Square Foot Gardening A Chain Link Fence

I have about 200' of chain link fence and would like to get some ideals on using it for square foot gardening. It would be helpful to see pictures to go along with the ideal.

We have one 50-foot run of chain-length fence that we have used for many years. It is our original Square Foot Gardening plot that is 50 feet long and 2 feet wide.

For years, we have used the 6-foot tall fence as our trellising for vertical growing. We loosely tie yarn around the lengths so that the plants can grow without being stressed by the yarn. It has consistently been our best growing area. If you get hold of Mel's first book, and you want to do more work than the newer method requires, I endorse the original method. To me, there is something about working with real Earth, and I feel better getting real dirt on my feet. Of course, we have about 18 inches of compost in that 100 SF.

I have pictures, but I do not have an online site for my pictures, since I do not have a flickr account or similar nor a facebook or similar account. It's not much to see, just a 50-foot fence with improved soil spreading out about 28 inches and old red bricks slightly buried as an edge.

Hardcoir wrote:
I have pictures, but I do not have an online site for my pictures, since I do not have a flickr account or similar nor a facebook or similar account. It's not much to see, just a 50-foot fence with improved soil spreading out about 28 inches and old red bricks slightly buried as an edge.

I'd love to see your pictures. You don't need to have a flickr or facebook to add photos. If you go to the home page, find the forum that says "how to..." and go to it. At the very bottom, the last message describes how to upload photos from your computer. It really is pretty simple to learn.

We have fencing in our comm garden specifically for our sugar snap peas. Its ideal for us. Just run a foot wide soil bed along both sides of the fence and you have a great place to grow sugar peas or pole beans..

Hardcoir wrote:We have one 50-foot run of chain-length fence that we have used for many years. It is our original Square Foot Gardening plot that is 50 feet long and 2 feet wide.

For years, we have used the 6-foot tall fence as our trellising for vertical growing. We loosely tie yarn around the lengths so that the plants can grow without being stressed by the yarn. It has consistently been our best growing area. If you get hold of Mel's first book, and you want to do more work than the newer method requires, I endorse the original method. To me, there is something about working with real Earth, and I feel better getting real dirt on my feet. Of course, we have about 18 inches of compost in that 100 SF.

I have pictures, but I do not have an online site for my pictures, since I do not have a flickr account or similar nor a facebook or similar account. It's not much to see, just a 50-foot fence with improved soil spreading out about 28 inches and old red bricks slightly buried as an edge.

Please do upload your pictures

quiltbea wrote:We have fencing in our comm garden specifically for our sugar snap peas. Its ideal for us. Just run a foot wide soil bed along both sides of the fence and you have a great place to grow sugar peas or pole beans..

Thank You so much quiltbea for adding the pictures

I used my wife's social site to try to upload pictures showing our fence and some of its use.

In this first picture, if it is there, is what it looked like in early April of 2011. What you see is the original Square Foot Garden Book method with about 12-15 inches of compost topped with shredded newspaper mulch. The containers have Mel's Mix for the first time, since this is just after I bought the new book. The chicken wire is there mostly to keep out 2-legged pests and not 4-legged. Our mower man tended to slice plants with his weedeater.



The next picture is our first year experiment with growing potatoes in black plastic trash bags. It was both a success and a failure. The success: we harvested over 200 potatoes that fall. The failure: we gained over 20 pounds eating them. Potatoes are no longer something we grow. We stick with nutrient-dense vegetables.



Here was my little helper in 2011. He or she was our number one organic pest control mechanism. He/She was just over 5 feet long and was a Connoisseur of Hasenpfeffer. We had no rabbit problems that year.

yikes! I prefer my outdoor kitties that I acquired last fall. They've done a great job with the mice. I'm hoping they will keep the bunnies away and the chipmunks, too. We've been overrun with chipmunks and I'm tired of them tearing up the yard.

Hardcoir....I've got one of those living in my garden, mostly among the bags of fall leaves that are broken open. I love seeing him skitter away when I go out to add to the nearby compost pile. He's a handsome fellow.

Thanks for tips and for posting the pictures.
Anyone have ideals for attaching sfg planters to the chain part of the fence and how to attach them?

We called him/her "Ribbon," and we came to believe that he/she actually knew us. When I worked in the garden, he/she popped his/her head up and would watch.

Since our snake's departure to the woods, the rabbits have come back. We have two large rabbits, and they act like they are just waiting for the squares to be filled.