Four Square Gardening

The name makes me think of square dancing, but dancing is completely optional with this little garden project! This spring, Jeff's dad helped to build a bunch of these Four Square Garden kits for the Garden Center. 

They are designed to make for easy vegetable, herb & flower gardening...no tilling required! The kit came with everything you need to start a nice little garden, you just purchase the plants or seeds for the items you want to grow. Jeff drove around with our kit in the bed of his truck for several weeks before we finally got a chance to put it together this past weekend.

We had a few hours on Sunday afternoon between morning church & evening church, the two younger kids were sleeping, so we got to work. Or as Jeff says, he worked, while I "helped" by taking pictures! 

First step: Finding a nice sunny spot. We put the square base in the yard for a few days to make sure that it would get enough hours of sunlight.

When we had a good spot, we put landscape fabric underneath to keep the grass & weeds from coming up into the bed.

Then we began filling it with the soil components: Vermiculite, Peat Moss, Black Castings (worm poop), Mushroom Compost, Manure Compost, and Chicken Compost...

We put in half of the vermiculite & peat moss first, then added the composts & raked them all around to mix. Then we put the remaining vermiculite & peat moss on top & mixed some more.

There was lots and lots of raking & mixing involved...

Hey LOOK, I did actually do some work!

Occupational hazard...foul odor!

Were you paying attention to the soil components...yes, it really did smell like poop! Even after scrubbing our hands several times, they still had the faint scent of manure, nice!

Poor Sophie, she is our nature girl & had been wanting to plant the garden for weeks...she didn't like the smell so much, but she was a trooper!

After all that work, Sophie brought out some refreshing water!

Next Jeff installed the strips that divide the bed into 16 one foot square planting sections.

Sophie always looks for ways to be a helper. She was holding the screws for Jeff.

Now for the fun part,  it's time to start planting!

Since we were getting a later start, we chose a variety of plants including herbs, tomatoes, and cucumber. We did buy a few seeds to plant including some beans, lettuce & spinach.

And a good drink to make everything grow!

The finished product!

The empty squares are where we planted the bean & lettuce seeds. They should sprout in a few weeks.

Tomatoes

Dill

Flat leaf parsley

Lavendar

Oregano

Rosemary

Chives

Sage

Cucumber

(I keep humming "parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme...")

I did also plant some basil in a separate pot & some mint in another pot. Mint is very aggressive & would take over the garden, so it works best in its own pot. 

So now we are just waiting for a bounteous harvest!!! We are also praying that all of the woodland creatures don't eat the fruits of our labors!