trowel allows the soil to be scooped out in a cylinder shape, and the onion/garlic dropped straight in - without the timber the soil all collapses into the hole. So far planted 54 onions, 54 shallots and 36 garlic, all in batches of nine. My beds are probably too big to truly adhere to the sqft principles, but I want to try it and see how I get on. Very exciting so far!

[rabbit]

Finally started planting up some of my veg today, concentrating mostly on onions and garlic this early in the year. Have made up a handy little 1sq ft plywood template, with nine 2" holes bored out of it. Using this and my thin hand trowel allows the soil to be scooped out in a cylinder shape, and the onion/garlic dropped straight in - without the timber the soil all collapses into the hole. So far planted 54 onions, 54 shallots and 36 garlic, all in batches of nine. My beds are probably too big to truly adhere to the sqft principles, but I want to try it and see how I get on. Very exciting so far!



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iI'm dead impressed look like this will be a very tidy organised bed!

Personally I'm beginning to doubt I can do sq foot gardening. I've marked out the squares with nails and twine (which will probably disintegrate in a matter of days!) and I've got so many seeds and so little bed space! Maybe that is exactly the reason to do it though!!??? I'll persevere but I think will have to be adaptable according to what survives and what doesn't.

Also I don't think a square foot is good enough space for me to fix up a cane support for the peas, maybe. The good thing is that at least I can put the flowers in the borders (although I don't really like the borders in our garden, but they'll be prettied up a bit by leftovers). My dad want seedlings so hopefully excess won't be wasted. I'm sure people at work would have some too.

[maisiem]

Newbie

Hi

I have 2 x two tiered raised beds and having read through this thread from the start I have decided that I will be doing the square foot gardening this year. I only had one tiered bed last year and did quite well with beetroots, onions and leeks. I did carrots and lettuce in pots and potatoes in bags. All with varying degrees of success and tomatoes in the greenhouse. Most of the things I had planted too late by the time I had myself organised so I am being more organised this year and trying to keep up with planting on time.

I live in Scotland in the central belt so a wee bit behind England on planting times due to the frosts but I am hopeful I will get it right this year.

[SarzWix]

Welcome to the Vine maisiem Timings for sowing are very much trial and error anyway; I found I did everything too late last year, and then this year when I've tried to do things earlier the weather has been vicious!

[marcofez]

I found that everything I sowed direct , didn't do very well if at all. Seeds nurtured under cover did really well for me after being hardened off and transplanted. Just keep on checking the weather!
Anyways, sowed my collection of 30 different tomato seed varieties. Hope to find out which ones I like the taste of, ease of growing and sauce making.