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We’ve been promising you guys this one for a while… and it’s finally here! Join us on the first part of our gardening adventure on today’s episode of Krocks In The Kitchen.
The Square Foot Gardening Method
When we decided to move out of the city, the first thing Brian started talking about was starting a garden. Neither of us really know anything about gardening (or building things), but we were determined to figure it out. You guys know I LOVE a plan, a check list, a guide, etc… and Square Foot Gardening came to the rescue!
So what exactly is Square Foot Gardening? Well, as the name suggests, it is based on growing plants within a grid of squares. Each square is one square foot – or 12 inches by 12 inches. You build a raised garden bed and add your soil (Mel’s Mix… more on that later) above the ground, instead of planting into the existing soil. There are many benefits of using this method, and you can learn more on their website.
Products & Resources
As you watch the video, keep in mind that you are seeing our very first attempt at building a garden and we didn’t really know what we were doing most of the time. 🙂 We learned a LOT along the way, and we will be sharing that in future videos.
That being said, I wanted to provide a list of everything we used in the video, in case there is something you want to try out in your own gardening efforts. We don’t necessarily recommend that you buy or use all of these products to build your garden, but this is what we used to start out.
Hopefully our upcoming videos will help you prepare for the spring gardening season ahead!
PLEASE NOTE: If you choose to purchase any products through our Amazon links, we receive a small commission from each sale at NO extra cost to you. All proceeds go back into making more content.
OFFICIAL SQUARE FOOT GARDENING RESOURCES:
Square Foot Gardening Book, 3rd Edition
Square Foot Gardening Online Course
PRODUCTS FEATURED IN THE VIDEO:
Oldcastle Planter Wall Blocks
2 in. x 6 in. x 8 ft. Premium S4S Cedar Lumber
ARROW 508 Genuine T50 1/2-Inch Staples
ARROW PowerShot 5700 Forward Action Staple Gun
Hardware Cloth 1/2 inch 19 Gauge Square (4 ft. tall)
Vigoro 3 ft. x 24 ft. 100% Natural Burlap Landscape Fabric
U-Post 5-Foot Fence Posts
Rubber Mallet w/ Wooden Handle
Nature’s Care Really Good Compost
ULINE Vermiculite (Grade 4)
Miracle-Gro Sphagnum Peat Moss, 8 qt.
Lambert Sphagnum Peat Moss, 3.8 cubic ft.
DIGZ High Performance Women’s Gardening Work Gloves
5 Gallon Bucket (3-Pack)
All Purpose Poly Tarp, 12 x 14-Foot, Blue
AVON Skin-So-Soft Bug Guard Plus
Neutrogena Oil Free Facial Moisturizer with SPF 35 Sunscreen
Check out our Amazon Page to see more of our favorite products!
Getting Started
Unfortunately we moved at the end of June, so by the time we got started with our garden, it was already July here in St. Louis. Even though we knew we’d miss the start of the season and likely wouldn’t have a super large bounty of crops, we wanted to dig right in with some trial and error. And oh boy, did we ever experience trial and error. 😳
We knew we wanted to following the Square Foot Gardening method using raised beds, but with all of the moving, we hadn’t really had time to do any research. We just knew we needed a square garden bed with a lattice to mark off every square foot. With those basics in mind, we set off on our grand adventure!
Since we were so late in the season, we hit up a few local nurseries in the area in search of some plants that were already growing. We would have preferred to start from seeds, but we had a lot of time to catch up for! The pickings were a bit slim, but ultimately, we found plenty of plants.
After we bought some plants, we headed over to The Home Depot for a few building supplies. Brian had been researching what he calls “castle stones,” which are concrete blocks that fit together with the wood kind of like a Lego set. It seemed easy enough to assemble, so we decided to go that route.
We also picked up some compost, peat moss, fencing, and a few other supplies.
For the wood, we chose untreated cedar. According to our research, cedar is best to use for raised bed gardens because it offers natural resistance to rot and insects.
Once we got the supplies home, I realized just how much we had no clue what we were doing. I immediately ordered the official Square Foot Gardening book to help answer the million questions that kept popping up. I also enrolled in an online course through the Square Foot Gardening Foundation.
Building Our Box
The first thing we realized was that the placement of our cedar in the “castle stones” Brian picked out would actually make our grid a bit larger than 4×4 square feet. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you are trying to follow along with a guide that bases EVERYTHING on it being 4×4, it does end up throwing a lot of things off.
No big deal though. We pressed ahead and set out to build our raised beds!
Our wood was cut for us at Home Depot, so putting the actual framework together was super easy.
Everything snapped together quite nicely and we thought we were off to a GREAT start!
Brian was concerned about critters getting into our garden, so we decided to add a few extra layers of protection.
We lined the bottom of the box with some hardware cloth that we had bought to make a fence around the garden. In case you didn’t know – hardware cloth is not actually cloth at all – it is made of metal.
We stapled it all along the bottom. Unfortunately, since are box was a bit larger than 4×4 feet with the castle stones in place, it didn’t cover the entire bottom, but it was close enough! 😀
Side note – the red staple gun you are seeing in these photos was awful and did not work and it was super frustrating. We promptly upgraded to this new staple gun that you’ll see in the next video.
Once the hardware cloth was stapled to the wood, we had to flip everything and rebuild it so that the hardware cloth was protecting the bottom of the garden.
We didn’t stop there! We also added a layer of burlap to help with any weeds that might pop through. We debated if this was actually necessary, but it seemed to work pretty well in the end.
And there you have it – one 4×4-ish box! We were so proud! 🤩
We were originally planning to create ONE 4×4 foot grid and make it 12 inches deep. However, after researching a bit more, we discovered that you really only need 6 inches of depth for most crops. For things like carrots or potatoes that need some extra depth to grow, they actually recommend that you build UP on a few squares of your garden using what they call a “top hat.”
After much back and forth, we ultimately decided to separate it out into TWO beds (each approximately 4×4 feet and 6 inches tall). This also gave us a lot more space for the crazy number of plants we had accumulated. Luckily we had plenty of supplies to add the extra bed.
Making Mel’s Mix
Up next, it was time to make our soil! The Square Foot Gardening method recommends that you use what is called “Mel’s Mix,” named after the inventor of this method of gardening – Mel Bartholomew.
Mel’s Mix is comprised of equal parts compost, coarse vermiculite and peat moss. Again, check out their book to learn more about why they use this special blend.
For the compost, they recommend that you make your own, but obviously we had no idea how to do that (yet – stay tuned), so we bought some organic compost at Home Depot.
I had never heard of vermiculite before – let alone “coarse vermiculite.” Apparently there are several different “grades” of it. We purchased these GIANT bags from ULINE. The shipping is kind of pricey, but it’s worth it!
I loved how shiny and gold it was!
The third ingredient is Peef moss – er… PEAT MOSS!
We used a tarp to mix it in (several) batches and transferred it to our raised beds!
Eventually we ended up with these two lovely boxes full of Mel’s Mix ready for all of our plants!
Next Time On Krocks In The Garden…
Thank you for joining us for part one of our gardening adventure! We hope you’ll join us next time as we finish planning out the garden and actually PLANT STUFF! We are also hoping to create a lot more content around our gardening efforts, so please watch the video here and be sure to comment and let us know what else you’d like to see.
See you next time!
I watched the video and loved it. You both made it look fun and easy. I want to try this type of gardening next year. I have never heard of the soil mixture so I want to learn about that. I love how Peef was there throughout the process. Where in the world did you find the Home Depot smock? The pups look like they are just loving life at the new place. Glad you guys included them in the video.
Thank you! Haha – the Home Depot smock for Peef was from a gift card they sell there 🙂