There are some questions as to what the square foot gardener needs for success by way of soil.  As the book says, you’re not going to need or worry about your existing soil because you’re going to make your own.  By the time you’re done mixing it all in, you will have a perfect soil to plant just about anything you want.  No more worry about pH, soil structure, clay soil, loam soil, fertilizer, etc.  This picture shows what you’ll need to effectively grow your first SFG immediately.  First-peat moss.  This helps with keeping a nice, loose, and friable mix.  It also has some water retention properties.  Cost-about $7.  Second, coarse vermiculite.  This is mica rock that has been heated to a certain temperature until it explodes.  This is what helps hold water more than any other ingredient in your SFG.  You should always try to get the “course” variety instead of medium or fine vermiculite.  The finer you end up buying, the less effective it will be at holding water.  This is the most expensive component-about $25.  Third-a blended compost.  If you visit my gallery you will see the individual items that make up this great compost.  I think it’s the best commercially available compost available.  So, if you can’t find Garden and Bloome soil building compost, try to get something that approximates this.  Cost-$8.  This will be all you will need to fill one 4X4′ SFG at a depth of 6 inches.  If you want to go a foot deep then you will have to double this amount.  For the most part though, 6 inches will be all you’ll need for most things.  Do not cheat on making the soil.  This is a one time expense and you’ll end up regretting it later on if you’re getting the growing medium from the landfill or just buying horse/cow/chicken manure, etc.  It is not worth the few dollars you think you will be saving.  If you cheat on the soil and when you have limited success you can’t come back and tell all your friends “that square foot garden stuff doesn’t work.”  One of the worst things you can do is to fill your boxes with potting soil.  Why?  Potting soil is specially made to get new starts off quickly with a very small amount of fertilizer, peat moss, and some perlite.  It’s only made to be short term.  If you were to fill your beds with this your garden would be out of the necessary fertilizer for what you want to grow in about 4 weeks.  Be smart.  Stick with this triple combination and you can’t go wrong…

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I was reading on the SFGF official forum earlier today.  There was a post from someone who was disappointed when they tried to start their seeds early in vermiculite.  The comment was that only 50% of them actually came up.  Well, this is precisely why you want to start in vermiculite.  If you would have started those seeds in flats (or worse yet in the garden) and nothing came up you would’ve felt like you wasted a lot of time-and money.  And maybe even some of those plants that came up in the vermiculite to begin with wouldn’t have come up at all in the garden because of the weather.  But if you would have started them in vermiculite you end up only planting seeds that you know are good-because they have been sprouted in vermiculite.  This is a great trick to do when you have saved seeds from years past.  Over time these seeds lose more and more germination so you don’t really know which seeds are good and which aren’t.  By using vermiculite you only find out which are the good ones.  I’ve highlighted how to do this by pictures in the gallery.  This kind of information is what my “members only” page will consist of.  It’s going to show a lot of “how-to” and a lot of little tips and tricks of a successful square foot garden.  It’s not ready to go yet, but it will be shortly.  Hopefully….

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Many years ago when I was doing an internship with Mel he said to me: “what if you have a vegetable garden that is protected from wind, rain, snow and other bad weather?  All of a sudden, you have a different garden!”  And that’s the truth.  Today it’s been warm-about 60-but it’s been very windy.  I have now planted 2 complete boxes in the 2X16′ garden(16 squares.)  First, if I had a traditional garden I wouldn’t be able to plant yet.  The ground would still be frozen solid.  But then even if it were ready to go it would dry out quickly because of the windy conditions.  Because I cover my garden with plastic-making sure it’s vented so as to not get too hot-I can create an ideal growing environment for the items I’ve planted.  As others are attempting to get their gardens ready and getting out those tillers-do you notice the soil after their done?  It’s all in clumps!  That’s because the ground is not ready to be rototilled yet-it’s too early for those gardens.  Not so for the SFGer.  While your friendly neighbors are out there tilling away, we now have possible rain and snow in the forecast for this weekend.  That’s an easy thing for all SFGer to handle, but it’s not such an easy thing for a traditional row gardener.  So far I have now planted 8 squares of a variety of lettuce, 5 squares of spinach, 1 square of radishes, 1 square of carrots, and 1 square of walla-walla onions…..

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