Organic Gardening for Health & Happiness

The pace of life is increasing, so if I’m ever going to share about our gardening adventure for this year, I’d better do it now.

Two years ago it was a disastrous vegetable garden. Nothing did much of anything. But then, I didn’t do too well either. Bill passed away in the spring and I was running crazy, trying to be superwoman, doing the work of two people, absolutely driven. Heart broken, the days and nights had slipped into another dimension. Once midnight passed, time ceased to matter, and memories and torchlight flickering gathered me in their comforting arms. All the shrubs and trees planted in Bill’s memory survived – a million buckets of water that summer. But the vegetable garden gave up the ghost, so last year I declared it a sabbatical year of rest to recover. Perhaps for us both. (Do I really know what rest is? Still working on that.)

Time does heal, I suppose. So this year I was ready to try again – but ready for something new. Square Foot Gardening – several friends had been reading up on it – so we decided to give it a whirl. Totally organic. Raised beds. Forget renting a tiller and ploughing and weeding. Forget the long row crops more suited to a farm. Think small, compact, individual squares with a different crop in each square foot. Grow only what you can eat. Intersperse the vegetables with flowers and herbs – both for pest control and beauty. Sounded like fun.

Julie got the jump on the whole process. Bought the book and determined to follow it precisely. We all need a little structure in our lives, so three of us launched in with both feet – literally!

While Scott scrounged scraps of wood and began cutting them to make our 4 ft x 4ft boxes out of 2 x 6s, we girls headed to the horse barn for a truck load of horse manure.

Great exercise! Was this really part of the plan? I’d already driven to Springfield to load by hand a pile of leaf litter that had been composting in a friend’s back yard for two years. This was getting to be a lot of hard work!

The recipe called for equal parts vermiculite, peat moss, and a mixture of 5 types of compost. Technically, we had 3 types and figured that would work. Back at the DeVos ranch, we spread a tarpaulin in the back of my truck, and began mixing. This was a lot easier than shoveling horse manure, and before long we each had our load to fill three boxes. Then came the grids, using thin strips of wood to divide each box into one foot squares.

It turned into a two-day process to finish it. Before you put the soil mix in the box, you have to spread out thick layers of newspapers or cardboard on the ground to kill the weeds and grass, then wet it down. Finally fill the 4ft x 4ft box with the soil mix. And voila! You are ready to plant!

The idea is to put a different crop or individual plant in each square foot, determined by the recommended planting spaces. For example, in a square foot you could put one pepper plant, or 4 lettuce, or 9 beets, or 16 spring onions. The fun was interspersing herbs and flowers for color and variety. It’s optional, but I also stopped by a bait shop and bought several little tubs of worms to add to each planting box.

I got a little creative, and made a long 2ft x 8ft box for tomatoes and zucchinis, and 3 diamond shaped boxes for rhubarb and cucumbers. Peas, beans, and tomatoes are all encouraged to grow up trellises. My peas are a mixture of sugar snaps and Sweet Peas. Metal conduit is used to make the trellis, and mounted over the top of 18 inch lengths of re-bar hammered into the ground for stability. Plastic netting can be strung across the framework to complete the trellis. I had to cut the 2 inch x 2 inch squares to make the grid big enough to train beans and tomatoes. The biggest challenge is to recycle whatever you can, and only buy what you absolutely have to.

The good thing about this soil mix is that it’s inherently loaded with nutrients, and drains perfectly. Even in a flood! Grass clippings make great mulch to keep the moisture in for the summer and reduce the need for watering somewhat. They recommend you place a bucket of water beside each bed for daily watering. It will be sun-warmed and the chlorine will dissipate. Here in Tennessee we get so many thunderstorms, God really helps with the watering. He’s so considerate!

Julie’s garden got a real setback with Nashville’s devastating floods– their whole property went more than 4ft under (including the house & barn). When the flood waters receded, two of her garden frames had floated away, but, to our astonishment, the soil mix was still firmly in its original shape! Still waiting on some soil testing to determine whether she can replant, or if the whole thing has to be torn out because of toxic residue from the flood. While I think of it, the latest report on the flood aftermath on tonight’s local TV news says no new flood insurance is being issued at present to any properties in the Nashville area because Congress has been in recess and thus has jammed any provisions for new federal flood insurance policies. This also means mortgages that mandate flood insurance as part of their requirements are also on hold. Unbelievable!

However, better keep my cool, and focus on the matter at hand. Gardening is a perfect tonic for that. Let me share the words on the garden plaque we inherited from Bill’s Mom, that has graced our garden here for many years.

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.”

You can see by the pictures what fun this has been! Weeding is very minimal. Once a crop has finished, you are ready to plant something else in the square foot space. And the easy part in the beginning is simply planting one square at a time. The perfect way to plan spring, summer and fall crops. Bite-sized pieces to deal with. Each square almost becomes a mini garden. You find yourself developing an intimate relationship with each little planting.

We have a wedding here at Ghost Gums on the Ridge on July 3rd, and the square foot garden is already an attractive feature with a charm of its own, demanding a lot less maintenance than the standard vegetable garden. Totally organic, and healthy too! I leave for Italy in one week’s time, leaving everything in the capable hands of the groom-to-be (Skylar, who is also my housesitter). Confident that it will be more of a pleasure than a chore to nurture our new style of vegetable garden. Feel free to post your personal gardening stories here to share with us all!