Garden Update – 02/20/2011

Well, it’s time to kick-off the 2011 gardening season here in zone 7b. I’ve been putting a lot of work into changes in how we will garden and I hope to test a lot of new ideas and techniques this year. Basically, we are switching over to square foot gardening on some of our terraces and we will be testing vertical tomatoes on one terrace which is also an idea I’ve gotten from the square foot gardening book.

If you are not familiar with square foot gardening you can see the book here. At it’s core it’s a technique that allows you to grow a lot of vegetables in a small area. Raised beds are normally used (but not required) and these are marked off into 1 square foot blocks. Inside each block you can plant a large amount of plants. For example, 4 lettuce plants, 4 swiss chard, 16 onions, 16 carrots, etc. Also, growing vertically you can grow 1 tomato, 2 cucumbers, or 8 peas/beans per square foot. This allows very intensive planting and requires good soil. The advantages are less ground to work, less area to water and fertilize, the plants grow up to crowd out weeds, and many more.

This year we will be growing asparagus, pod peas, lettuce, chard, carrots, beets, radishes, onions, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, peppers, some herbs, and maybe a few other things. I’m hopeful our square foot gardening plan will help us maximize our space and will make us a little more efficient.

I’ve included so pictures of my early spring labors to give you an idea of how we are going to work this out….

Producing asparagus bed in the back and new one in the front.

Garlic (planted in November) and onions. Overall we have 300 onions.

This bed is 4x12. It's in ground. I am using venetian blind strips as dividers.

The $20 beds I got at Home Depot. Just finished getting them ready.

This is where our vertical tomatoes will go. Doesn't look like much now.

This is where our peas/cucumbers will be. Will put up the trellis soon.