Step 2 - Go Big or Go Home (Gathering Supplies)

The point of Square Foot Gardening* is to grow a lot of food in a small space. That's a great concept for normal people, but let's not kid ourselves - nobody has ever accused my family of being normal. When you're trying to feed seven people (six males), a couple of 4'x4' boxes just isn't going to cut it. So we always go big.

Here is a list of supplies we need to gather:

• landscaping fabric (to reduce the number of weeds)
• wood (to keep in the dirt - this isn't rocket science)
• stain (to protect the wood so hopefully the boxes will last longer than a couple of years)
• braces (If you're doing normal-sized boxes, these are not necessary, but since we have 22' and 28' sections that we're joining together, we need something to stabilize them.)
• screws (How else are you going to hold the boxes together?)
• conduit and netting (vertical frames for vine plants)
• soil (This is going to get an entire post to itself...aren't you excited??)
• stones (walkways)
• plants (We haven't gotten set up to do everything from seeds yet.)

Easy in theory, but time-consuming in reality. No one place has everything we need, so there's extra running for that. Factor in the fact that we didn't do enough research and had to rework some of our lumber needs (shocking, I know), and you have, in me, a person who is very thankful that this only needs to be done once. One more time, I mean. Did I mention we've been down this road before? One LAST time. This is the last time I'm doing this, I swear.

Once we got our lumber delivery, we put it in a very rough layout to see approximately what it will look like:

Future garden or Level 1 of the latest game craze?

After the kids got done using it to chase each other around the boards, I started feeling a lot more confident that this is going to look pretty close to what I had been picturing. Well, I'm also picturing landscaping and a patio, but one step at a time, right?

We're still in the process of gathering everything needed, but we've gotten enough of it that we can get the main structures assembled. Weekends seem to be the only time we can really work on it, so this is all taking longer than I had imagined, but I think it's going to be well worth the effort. And if we're late getting the plants in again this year (which we are), it gives me an excuse to run around like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and say, "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!"


*Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew can be found wherever fine books are sold...or wherever any books are sold for that matter.

Step 1 - It's Not Too Late to Turn Back (Planning)

Putting a raised bed garden together should be pretty simple and straightforward, right? I mean, you just build a few boxes, throw some dirt in, plant your stuff, and watch it grow. HA! Things are never that simple. When planning the layout, composition, and general purpose of your garden with the input of other people, it can be helpful to be speaking the same language - and even if you use the same words, it doesn't always mean you're speaking the same language.

I swear there were times throughout the planning process that my husband and I were talking about the exact same things but had no clue what the other was saying. Ever feel like you're stuck in the middle of Abbott and Costello's 'Who's on First' skit? Yeah, that was us.

I blame it on him being a computer geek. He likes abstract thinking and loves to design everything on the computer. I'm completely old school and figure it's easier to spend 15 minutes drawing the design on a piece of paper than to spend 3 hours trying to get the dimensions right on a computer program I don't understand. That, and computers hate me. But that's a discussion for another day.

So the shape of the garden was not hard to figure out. Since we've had such a long history of trial-and-error (they're learning experiences, ok?), we pretty much knew what we wanted this time around. We're going to have three 4'x12' boxes in the center with a border of 2' wide boxes surrounding them. Outside of that border, we're going to have a fence (two fences actually, but I'll get into that later) which we're planning on dressing up with flowers, etc.

The details will always get you though. How deep do you want the boxes? Where exactly do you want the whole thing positioned? What are you going to use to fill in the walkways? What color are you going to stain the wood?? These and many other pressing questions (maybe just for me) need to be worked out, and just when you think you've nailed something down, someone thinks of another detail, and it all needs to be reworked.

We really thought it would be simple and the majority of the thinking would be done within a couple of hours in one night. With our *vast* experience, we should have known better.