I think the thing that can become a lot of work in gardening would have to be the weeds. There isn’t much about gardening that I don’t like and weeding is at the top of the list.

This year we started with square foot gardening and it really does rock. We had a lot of vegetables and very few weeds at all.

Today our easy gardening tip is about having less weeds to weed which is alright with me.

We had a great year in the garden with few weeds I might add.

The way we did it was to plant things very close together so that there is no space between the rows and it worked great for the most part.

We definitely had very few weeds, mostly at the start of the season before our vegetable plants had any size to them. This gave a lot more free garden area for the weeds to grow in.

As soon as the vegetables started to grow the weeds started losing their foot hold on the garden and after a few weeks there were virtually no weeds.

Better Planning Next Year

photo credit: greengardenviennaWe didn’t take the height of our vegetables into account while still in the planning stages so we ended up some vegetables that were over grown by other vegetables.

Next year we will plant or arrange our garden so that we have the heighest plants where they won’t smother or block other smaller plants from the sun.

I think we can also add a little more space between the rows so they have a little more elbow room to grow.

Example: I planted the peas and beans too close to the tomatoes and in no time the tomatoes were towering over the peas and beans blocking out the sun.

The peas also grew up into the tomato plants and made quite a mess. We did get plenty of peas and beans but nothing like we would have if we had put the tomatoes on the opposite side of the peas and beans.

Just a simple placement like that can make a huge difference in your end result.

We love square foot gardening and how easy it is too keep the weeds down, we will just change the order of things.

That’s your easy gardening tips for today, enjoy. Live long with much produce.

Okay I have started making little life jackets for the vegetables in our veggie garden. I am even thinking about building an Ark now.

June 10th frost kept ringing in my ears as I thought about planting. I remember my dad would talk about a killing frost around the first full moon of June.

So we waited until after the full moon before planting our vegetable garden. The temperature got as low as just one degree off freezing so I think the wait was worth it.

Once we planted our little square foot garden it started to rain and hasn’t let up much since. Now it’s the first week in July and it’s still raining. I think it’s raining even harder than it did in June.

I am sure if it wasn’t for the view of our backyard from my office window I would be completely depressed by this point.

Let’s Go To… Oooops It’s Raining Again.

The rain has put a damper on so many activities this year and the only ones not complaining are the plants. Well those plants that haven’t been washed down stream that is.

Vegetable Garden Draining Well

I started our first 4 foot square garden right in the spot that holds the most water. I thought it was the best location in our yard even though it would need a lot of work to make it drain well.

After removing the sod and digging up to a depth of about a foot I added plenty of peatmoss and top soil which made a huge difference in drainage.

It was bad enough that in the spring we had ducks landing in the water and they were able to swim around like it was a pond. They are in for a bumpy landing come next spring.

We have had a few down pours that all but buried the smaller vegetables like the radishes and swiss chard. Even though they took quite a pounding they came right back after the rain stopped.

I may not have to use those life jackets after all.

I managed the energy to get our first 4′ square foot garden yesterday. It wasn’t even that hot out but I was done by the time I was done. Today is going to be 3 times hotter than yesterday, so I got out into the backyard really early and have the second one dug up already.

I think I might just have to take a nap to get my energy back, well maybe not. I can’t stand taking naps, it seems like I am losing hours of my life, so I will wait until my heart rate comes back to normal and I cool off a bit and then I will go for a nice long walk and take lots of pictures of our neighbourhood gardens and flowers.

I use our trusty little spade to do the cutting and digging. It was so much easier than using the round mouth shovel I usually use for digging.

First I measured two four foot squares with a few feet between them for ease of kneeling and mowing.

I used a few bamboo rods I have for staking up plants like tomatoes and beans.

Then I measured from the right side of our garage to the property fence on the same side, found the centre and from there I just made two four foot squares and marked them with string to make it ease to dig the outer edges.

The rest of the job of digging wasn’t that hard, it’s just the limitations I have from heart medication that makes it hard on me. I just have to do it small bursts. It takes me longer but I do get the job done.

Jenny will be so happy to see the second one done as she thought it would be way to hot for me to work in the backyard garden. We can do our happy dance, or maybe we will have to a square dance. Ha Ha

Now that we have all the digging done it doesn’t look too square but once we bet the 2×8 boards around the outside it will square up pretty good.

Image by kmvinther via Flickr

Does size matter when it comes to starting your own garden in your backyard? Well if you learn to start a garden in such as way as to make the best use of your available space then no size doesn’t matter so much.

It truly amazing me when I remember back to weeding the garden as a kid. It didn’t amaze me then but today when I think back to how huge our garden was and how much wasted space there was I am sure they wasted far more than half the space they had.

Now I am not saying that was a bad thing. We lived on a 100 acre farm and had plenty of room to waste space but today we live in cities and towns and it can be quite costly to have extra space to just waste.

My wife and I bought the property we now own along with the lot beside it specifically for starting a vegetable garden. We are now converting a big part of that second lot into flower gardens. What??

Well Jenny and I have been learning about square foot gardening, which my wife and I refer to as square metre gardening as we are proud Canadians, and see the benefits. Now we don’t need nearly the space we thought we did.

We have also been using containers for some of our vegetables because it allows us to move them around so they get the best possible growing conditions. Last years, crop of tomatoes was great, this year we will have even more varieties.

This year we are even planting our potatoes into big containers, it’s going to be an interesting summer I believe and most likely a learning experience.

So if you are thinking size does matter when it comes to starting a garden in your backyard you might want to think again and check out container gardening as well as square foot gardening.

We are so excited about our vegetable gardens this year. We decided to go with two square foot gardens. Each are 4 feet square with a strip of lawn between them wide enough to mow. They should look great.

SFG tend to make it easier to reach into the center of each garden for weeding, adding compost or harvesting. Plus if for any reason we need to erect a fence to protect against unwanted critters it won’t take long as the gardens are small and compact.

By the way the major point that attracted us to SFGing is the lack of weeds.

Image by Product of Newfoundland via Flickr

If you have been follow our gardening blog you know we are learning how to be gardeners and that last year we planted about a month later than we should have. We still had fun and learned. We also, even though we started late, had some great produce and were very encouraged.

Last year was really our first year at gardening. The previous two years at this home we spent doing things that needed fixing up and only planted a few flowers and some tomatoes. We didn’t plan any garden in those two years but we had it in our minds.

I guess having it in your mind isn’t good enough we should have planned, at least for last year when we tried a few more things.

That’s called a learning experience so we have already started planning for our 2009 garden.

I thought that other newbie gardeners would like to have a plan so we are going to add a post for each step we do in our preparation planning and will link them here like a little table of contents.

Our Backyard Garden Plan For 2009

Square Foot Gardening

We have decided to do square foot gardening with raised beds and all fresh soil. We decided to go with this method for a couple of reasons. Even though we are metric in New Brunswick, Canada I still think feet.

First, our soil is like clay that has been compacted and second, with raised beds I won’t have as much difficulty with my back. Poor ole me.

Testing Your Soil Before Planting or Seeding

It’s important to have the right PH balance for the plants you wish to grow in your flower garden or vegetable garden. If you’re not using raised beds using good soil you may want to test your soil so that you know what to add to it if it’s not the best soil.

I will link to a few places that will give you a better idea about testing your soil.

How many of us started gardening without the slightest idea about soil PH? Well I am in that group and really didn’t pay any attention to our soil’s PH balance until we found that some things grew well while others just seemed to struggle to stay alive.

I started looking online to find answers and here is what I found. Get a soil testing kit and test the soil where you are planting and compare that with the PH requirements for each plant as some like it acidic while others prefer more alkaline soil.

Soil Acidity, learn more about your PH balance between acidic soil and alkaline soil.

How to test your soil.

More to come as I write up more of our backyard garden plan for 2009 so bookmark this pages and return often.

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