My husband Mike and I thought long and hard about where to place the raised garden. It needed good sun, but not too much since our AZ sun can do a lot of damage. We knew it would have to be raised for a few reasons: 1. our soil is part clay, part sand, part dead dirt (meaning, it's so compact that bugs and vitamins don't even try to get in there), and roots. We knew that good soil is the first part of gardening that you MUST get right. 2. Our chickens. I knew if the garden was on the ground, they'd peck at the leaves and probably eat the seeds. 3. The best place in the yard was in an area where we have bricks placed on the ground. It used to be the ground of an old shed until we took it out.
From just my own knowledge, I knew I could do "square foot gardening", which means that you separate your garden into square feet sections and plant a different vegetable in each. This allows you to have a large variety of foods, rather than, say, a whole garden of corn. I also knew that I tend to bite off more than I can chew when I'm spontaneous, so we scaled back and decided on roughly 8'x8' total. With the brick size, that would leave me with about 7'x7' of soil space.
On October 15th we purchased 84 blocks at Home Depot for less than $2 each and placed them in three rows, making it roughly 20" tall. We filled it with a 40/40/20 mix of Miracle Grow garden soil, packaged manure, and compost mulch (all from Home Depot). Mike added some small 10" fencing to make it a bit taller to make sure the chickens couldn't get in. Then I sectioned off one-foot squares using twine that I attached to the small fence pieces at each side, making 36 squares total.
Mike wasn't sure (and neither was I!) if I planned to plant seeds or transplants, so he bought a few transplants at Home Depot for me to start out.
I researched online before I did ANYTHING, from what soil to use, to bugs. to seeds. A few helpful cites for me learn about general gardening were:
The obvious first step was to figure out what foods should be and can be planted in October in Arizona. I used this as a guide:
I decided on (I'll list the exact brands in a separate post):
Tomatoes (1 transplant and two varieties of seeds)
Green Bean seeds
Red and green pepper transplants
Peas (2 transplants and one kind of seed)
Cucumber transplants
Broccoli seeds
Basil transplants (good for pest control)
Oregano transplants (also good for pests)
Zucchini squash transplant
onion seeds (not ideal, but I couldn't find any bulbs)
carrot seeds
cantaloupe seeds (this was a favor for my son Jack who loves melon)
Romaine lettuce transplants
Spinach transplants and seeds
The second step was plan out the placement of veggies. I needed to make sure that next door neighbor veggies would play nicely together. I had a feeling that some could harm the development of others if placed together, so I researched and found my saving grace:
This site has pre-made layouts or templates for you to make your own. I like it because it shows you how many of each veggie can fit into a square foot section. That way you know how many squares you want to use per vegetable. For example, we love carrots, so I planned to use 3 squares for carrots. I also knew I needed to leave at least one square open for our sprinkler.
I used a pre-made layout and tweaked it to accommodate my chosen veggies. Here's my final layout plan:
Let me go over my codes...In each box, I wrote the vegetable on the top, then I plotted out how many would fit in each square and drew as circles. On the bottom left corner, I noted "T" if I planted a transplant, S1 if it was a seed I planted in week 1, or S2 if it was a week 2 seed. I wanted to experiment with timing, which is why I planted a few seeds a week apart.
*Side note: It was 90-100 degrees for the first 8 days or so. I planted my first veggies on Oct. 16th.
On the bottom right corner, I wrote the estimated number of days until harvest, according to multiple sites and the back of seed packets. I have a detailed journal, and in there I wrote the estimated dates for which I could expect seeds to germinate (show their tips). I do all of this to make sure I'm doing things right and so that I know if something's wrong. I know it's very detailed, but it didn't take more than 10 minutes to write and I like knowing everything I can about my new project.
On planting day, I made sure I had my layout map handy and planted as the packages said. Some seeds only need to be planted 1/4" deep, so I found it easiest to sprinkle the seeds on top of the soil and then just "fluff" the soil around a bit. I also added a wire accordion-style partition between my tomatoes and peas for them to grab onto (something I didn't know until my husband pointed out!)
The last step was to set up the water timer. Mike set it to go on at 5am for 10 minutes each day. It's important to know which crops need daily watering and which need less. I'll catch you up on that in another post.
Here's the final product:
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