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Square Foot Gardening Grow More in Less Space: Book Review

13.8 years ago product review, square foot gardening 4 Comments

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I can not say enough positive things about this book, it might be because the very first gardening book I ever read was the original Square Foot Gardening book. It provided me with the basic tools to setup my first garden with great success. Provided I can basically credit my success to gardening and the eventual creation of this blog directly to the initial reading of this book, in many ways I look at Mel Bartholomew as the original “cheap vegetable gardener” with the many cost saving tips he mentions in his books. Though the original book written many decades ago can still be applied today, there were a few parts of this book that made following all the techniques difficult, one specific example is his “perfect soil” consisted of 7 different ingredients which many could be purchased at your local nursery but one specific ingredient “wood ashes” are much less common with majority of houses using alternate fuels for heating these days. The good news this problem as well as many others were taken care of in his latest installment of his series All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space!

As the title explains the primary premise of square foot gardening is by dividing your garden into one foot by one foot squares. Not only is this beneficial for garden organization but also allows an easy way to implement intensive gardening in your own backyard garden allowing you to grow more vegetables in much less space compared to growing the same plants in rows. Be eliminating the need for rows or more specifically the need for spaces between rows you can plant more vegetables in a smaller space. This is visualized below with the visualization in the left being 144 carrots being grown using the square foot method compared to the visualization in the right using conventional row methods (with minimal gaps between rows) yielding 60 carrots with both being planted in a 9 square foot area.

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Now with no rows you might be thinking, “How can I weed, water, or harvest without having access through rows, the solution to this is actually quite simple by creating a series of small beds no more than 4 feet wide. This provides easy access to do your garden maintenance by only requiring a maximum of a 2 foot reach required to access any square from one of the four sides. Below you can see my then two year old daughter demonstrating the ease of this.

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Now I have talked a bit about the process lets get back to the book. What is great about this book is it provides chapters on all of the stages of starting your own garden. It goes from picking your best location to start your garden, creating vertical trellises, starting seeds indoors/outdoors, watering and maintaining your plants, and finally harvesting. But wait there’s more…there is also a great section on extending your gardening season with hoop covers and cold frames with detailed directions on all of these.

Though the content of the chapters are great the section I keep coming back to year after year is the appendix in the back that lists the common types if vegetables which provides great visuals to how and when to plant and harvest each of these veggies as well as specific care instructions to deter various disease and pests associated with that particular plant. Unfortunately this section was removed from the new book, but the good news is since the previous version has been in print for over 30 years you can pickup a copy used for almost nothing.

Overall if there is on gardening book I would recommend to someone starting out with gardening All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! would be the first book I would recommend. Not only is the advice very effective it is also economical providing great methods using many materials you may already have in your back yard.

Win a Free one year Subscription GrowVeg.com

13.8 years ago computer, free, garden planning, giveaway 40 Comments

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GrowVeg.com has graciously offered us a free one year subscription to their site ($25 value) to give away.

If you haven’t heard of GrowVeg it is an online program that allows you to plan you season of gardening and provides you reminders when you should start seeds and move transplants outside.  You can check out my first review and my more recent review for some more specific details of this years new feature enhancements..

There are multiple ways to enter:

  • 1. Add a comment to this post
  • 2. Like CheapVegetableGardener on Facebook (add an additional comment to the post)
  • 3. Mention this giveaway on your site/Twitter (add an additional comment to the post)

We will pick a winner on 02/12/11 but if you can’t wait to get started planning your garden go ahead and sign up for the free 30 day trial and if you are lucky you can continue using it for free.  Good luck.

Wet Circuits water resistant power strip review

13.9 years ago electronics, power strip, product review, water, waterproof, wet circuits 7 Comments

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One problem with growing plants indoors is the requirement for indoor lighting, combined with the need to pour water on plants around such lighting causes a potential electrical disaster.  When I heard about Wet Circuits water/tamper resistant power strip I simply had to try it out.  Not having the $70 to buy one myself, the nice people at WetCircuits sent me a sample to try out these claims for myself.

After reviewing their very informative infomercial style demonstration (see below) I felt I would not be doing my job unless I reproduced at least some of these demonstrations for myself.

Being cautious I started with sticking in my voltmeter while having my homemade supplemental LED light plugged in.

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Test #1 one passes with flying colors

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Next it was time to pour water on the live outlet…now using a normal socket this would result in a nice spark if you were lucky.  As you can see from the video below, this also passed without any problems.

I decided to skip the tweezers test provided that the voltmeter answered the expected result and well it is just plain scary to try even when I know it won’t shock me.

Now if you have shelves of grow lights or your own grow box for $70 this is a decent investment though it does buy you some piece of mind.

Office hydroponic setup (Growing Basil in a water bottle)

13.9 years ago basil, cheap, hydroponics, office 6 Comments

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An unfortunate thing happened to my little office basil growing experiment, I got some fungal gnats and not wanting to be the guy known for his office infested with flies I decided to throw together a little hydroponic system primarily consisting of items I had around the office.

I started with an old reusable water bottle I had previously used to store water for my prior soil based basil plant.  I filled the bottle with water, added a couple of handfuls of hydrocon clay pellets, dropped in an air stone attached to a cheap aquarium pump and I have a neat little bubbler system.

After a couple of weeks there was great root growth (water is not really green just poor camera, bad lighting and unfortunate use of blue water bottle)

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After a couple more weeks, when I was away for Christmas vacation I came back to a plant though needing some water was still growing strong.

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For nutrients I broke off the smallest piece of some generic brand plant spike fertilizer I can put in piece in every week or so along with a small pinch of epsom salt.

When it is time to harvest, I made good of office supplies: a couple of binder clips attached to some rubber bands provides good air circulation to dry out any extra basil I want to store for later use.

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Hey it is not pretty, but it is cheap and provides me some fresh basil to add to my omelets from the cafeteria downstairs and even a little extra dry basil to use at home.

How to store your Fruits and vegetables

13.9 years ago corn, herbs, peas, peppers, spinach, storing, tomato, vegetables 3 Comments

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Whether it is to preserve your harvest from your garden or to help extend the life of the expensive produce you purchased from your local grocery store or farmers market, a little knowledge can help keep your veggies tasty and even stretch out a couple of extra days before becoming compost.

The basic idea is pretty simple, think about where your produce is stored in the grocery store and then do the same thing at home.  For example they store carrots in a refrigerated display case…so you should store yours in your refrigerator.  They store their onions at room temperature so you would think it would be best to do the same…reality is they are best to be stored between 55-65 degrees.  During the winter time my room temperature is probably in the top part of that range but majority time my indoor temperatures will be much higher.  Depending on the age of your house, you may have a root cellar which helps to create these ideal conditions for that pesky produce that is too cold in the refrigerator but too warm in a heated house.  For the rest of us find a nice cool location in your house such as garage or spot next to a window (at least during the wintertime) otherwise you may be reducing the quality and viability of your produce.

Below is a list of the recommended storing temperatures for fruits and vegetables:

Vegetables

Refrigerator
(32-36°F)		 Root Cellar
(55-65°F)		 Room Temp
(55-70°)
Artichokes check
Arugula check
Asparagus — submerged in water check
Beets check
Bok Choy check
Broccoli check
Brussel Sprouts check
Cabbage check
Carrots check
Cauliflower check
Celery check
Corn check
Cucumbers check
Eggplant check
Fava beans check
Fennel check
Garlic Green Check Mark Clip Art
Greens (Kale, Chard, Collard Greens) check
Green Beans check
Green Onions (sealed bag) check
Herbs (submerge in glass of water) check
Leeks check
Lettuce check
Mushrooms (I know, not a vegetable) check
Onions check
Parsnips check
Peppers check
Potatoes check
Radishes check
Rutabaga check
Snap Peas check
Spinach check
Summer Squash check
Sweet Potatoes check
Tomatoes check
Turnips check
Winter Squash check

 

FRUIT

Refrigerator
(32-36°F)		 Cool Place
(45-50°F)		 Room Temp
(55-70°)
Apples check
Avocadoes check
Bananas check
Cranberries check
Figs check
Grapefruit check
Grapes check
Kiwis check
Lemons check
Limes check
Mangos check
Melons check
Nectarines check
Oranges/Mandarins check
Peaches check
Pears check
Plums check
Pomegranates check
Rhubarb check
Strawberries check

Top gardening posts of 2010

13.9 years ago cheap, garden planter, LEDs, moisture sensor, upside down planter 1 Comment

2010 has been a pretty exciting year for CheapVegetableGardener.com.  Bringing on a significant number of more readers and many great mentions by some large publications, I thought I would mention the top 5 posts of 2010 which helped this happen in case you missed them.

image Being kicked off by an awesome mention in a New York Times article and subsequent interview on Science Friday on NPR, this article on making your own tomato planter held the #1 spot.  By taking a two liter bottle, a little spray paint, and a chopstick (or small stick) you can make your own upside down tomato planter.
image This article has received some decent traffic from numerous sites but the mention on lifehacker.com is what put this one on the #2 spot.  Now if you are trying to make a little profit from your extra harvest or just trying to save a little extra money at the grocery store this post lists the top vegetables for your gardening square foot.
IMG_1516 Want to start some seedlings indoors without spending a fortune on lighting?  Check out this Christmas light LED grow box post which has held the #3 spot.  All it takes is a couple of strings of LEDs (purchased during after Christmas sales of course), a Rubbermaid container, a drill, and a little patience you can have your own indoor growing apparatus.
IMG_4590 Sometimes I got busy in the early spring and forgot to water my neglected seedlings in the grow box in my garage.  To solve this problem I made these great little soil sensors using galvanized nails and Plaster of Paris.  Check out this post which help the #4 spot for the full build instructions.
Raised Vegetable Garden Finally after some personal trial and error the #5 post of this year goes into detail on how to create a new garden bed.  This covers the basics of picking the proper location and also some cost benefit analysis for using various materials (cinder blocks, wood, chiseled wall blocks, bricks) to build a new bed.
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