Madcapper's 2013 Square Foot Garden (With Pics)

So a few weeks back I asked for advice on another forum on a good beginners gardening book, and square foot gardening was mentioned by more than a few people. I looked into it a little bit and decided to go ahead and buy the book, to prepare to plant for next year. Well after ready the book cover to cover in about a day and a half, the desire to build and plant a square foot garden was pretty strong.

So I went ahead and told the wife that we would go ahead and put some stuff in the ground for this year!

As far as location we are somewhat limited by what is essentially forest on our property. The site gets full sun starting around 1130 am, and at this point, stays in full sun until about 6pm. The deck is on the east side of the garden.

I used 2 8 ft 2x8 boards, that I had precut at Home Depot, and 3 8 foot pieces of 3/4" lath for the grid. Going back I would use 1/4" instead of 3/4". The wife was the one doing the actual shopping as she had the day off on Friday, while I was stuck in the office.

The box is screwed together with 3" galvanized deck screws, 3 in each corner. Pilot holes were drilled into the face of one board, with no pilot hole in the foot of the adjacent board. The frame is very sturdy, even without any kind of bracket for the corners. The bottom is a sheet of weed block and chicken wire, to keep down subterranean pests.

I still need a build a trellis for it (The one in the pics is temporary). I am planning on building one on the east side adjacent to the deck, and one on the north side for the tomato plants. Hopefully having 2 trellises doesn't back fire on me, if it does, then I guess I will just have to expand for next year!

I laid out the plants/seeds in a grid next to the box, as I planted I stacked seed packets off the side, and didn't write down what went where, that's a lesson learned.

Layout as best as I can remember is as follows:

(N/W Corner)
Cherry Tomato - Cucumber - Watermelon in 2 squares
Radish - Broccoli Raab - Romaine Lettuce - 1 Pumpkin in this square and the one below
Marigolds/Geranium - Mixed Leaf Lettuce - Marigold/Salvia - 1 Pumpkin in this and the one above
Green Onion - Marigold/Salvia - Carrots - Stringless Beans

Cant post any outside links for 7 days so no pics for now

I planted all these plants on Sunday. Sunday night I was cooking dinner and it was getting hot so I opened the window over the kitchen sink. Forgot to close it last night...fast forward to this morning and as I am walking through the kitchen I hear something out there. I grab the flash light and find that there is a raccoon climbing up an oak tree just on the other side of that short temporary fence bordering the grass. This is within my yard which is fenced in by a 6 privacy fence on the street side and 6 ft chain link for the other three sides. Gotta keep the beagle/lab mix and cockapoo contained (Don't unleash the beast!!!)

I dont know if the raccoon was going for the garden, which has nothing fruiting (Seeds maybe?) at the moment, or if he was digging around in the fire wood pile, which is stacked at the base of the oak tree he was climbing. Either way I need to figure out what to do about the masked bandit.

Madcapper, to the forum.
Sounds like you jumped right in this year. Good for you.
My only concern would be the watermelon and pumpkin squares. I'm thinking you didn't allow enough, but if you have lots of vining space out of the bed for them, and I mean lots especially for the pumpkin, you may be OK. I'm thinking you will trellis those vines.
Everything else sounds fine.
Pumpkin have huge and many leaves, more so than watermelon but the purpose of a gardener is to try something just to see if it works. How will you know otherwise.
If the pumpkin gets too long, you can cut off the vine after one or two fruits start to develop. That will help the vine put more energy into the developing fruits sooner.
Good luck and when you can, post pictures. We love pictures.

Hey madcapper! Welcome to forum. Lots of great folks here with lots of great information. I think you'll like it.

Figured I go ahead and post too. I'm a newbie here and to SFG also. I'm close to you, I'm in Culpeper, and your story sounds like mine. Started reading everything I could and jumped right in. I've got 3 boxes now and might add more. I planned on where I was going to plant everything and wrote it in a notebook ahead of time. Now as long as I can remember where it is I'll be ok. Looking forward to seeing your pics. To everyone else, I'm getting tons of great info here! Thanks.

Still waiting for the magic time when I can post pics. I pruned the little tomato plant we bought last night, had a hard time convincing my wife the suckers needed to be removed. Finally got her on board though. Everything is looking very good now. Rain all day today and tomorrow not too heavy though so hopefully everything stays where it belongs

You don't have to wait to post pictures. Here's how:
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t129-how-to-post-a-picture-located-on-your-computer

Here are the early pics I couldnt post due to my newbie status.

5/13 update: The Square foot garden is going great so far, granted it has only been in the ground a week, but it's on a roll. All of the squares except the pumpkin and carrots are showing fresh green shoots of life. This weekend I built and installed the full size trellis. It is 5 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and it is made out of 4 pieces of 18" steel rebar hammered in the ground, and 1/2" electrical conduit. The net I made out of a military grade spool of 100% cotton webbing (500 Yards) that the previous owner (Marine) of my house left behind when he moved out. I put in the horizontals first, then the verticals woven around them to provide the support from the top bar. Spacing is 6 inches for the most part (good thing the plants don't mind if my squares are not perfectly true).

Here are some pics:

First a couple wide shots of the new trellis in place.





Next is a close in shot, you can see the radishes are coming in like weeds just below the tomato plant, those things grow like crazy!



Finally, the tomato plant that we put in the ground is doing great. Even has two little fruits developing already. My wife is super excited about them.



All in all, things are going great. No more signs of critters in the area so for now I am going to let it be. Although I do plan on making some pepper/garlic spray, that is suppose to be very effective at detering pests of all kinds.

Looks great Madcapper! I don't think that one box will be enough for you I have 3 4x4s, and I want more, lol... It is addicting lol.. Keep us updated with pics.. Your garden is looking really good.

So another week has passed, for those keeping track, this is only the second full week I have had my garden planted. A few of the squares were planted with actual plants, those are pretty obvious at this point, but the squares I planted with seed are all coming in very nicely. Pics below: Another wide shot just to show how things are going. Wide shot from the front, if you compare this pic to last weeks picture you can see how great everything is doing, the tomato plant has grown 6 inches (the height of my trellis rows) the cucumbers next to that have grown about the same. As you can see on the right, the pumpkin and beans are growing great as well, significant growth all around. For side by side comparison, here is last weeks pic: And now this weeks: Here is the closer up view of all of the growth: And finally my tomato plant is fruiting like crazy, feels like we cheated a bit putting in such a big plant from the start, but really happy the way it is growing. We have a few plants that we planted from seed over a month ago in another area that are not near the size of this thing, guess I need to start the seeds inside sooner next year. Again, very happy with everything so far. I had some sign of bugs eating the leaves on my plants so we used a vegetable friendly insect/disease prevention powder (that is the white residue on the tomato plant, i hate the white residue). I really wanted to go more natural though so I made some garlic/pepper spray (that's what is in in the lowes spray bottle under the deck in the diagonal wide pic). It has 2 whole heads of garlic and a ton of cayenne blended in and strained. Made the house stink all day on Saturday, Mrs. Madcapper was not happy about that. It also makes the garden reek of garlic, but hopefully I can deter some pests without resorting to chemical warfare (although I did buy a liquid vegetable friendly chemical spray just in case). I will also wanted to add a side by side comparison in my first post here but it appears as though I cannot edit my original post.

Looks really nice and clean!

Madcapper you have done a GREAT job. NICE WORK

Lookin' really good.

Awesome job and I really like your adjustable grid.

bnoles wrote:Awesome job and I really like your adjustable grid.

Lol those two squares are only adjustable because I cut them, I guess I could make the whole thing adjustable, would have to think about that!

End of week 3.

Alright so another week has passed and I know you guys are ansty for your update on my garden this week. Sorry for the delay but the long weekend and a terribly busy home life relegates me to post only while I am at work where I have plenty of free time

So these pics were taken on a monday, rather than the usual saturday, so they had a couple extra days growth but as we can see from the first post in this thread, the growth is screaming right along. The tomatos are going crazy, I am very excited for them even though I dont even eat them, my wife loves them though so we arent growing them for nothing! Anyway without further ado, here are the pics for this week.

OK well the end of week 4 has come and the latest pics are in. Things are looking great in the square foot garden! Minimal insect damage to some plants, but nothing to worry about. I havent had any issues (knock on wood) with larger predators. My garden has a wire mesh underneath it and is in the back yard, privacy fenced. My neighbor across the street is having a problem with pests, they had some squash that were going to be ready later this week, but something ate them a day or two back, no privacy fence and no wire mesh under their garden. There are small tunnels in the garden box, so thinking maybe voles? I gave her some juicy fruit gum, which I have heard clogs up a voles digestive track and will kill them. Hopefully it works for them, and hopefully my luck continues.

The improvements this week are 2 worm tubes. They are made of 3 inch pvc with 1/2 inch holes drilled all through the tube in the area that is under ground. I saved two tubs of red worms from being drowned (do you think PETA will let me join? LOL). Put scraps and stuff in the top of the tube to feed the worms. Worm poop is great fertilizer and they aerate the soil. This is an alternative to composting. My wife has put her foot down, she does not want a stinky pile of "stuff" in the back yard, no matter how much I try to tell her it doesnt stink that much.

Here are this weeks pictures.

Looks great!! And I love that you painted the worm tubes red!!!

Looks great! Lucky for your wife she doesn't have to share wish my hubby didn't like tomatoes!

Thanks! I had a dream last night that something ate my tomato plant, I woke up like it was a nightmare! lol does that mean I am hooked for life?

Alright well week 5 ended this weekend and things are great except for one minor set back! I took the following pics on saturday and everything was looking great! On Sunday I was checking things out and my cucumber plant on the left, right next to the tomato plant had about the top half of it chopped off! Now, I did mow Sunday around noon, and I noticed the plant cut off around 5. I am pretty sure that I did not cut it off with the weed eater or mower, although there is a possibility that I did. The more I think about it sitting here, it seems odd that something would just chew through the stem and leave it all just hanging there, so maybe I did the damage myself. We do have a very large squirrel population but there was no other signs of damage, just a broken stem. I didn't get any pictures of the break though, maybe I will take some tonight when I get home.

I will be posting a few more pictures than usual this week because we are really starting to see some development in the garden other than just regular growth.

First is the usual wide shot, my tomato plant will be grown over the top of the trellis in about 3 more weeks, and I think I will just let it go over the top and drape down the back..open for input on that though.



This is the closer shot of all the growth.Sunday I saw a radish that had worked its way halfway out of the ground so i went ahead and harvested that. The first take from this garden for the year.



So I have 4 bean plants in the bottom right corner. They are suppose to be bush beans, but they are snaking up like vines. The two near the trellis are going up, so I staked the other two. The day after I staked them, one of them reached all the way over to the far stake and decided to climb up that, so its all pretty jumbled in there!



We have lots of tomatoes coming in. My wife is very eager for them to get to the point where we can pick them, many near the bottom have got to be pretty close to harvest.



These are the two cucumber plants, the left hand one is the one that got cut off, I think it will be ok though. Notice the flowers down in there. Should have some cucumbers on the vine here pretty soon!



Here is a closer shot of the pumpkin (center) and watermelon (left). They are starting to climb on the vine with minimal assistance from me, its amazing how fast their little grabbers will sprout and latch on to the trellis.




All in all a good week. Hope you guys enjoyed the update. More next week.

Looks awesome thanks for posting pictures its nice to watch how things grow for picture to picture!!

Madcapper I am glad I found your post. Im very new to all this my first ever SFG (this year) is a TT.

I am very interested in 2 things you did :-

1. Please talk me through your worm tubes. I understand the concept. However how did you decide on 3 inch diameter and why have they got a lid on them? Are there air holes in the lid? :scratch:

Thats a lovely shade of red. Have you used red for a particular reason, so you can see them easily or something.

2. Please explain how much pepper to garlic you used. I have a cat and fox problem here in my garden in the UK Do you think it will work on them?. How would I use it?

Im sorry for all my questions. But as my dear old Granny said. If you don't ask you will never know

Hey no worries, thats what we are here for right? Well first off, the worm tubes I got the idea for from this thread right here on this forum https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t1603-worm-tube-for-the-sfg

As for the color, well thats more of an orange than a red and the reason I chose that color is because my wife loves orange The reason for the cap is to prevent bugs and stuff from swarming in your tubes and there are no air holes. The thread I linked above has copious amounts of info for the tubes, I read the entire thing!

The garlic spray recipe I used is here http://www.insanechicken.com/blog/homemade-garden-pest-control-garlic-pepper-spray-recipe/

I think that the spray may help some with your cat and fox issues, its super easy and cheap to make so why not give it a shot? Word of advice, make it outside if you have any sensitive noses in the house, my wife was upset with me the entire afternoon because of the strong garlic smell!

Thank you so much for your help

I will put the ingredients on my shopping list