EcoMeg

Previous Related Posts:
An Organic Square Foot Garden (Part 1)
The Basics of Composting

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Spring has sprung here in North Texas!

After what seemed like FOREVER (to my toddler), our seedlings sprouted...

... and then eventually grew strong enough to be transplanted into the square foot garden boxes, where they endured one last freeze (grr). Sadly, the watermelon and cantaloupe seedlings did not survive that and we had to start them over, but the others fared pretty well.

Things have warmed up a bit and the days are mostly gorgeous...

The garden now looks like this. The Bermuda grass should emerge from hibernation soon. Note the compost bin in the foreground - we are well underway with filling that up. It only got stinky once before I realized I needed to add more grass clippings to dry it out a bit. I also planted two apple trees along the slope beyond the boxes - one Granny Smith (pies!) and one Golden Delicious. When planting apple trees, you typically need to plant two or more different varieties so that cross pollination can occur. Otherwise the trees don't bear much fruit.

Our Golden Delicious apple tree produced its first blossom, which is very exciting!

I also decided to plant some strawberries. Since I did this after I started the square foot garden, I just put them into separate planters and gave them plenty of room to sprawl, which they like to do. Shortly thereafter, we had our first strawberry!

Here is what the individual "crops" look like now. Our radishes are growing very quickly. I'm really optimistic about the bok choy (can't wait for that stir fry!) and the spinach. My onions are doing well. The tomato and bean pole plants are taking their time.

The lavender and broccoli are also showing promise...

The carrots took a bit longer to emerge but are doing very well. You can see here that they need a bit of selective pruning so they won't choke one another. I've had to prune every crop a bit so that I didn't have too many plants growing in each square foot.