It can be any length you’d like but it shouldn’t be any wider than 4′. It can be shorter than that too-just like the picture. This is for our daughter and son-in-law. They don’t have a lot of room so this 2X4′ will fit perfectly for them. That’s only 8 squares of planting. We’ll be filling it with crops that love cold weather, are easy to grow, and that taste great(doesn’t it all?) Your box can be made out of wood, vinyl, bricks, ammo boxes(although they’re a little deep), railroad ties(the newer ones), etc. Screw them together with regular deck screws-at least 2 on each side and preferably 3. Be sure to rotate the corners as it shows in the picture. Try to make sure you put it in a place that gets a minimum of 6-8 hours of sun. And how deep does it have to be? Only 6 inches! That’s it! These are 2X6″ pieces of wood that I picked out of a trash bin near some new construction in the neighborhood. Free wood is the best! It takes about 10 minutes to drill this together. Next up: step 2-the perfect soil and my recommendations for commercially available compost. This is one of the biggest things to understand about the SFG system. If you get this wrong, all the other advantages of SFGing go away. It’s the biggest reason for failing in the SFG system.

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This week I’ve collected all the seeds I’ll need for an early spring garden. I also built this cold frame out of scrap wood laying around the house. I really didn’t need one, I just wanted one. This will be perfect for use in early spring and winter this year. When I look at the soil inside the cold frame I can still notice a shadow of about 6″ in the front of the bed. This is being cast by the wood in the front of the cold frame and the sun still being a little bit low. I’d say if you want to have success in a cold frame early, make sure that the entire soil area in the cold frame gets 100% sunlight with no shadows. As I’ve watched weather underground I can see that the low’s for evening temperatures are a little below freezing for the remainder of the month. That, along with noticing there will be 10 hours of sunlight on January 30th tells me it’s soon time to start planting. In two weeks I’ll begin direct seeding right into the cold frame and the garden beds. Next week I’ll begin to start a few things indoors-leeks, a few varieties of lettuce, poc choi, and chard. There’s still quite a bit remaining in the garden right now-carrots, potatoes, spinach, arugula, rosemary, parsley, and mache. It’s been a fun winter experimenting with all sorts of different things. Spring season is getting closer.

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