New SFG in Northern Wisconsin...

Hello Everyone. Here is the begining of our SFG. We are excited to see how well this system works. Looking at everyone's pictures and postings has really helped us make a plan and put it into action. We have to show you our before picture. Allot of work went into bringing the sunshine to our back yard. We had three huge evergreens and lots of arborvitae's.



Here is our blank slate... We put the fence up last fall, it still needs a paint job.



Here we are setting out one of the boxes...



All but one box built...



Tonight we finished the hoops and most of the planting. We are a little over two weeks away form our last frost date so a few plants are vacationing in my wifes scrapbook room, receiving a tan



Here are a few of them...



Here are the strawberries. We are starting with one plant and will allow the sisters to take until we have four per square. Once full, we will have 272 plants....



Here are a few cold crop transplants and garlic. We are a bit behind but we are hoping things will catch up.



This is our carrot box. We are staggering our plantings and only planting 6 squares at a time. We are also mixing in some radishes in between...



We have to show you our Mel's Mix watch dog... Daisy



And her side kick... Buddy



This is what the fence will look like once painted.... as you can see we love flower gardens also....





Well, putting on the row cover was the last thing we did tonight... We have MM to put together for our tomatoe beds and a few other things to complete. I will try to make a tie down system for the row covers to clean that up a bit. We hope you enjoyed our start and look we look forward sharing more "veggie tales" in the future...

Veggie Tales

Just wonderful. Love watching gardens made from scratch and following their progress.

Do you have any moles or voles?

Kelejan wrote:Just wonderful. Love watching gardens made from scratch and following their progress.

Do you have any moles or voles?

Living in town we don't usually see much for moles or voles. Our nemesis would be a group of raccoon’s that use our cities storm drains as an evening snack-a-thon. We do get the occasional black bear in the neighborhood also. Deer can be a nuisance but we don’t see them too much in our area of town.

Your garden is coming along very nicely! I look forward to watching your progress.

looks great!

thanks for sharing the pics with us....cant wait to see more as your garden grows!

hugs

rose

Your garden looks fantastic.

jdnetone

You've made terrifc progress. I love seeing your photos. Keep up the good work.

Simply beautiful. Can't wait to see how it looks mid summer!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lookin' GOOD!

GG

Wow that looks WAY cool! How many feet do you have? It looks huge! I really like your covers. I have pipe brackets on the north end of a couple of my boxes for trellis and may just add them on the south end too so I can easily cover! Great looking garden!

Wow it looks way AWESOME!!! Way to go!

That looks outstanding! I was wiped out after mixing up Mel's Mix for two 4x4 boxes, but I see you have some good helpers. That is impressive. I love my trees in my yard, but I am finding myself more and more envious of backyards that wide open and sunny.

kstephens wrote:That looks outstanding! I was wiped out after mixing up Mel's Mix for two 4x4 boxes, but I see you have some good helpers. That is impressive. I love my trees in my yard, but I am finding myself more and more envious of backyards that wide open and sunny.

Yes! that is such a great garden! and I am w/ you on the wide open space...I have a garden at my boyfriend's house because he has plenty of land.

Love the layout...and plant some borage and/or lemon balm...bees and butterflies love it. i just bought some seed and will be starting mine.


LOVE THOSE PICS!

why kind of wood did you use for your sfg?

Looks great. I put a fence around the garden this year to keep the deer out, hopefully next year I'll get my boxes built.

darci.strutt wrote:Wow that looks WAY cool! How many feet do you have? It looks huge! I really like your covers. I have pipe brackets on the north end of a couple of my boxes for trellis and may just add them on the south end too so I can easily cover! Great looking garden!

We have just a little over 300 square feet.... I do allot of canning and freezing. Hoping all our heirloom varieties produce well, this is the first time using heirlooms. We love the row covers especially being so far up north our seasons are a bit short. Good luck with your row covers.

michellentn wrote:why kind of wood did you use for your sfg?

We used non treated construction lumber..... we should get 5-6 years out of it if not more (crossing fingers and toe's). Happy Gardening!!!

Well it's been a long time since we have posted any updates. We had some flooding in our area and our basement received about eight inches of water so our focus has been on cleanup and demolition. I would say poor Duluth got hit allot harder....

Now for the good news. When we checked out our garden after the rain it looked like a pond... the water was about six inches up the side of our boxes, so we tested the "you can't over water Mel's mix" and it passed with flying colors.... Had it been our normal clay around here it would have taken forever for the plants to dry out.

Here are some pics of our garden as of this evening. I know it may seem like we are behind but you have to remember our last frost date up here is into the early part of June. Also we had a cutworm battle so we had to replant our beans, cucumbers and many others.

So here we are....



We did get a portion of the fence painted before the tomatoes took over....



Our Carrot patch...



Our peppers, eggplant, basil and onions....



Some cabbage showing off of few cutworm scars. Only about 1/2 of our broccoli and cabbage made it....



Out tomatoes are doing VERY well....











Some Peppers





And our beans are finally doing well....



At the last minute we decided to go ahead and try some squash and melons so we cut up those concrete tubes and made mini-boxes full of MM. They seem to like it...



Also we used the MM in our potato bags....

We should be seeing allot of Cucumbers also....



Sorry for having so many pictures... They add up quickly.

Happy gardening everyone


Veggie Tales

A Stunning accomplishment and a flood to deal with on top of it?
Magnificent results and Congratulations! My guess is you have a strong gardening background to be able to jump in so fast and furiously with so much success?? Whew!

wow!! stunning garden! niiiice job!!

Love all the pics. Seeing what others do helps us all out. Looks like you are having a good season.

I grew some squash like you are this year as well. Worked real good.

CharlesB wrote:Love all the pics. Seeing what others do helps us all out. Looks like you are having a good season.

+1

llama momma wrote:A Stunning accomplishment and a flood to deal with on top of it?
Magnificent results and Congratulations! My guess is you have a strong gardening background to be able to jump in so fast and furiously with so much success?? Whew!

Well this is only our second year working w/ veggies. Last year we attempted row gardening at our local community garden. We did pretty well, but the Square Foot Gardening is really working nicely. We really can't take the credit as all of our info came from Mel's book, and this forum. The only other research came from our local extension on what each type of plant likes in our own climate. The rest is from all of the great posts you all write here, so thanks again for everyone’s help!!!!!

Veggie Tales

You are doing wondefully well. Have your neighbours made any nice comments. Such as "I am envious."?
Never say sorry for posting too many pictures. We love them.

Yes... The neighbors have taken notice. One had to stop us one evening and talk about our tomato "trees". It has been fun educating them about the square foot garden approach. We have since set up two boxes for my parents and others have borrowed our book. We are loving it!!!!

Veggie Tales