Getting Started

I decided to start a gardening blog to keep track of my experiences in gardening here in Elk Ridge, Utah. Things posted here are my own opinions, derived from doing research online, reading books, and good old experience itself. Last year's garden was a good success. I had some topsoil brought in and grew many different things. But the melons, pumpkins and winter squash took over a large portion of the ground and some things didn't do so well. So I decided to make some changes.



I'm expanding my garden this year and implementing suggestions from Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening. I am building boxes using 2x8's and filling them with "Mel's Mix," which is one part each (by volume) peat moss, vermiculite and compost. I am planning on 12 2x8 foot boxes, five 3x3 boxes and five 1x3 boxes (for the kids). Mel says you can grow in just six inches of his mix, but I'm going for eight inches to reduce watering even more. I also bought some rebar, EMT electrical conduit and some nylon trellis netting to grow tomatoes, melons, winter squash and such vertically. I'll post some pictures of my setup when I'm done with it, but you can go to the above website to see some of Mel's pictures. I also bought some wood shavings that I can use both as chicken litter and as mulch. BTW, this can all end up being very expensive when doing such a large garden. I would recommend starting small and expanding some each year.



Of course, all of this will be fenced off with six-foot fencing to keep the deer and chickens out. They can both do serious damage to a garden.

In order to grow some of the longer-season veggies, such as broccoli, I bought an HID (high intensity discharge) lamp to grow things indoors as much as eight weeks before they go outside. I'll talk more about lighting in a later post.

I have already started broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, swiss chard, lettuce and peppers. Tomatoes and celery go in today. I will post about each of these as I find time.

The peach trees look like they're about to send out the first leaves of the season. The cherry trees are coming back to life. The chickens are happy to have a snow-free yard again. And despite the snow forecast for Sunday/Monday, I'm pretty excited for spring!