Putting Together the Garden

Yesterday was a day of hard work as we prepped two of our 4x4 ft. garden beds for onions and asparagus. Because of our small yard, we are trying the raised bed system known as Square Foot Gardening. It's a much more intensive method of gardening that is allowing us to raise 16 onions in one square foot! According to the creator of the Square Foot Garden system, three of the 4x4 ft. beds should be able to provide all of the fruits and veggies needed for one adult (this is for fresh and preserved consumption). We are doing eight of these and a 12x2 ft. bed, so hopefully my black thumb will be able to get adequate food from our garden. We have made our beds with cedar so it will last a long time and not have the potential to leach unwanted chemicals into our soil (which is a risk with treated lumber). We put down the landscaping cloth yesterday to keep weeds from being an issue in the beds and created the Mel's Mix, which is a blend of compost, vermiculite,

and peat moss. We ended up filling two and half of the beds and laying wood grids that show us each square foot. We got really lucky yesterday on our search for vermiculite that led us away from Lowes and over to Oakland Nursery (a haven for any gardener!). We not only found vermiculite we also found two year old asparagus crowns so we were able to put them in! We ended up planting 16 yellow onion sets, 16 white onion sets, 9 Mary Washington asparagus crowns, 9 Jersey Giant asparagus crowns, and a few random onions around the house. Surprisingly, it only took us about 2 1/2 hours once we got all of our supplies!!