I've used a modified "square foot gardening" technique for several years. You can start now to get ready for spring. It's a great book- get a copy from your library! I framed in my garden beds with 10x2 (untreated) lumber 4 feet wide by 12 feet long. By making them 4 foot wide you can reach everything from the outside. The book tells you to plant in 4x4 beds but I find that longer beds work better. Next fill the frames with leaves or straw. (grass clippings take too long to break down). No need to rototill or remove the sod. By spring the beds are ready. If you still have leaves in the beds at planting time simply push then aside and use them as mulch. Try not to walk in your beds- this way the soil will not compact and you do not need to turn it over each year. ( I have never had to do more that dig a small hole for seeds or plants. Sometimes you don't even need a shovel.) My beds are over-run with earth worms. The soil is loose and mostly worm castings. If you fish you will have more worms than you can use! Use vertical planting whenever possible. It will save room - and your back. We find that string beans (pole) love the sun and produce continuously until the frost. Cucumbers and tomatoes like it too. If you live in the New England area then you know about slugs. They love my garden. Fortunately there is an easy fix. I simply sink used tuna/cat food cans into the ground. Make the top at surface level. Then 1/2 fill with beer. (Slugs seem to prefer the cheapest beer you can find) The next day you will be shocked at the amount of slugs. During one bad infestation I found several cans filled to the top with dead slug! (They can't resist it- they're stupid that way) This type of gardening won't work with everything. Corn, potatoes, etc, may need more room. The great thing about Square Foot Gardening is that you can grow more in a smaller space. It takes less work to maintain and it's easy to run a fence around.
There's a similar method called Intensive Gardening. We have been using that and square foot gardening for quite a few years now but not with raised beds...yet! That may be next! The no-till method is healthy for the soil. You can grow a LOT in a small space!
THAT'S A FACT! The last place I lived had very little space for gardening so I built 2- 4'x12' boxes and brought in 2 truckloads of topsoil to fill them. Those 2 boxes more produced than I ever thought possible from such a small space. :2thumb:
this year i did something unusual --i had a old canoe that had a big hole in the bottom and some broken struts sooooo i moved it next to the sunny side of the shed and filled it with compost and soil and now i have some very large tomatoes and bell peppers going wild and if i need to move it next year all i have to do is hook the truck up and pull it to another spot nothing wasted
My beds are 8' x 2' and have several 55 gallon barrels that I cut in half and placed them together "as if you stacking 5 gallon buckets up within each other" The top one I would drill lots of holes "small ones" and one 1" hole for a pole to go threw into the bottom section. The top section would be filled with soil for the plants to grow in, once they establish and there roots make there way threw the small holes there in the lower section witch you fill with a miracle grow solution "filled by the 1" hole with pipe" After that there fully feed by the standing miracle grow water solution. The bottom will fill with roots in no time. Makes some awesome and healthy growing plants. My watermelons, pumpkins, and cantaloupe are done like this. Hope I explained it good and not confuse anybody.
Very true. I grow better cukes vertical than I could if they vined on the ground. I also grow 100 times as many green beans (pole) vertical than I could bush variety in the same space- and no bending over!
