Our Very First Square Foot Garden

This past spring I decided to try and do a legit little garden for my family to enjoy. I have so many fond memories of helping my grandfather and father in their gardens, that I wanted to give that opportunity to my girls. We rent and can’t exactly go tearing up our yard to make a huge garden, so I was very happy when I discovered square foot gardening while browsing on pinterest one day. We actually had a little raised bed that we fixed up last year, but we only grew flowers then. This year I planted carrots, beets, onions, peas, a tomato plant, and spinach in our little garden bed. Then I planted a cucumber plant in a planter and a pepper plant in another planter.

These pictures are mostly from May when we did our big harvest. I should have let things stay in the ground a little longer, but we were getting ready to leave for a long trip and I knew it would be too late by the time we got back. My girls had so much fun pulling out their veggies! And let me tell you, they were so much more excited and open to eat vegetables that they picked themselves.

The peas, tomatoes, and cucumber plants kept giving a continuous harvest for a while, so they were still able to go pick some goodies to eat later.

  I liked square foot gardening because it was more technical for a smaller garden space. Meaning, the sites I found told you how big to make your “boxes” with string (if you like) and how much of each thing to plant in each “box”. That way everything is spaced out correctly and has enough room to grow. I did know that our space wasn’t very deep and it was rocky once you dug down far enough, so I wasn’t sure how the root vegetables would do. Fortunately, they did pretty good! Our carrots are a little funky looking, but that’s okay. It was still fun to give them a try and they tasted fine.

Unfortunately, we came back from our few weeks trip to a very sad garden. I figured it would happen since it gets so hot here in Louisiana it makes plants dry up real quick. Aphids and stink bugs also attacked our tomato plant and it was too late to try and save it. I planted some zinnia seeds for the time being and am having pretty flowers consistently. I’m hoping to get some things planted this month for a fall harvest though. Did you grow a garden this year? What did you plant?

-Jess