Madison, Georgia

Hi all. I did not know anything about square foot gardening until last month. My house is on a 1/8 acre lot so my backyard is only 24'x64' of which part is taken up by the porch and the stairs. I was looking to do some kind of container garden look with it and stumbled across SFG. I was really intrigued by Mel's method. I ordered the book from Amazon and finished it in 2 days. As many others have said, finding the ingredients for Mel's mix was the hardest part. I used coarse vermiculite, sphagnum moss and compost of equal parts cow manure, hen manure, worm castings, mushroom compost and ecoscraps fruit/vegetable compost. I have built my first 6, 4'x4' boxes mixed up my soil, loaded the boxes, laid my grid down and planned out my planting. I got my late summer/fall seed in the ground over the last 3 days, so now I am getting to work on my vertical and horizontal trellis. I believe that eventually my 96 sq ft can be expanded to about 400 sq ft. I really appreciate all the tips you experienced gardeners provide.

Cofer's Home & Garden in Athen's Ga. has about 20 bags of  Mel's mix in stock for $26 per 2 cu. ft. bag.

Pike Nurseries all around Atlanta have coarse vermiculite.

Welcome macthknife.  Glad to see another Ga gardener here.  I started in the fall of 2011 with one test 4 x 4 and I have kept expanding from there.  Tellising is the answer.  I have used nylon netting but will switch to cattle panels when the nylon wears out.

Hi macthknife.  I live about an hour from you in the Buford area.  Welcome!

Matchknife,  Welcome to the Forum from California!      My backyard is just half of yours, 60 x 13', but I have neighbors' trees preventing using the footage to full advantage.  Congrats on finding the ingredients to make your own Mix.  Most find it better than commercially bagged ready mix.  Please post photos of your garden.  We love photos!!   

Wow!    Very nice!   

What a wonderfully nice neat space (and look). It's going to be a pleasure to garden in there!

I foresee ... trellises in your future ...

macthknife, everything looks beautiful! Happy planting!

The hard part is over, building....now the fun begins with planting and harvesting!

congrats    Macthknife your garden area looks beautiful!!

happy gardening
rose

That REALLY looks great!

Nice to have you here mactheknife.  Welcome!  It's nice to have another southerner with us.  This is a great forum.  I've learned a lot here.  I had some missteps, but folks here always help with good advice.

Here are a few pictures a couple of months down the line including the addition of a couple of trellis boxes, a couple of motion control sprinklers and animal netting to control chipmunks and squirrels...

Nicely done! How much have you been able to harvest so far? If I remember right you started late July? Keep up the great work.

Bush beans are being harvested now in force. Everything else is in process. Seed potatoes and leeks just went in a few weeks ago. My winter squash is going up the trellis and flowering, so I may see more activity there directly. I had to do quite a bit of re-planting because of squirrels/chipmunks digging in the beds for seeds, and coming up with an effective method for dealing with them has been my biggest year 1 problem thus far. I just sprouted a big bunch of mixed colors of chard to pair with pansies for winter pots for my back deck and the front porch. It has been a learning process, but a fun and satisfying one.

Wonderfully neat and pretty. Glad you're having fun. You should be able to get a substantial amount of produce out of all those squares if you can keep the critters at bay.

The best tool I've heard of to take care of ground creatures is a sprinkler that has a movement sensor and shoots water at anything that gets in the zone you set it up to cover. I've heard really good results from it but can't remember the name. Maybe someone else will chime in with the info?

Oh those are nice, Mac!  Is the black pipe conduit?  Mine is silver.  Did you paint yours or did it come that way?

CC

Mac,  Gorgeous! Thank you for sharing photo.

Beautiful!  I love seeing pictures of other peoples gardens.  It's so inspiring and I get lots of new ideas.  I noticed the trellis netting across the top of each box.  I assume this is to support taller plants.  Does this make it difficult to work in the beds?  I considered doing that with my determinate Roma tomatoes

Mac, it looks terrific!  Congratulations!