Introducing myself

Hello Everyone,

My name is Darla Jones. I moved to southern Utah last spring and built our new and final home. My husband retired from the Army in October and now makes sewer and sprinkler pipe to help pay the bills. We still have four of our six children at home and this new house so there are plenty of bills. We spent the previous 25 years moving around the world. Everywhere we lived I tried to plant a garden. I learned a lot along the way but had to re-invent the wheel so to speak almost every move. I didn't learn about SFG till two moves ago but have been trying to make it work ever since. It has been a challenge since we went from living in southern Germany to western Africa in those two moves. Now that we are settled in our permanent home I am trying to set up a permanent garden. There is still a bit of a learning curve for me so I will probably be asking lots of questions here. I'm glad there is a community of folks I can refer to. See you on the forum!

Darla....Firstly I want to thank your husband for his service to our country and yours and your family for being there for him thru all the moving and worrying turmoil.  Its good to have you and your family back and retired and safe.

Gardening SFG is a wonderful experience.  You can maintain gardens better in raised beds, just be sure to locate them where they get around 8 hrs of sunlight a day.  I suggest making your beds only 3 feet across so you can reach all the corners easier.   
From there you can find out what grows best and when in your particular area and grow what your family loves to eat.
I'm thinking you'll have a shorter season much like I do which is good in many ways because growing cool-weather crops is easier, and usually twice a year, before and after the warm-weather crops.
Have a grand time getting your garden up and growing!  Good Luck!

Welcome to our little world where there are dozens of gardens of Eden.  My wife and I have been in your shoes before, where we left an incredible garden to the people that bought our house in Colorado and hopefully kept it organic and SFG.

Of course, when you move to a new residence, your desire is to start  immediately with the same size garden or even bigger than what you had before.

That can be very costly.  The first year, you have to buy all the Vermiculite, Peat or Coconut Coir, and all the sources of compost, since you do not have appreciable compost made yet.

We were strapped for funds that first year, and this was before the new SFG, so the issue with us was digging a foot deep and improving the soil as the original method mandated.

If I were starting over with a first year garden, I would make one or two raised bed SFG squares and then try something like Lasagna gardening or the new hot trend of using decaying wood with other items in a raised hugelkultur bed and use SFG spacings like this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sso4UWObxXg

Welcome Darla!

Did you find out about any new and interesting plants during your stays in Southern Germany and West Africa? Any that you might one day grow in your new home in Utah?

Oh,and Germans eat borage sometimes ... did you ever try that?

I hope you find a way of SFG gardening that suits you. If I had my dream garden it would be all raised beds so I wouldn't have to do stoop labor, which only gets harder on the knees, hips, and back every year as we age. Plus we have such a big problem with moles and voles and rabbits here too. But that is much more expensive than beds placed right on top of your lawn. That's why they call it a dream!

Good luck, and I'd guess that with the desert sun, you may soon be asking people about shading crops to prevent sunburn and excessive moisture loss. Sanderson does that, as does capecoddess. Maybe you can check some of their pictures on various threads or ask them for help should shade screens be something that sounds interesting to you.

Darla  
from Kelejan  
in British Columbia, the Province just above you in Utah.  You will find that you will have four seasons very much like us; a short spring and fall, a long  summer and winter and generally lots of snow and cold.

Hi, Darla In Facebook, you had a question regarding drip irrigation. You can post your question and photos here:
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t18962p16-drip-irrigation-for-sfg?highlight=Drip+irrigation

Welcome Darla! You've come to a good spot. Everyone here is helpful and friendly. Happy gardening!

Welcome from the Florida Treasure Coast. Loads of great info to be found here.

Hi Darla.  Welcome from Atlanta, GA!

Please also accept my thanks to your family for your service to our country.  My hubby was also in the Army and spent time in Germany in the Munich area.

I agree w/ Marc about the no-bend dream garden.     But not there yet...