GardenDesk

Raised Beds and a Garden Journal are Better; Back to the Basics!

We recently came across this picture from 1998 of our adorable daughters enjoying their pool.

It made me smile like all of our old pictures of them do. The added bonus to this picture however, is that you can see our raised bed garden in the background! Back then the vegetable garden was manageable and fun for the whole family. Last year we switched to a large farm style row garden and it WAS NOT fun for the family. We got a large harvest but the weeds got so out of control that my wife and daughters wouldn't even go out there. It looked terrible!

The other cool thing about our old square foot gardening gardens were that they were small enough to be mapped out in my garden journal. Here is the map of the exact garden seen in the first picture:

It is recorded in my favorite book, A Gardener's Journal: A Ten Year Chronicle of Your Garden which was a Christmas present from my wife in 1997. In it you can track your garden's progress every day for 10 years! I used it faithfully for two or three years but I wish I had all 10 years filled out. If so, my garden would have been much more successful! Here is what the outside looks like (I've been looking at it along with my new 2014 garden catalogs!)

It's a fantastic reference because it has designated places for you to record lots of things about your gardens; layout maps, notes, weather, planting and harvest records, perennial gardens, pest and disease control and more.

I'm looking forward to using it again this year. The first thing I'm going to do is draw a new garden layout with raised beds like in the picture of my swimming little girls. I have much to consider. How large of beds? How many? Made from what materials? What will we grow in them and how much? These are great things to ponder during this cold winter.

Hopefully going back to the basics with only a small number of raised beds and using the Garden Journal again will give us a new start and a garden that the whole family will enjoy!

Square Foot Gardening Book Converts Another Gardener!

Mel Bartholomew has been showing people how to grow more vegetables in less space for over 25 years now. His square foot gardening techniques are so much easier than traditional row gardening. Every year, more gardeners are opting to leave their row gardens behind to start square foot gardening in raised beds.

I'm happy to report that one such convert is my next door neighbor Jerry.

Jerry used to raise a large row garden but hasn't grown one for years.
He came across Bartholomew's book, All New Square Foot Gardening listed as one of the best gardening books on my "Eight Invaluable Gardening Books" page here on Garden Desk. (Thanks for stopping by the site Jerry!)

He bought the book and followed its instructions so well that Mel himself would be proud.

I took these pictures back on Memorial Day weekend when I got to visit him while he was finishing up planting his three 4x4' beds. I haven't been over there since, but even from my garden I can tell that his plants are much bigger now. I will have to show you an update pretty soon if Jerry will let me. It's not far from my garden. You can see it and my greenhouse in the background of this picture.

Jerry said he really likes gardening this way so far, and I am excited to see his progress throughout the season. I hope square foot gardening works really well for him.

What a difference a book like Mel Barthlomew's All New Square Foot Gardening can make.