My Plants Live in Toilet Rolls?

This garden was planted August 18th, It contains
celery, cabbage, carrots, beetroot and also gave us
30 radishes in the bare space, which is now
replanted with more carrots.
It's had no weeds despite the forest of them
surrounding it!

I mentioned in a previous post, that Square Foot Gardening is my plan of choice for an easy, productive garden, that I can remove in a matter of weeks if necessary.

Square foot gardening was dreamed up by Mel Bartholomew as a space saving, time saving way of growing plants. He quite literally wrote the book on it. This won't be the first time I've tried it, and I had some great success before, so I'm fairly certain of success going in.

What they are, actually, is raised gardens, built on top of the ground with none of your existing soil. This immediately gets rid of the hassle of having a bad soil type, and also the weed seeds that are impossible to get rid of.

The gardens I'll put in, are four feet by four feet, which is a pretty standard size. You don't want any part of the garden to be more than two feet from a walkway, because you don't want to walk on it and compress the compost mixture. I'm deviating from the growing medium Mr Bartholomew suggests, mostly because of price. He suggests an equal mix of compost, peat moss and vermiculite. I'm just using compost - a vege one from a landscaping centre - and I've not had a problem yet.

All the different items I'm using (so far!) to grow
seedlings.

Before I set the gardens up though, or even buy the compost (I'd use my own, but it hasn't composted yet) I need something to plant in them, and also a plan so I know what to plant. Well, I have a plan, but that's a whole other post - you get to see my geeky pictures - lucky you! So I know what to plant, so I know what seedlings I want.

One of them is corn, which should probably be in by now, but I'm not scared. The seedlings are sprouting right now, in recycled punnets from the pansies and tomato plants I bought, and in toilet rolls, when I ran out of other things to use. That'll be one whole garden done right there. There's also lettuce, broccoli, cucumber and cauliflower trying to germinate in the other various receptacles. Use what's available, I say! No point buying little pots when you have an egg carton available. I even caught myself staring questioningly at a bean can last night, wondering if I shouldn't put a few holes in the bottom and use it as a plant pot.

So, in another week, I think the corn will be ready to go, and in the mean time, I'll plant some more seeds and keep waiting, waiting, waiting...




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