Building the square foot garden

Sara Jo and I have been so excited to start a garden since we bought our house last summer.  After much reading, we’ve settled on doing a square foot garden.  For those of you who don’t know about Mel Bartholomew’s awesome garden design, the idea is you create raised beds no more than 4 feet wide and fill them with “Mel’s Mix”.  The mix is 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 various composts.

Our wonderful neighbor Thayne (owner of The Best Handyman Services in Salt Lake City) was gracious enough to drive me to IFA on Saturday and let me load up 56 cu ft of vermiculite, 56 cu ft of peat moss, and about 30 cu ft of compost in his truck and trailer.  Their compost prices weren’t the best, so I bought 10 cu ft each of some of their two cheaper compost varieties, and am planning to get 2 more varieties from Home Depot to make a total of 168 cu ft of soil.

Somehow we managed to fit all the wood into our Hyundai Sonata, a four-door sedan.  Sara (39 weeks pregnant!) thought we were going to die, so we drove home very slowly.

Today I got off work a bit early in the day, and about 3 cordless drill batteries later, we had put 3 boxes together, and removed the old, creaking, dangerous patio steps on the garden side.  As the light faded, we cut the PVC pipe for the drip system and put all the attachments on (no glue yet though).

Next steps are:

1. Glue the PVC
2. Dig the trenches
3. Place the piping
4. Lay down the weed fabric
5. Mix soil
6. Fill boxes
7. Lay out drip system
8. Place wood lathes every foot to create organizational grid