Square Foot Gardening

A few weeks ago, we got an email from a family in our ward who was unexpectedly moving that they were trying to sell their booming square foot garden they had just planted. I begged, but was rejected. Imagine my surprise when, several weeks later, I stopped by their yard sale and found out it was still available. This time, I got to see it in person, and begged again. This time, Braden agreed. So we paid for it and came back that night to move it. Much to our dismay, it was not truly moveable...

Instead, we had to cut out each square foot and transfer it to our house, reposition it in the box, and hope we didn't kill it. Instead of it being a quick process, it turned into 2 hours for Braden and our friend, John, to get the whole thing resituated.

I woke up Saturday morning with dread in my heart for what I would find outside and just about cried when I saw the damage. There were 3 HUGE tomato plants (2 Roma and 1 cherry) that were covered in big, green tomatoes. They were now shriveled, limp, dry, and quite dead. The big zucchini was a matted mess, completely lifeless. The watermelon vines looked pathetically sad. And the cucumber vines were no better. In fact, the one that was quite difficult to maneuver was a pile of crumbled leaves. The corn stalks had all fallen over, snapped in half, or just layed down from the shock of it all. Even the marigolds were shriveled. It was SO sad!

We had to ask for some of our money back and thankfully got it from these dear people. They were heartbroken, too, at the loss of their garden. But at least now we knew, you can't move a square foot garden that way. We'll never try that again.

This morning, the girls and I spent 2 hours pruning, digging, dunging, watering, and tenderly caring for these plants that are on the brink of death. I don't know if any of them will revive. But we'll try to care for them as best we can for the next week to see how they will do.

Here's how they look after all our work this morning:

In the buckets are a navel orange tree, red grapefruit tree, and two bell pepper plants.
This box has 10 squares of corn, 4 squares of marigolds (supposedly to keep bugs away) and 2 watermelon squares...those are the sad looking dead things there in the front.

This box has 3 squares with tomatoes (in the cages), 1 potato, 2 strawberry, 2 cucumber, 1 blackberry (which is long dead, I think), 2 jalapeno, and 4 marigold. Do not be deceived by the green. These poor plants may either be on the way up or the way down...

The blue bins transfered just fine. Unfortunately, we bought the garden for the boxes, not for these two bins. They're filled with things we don't necessarily need in the same way. This one has mint, cilantro, basil, chives, green onion, and supposedly thyme, but I can't figure out if that's the big one on the bottom right. The diagram was incorrect for what was in that corner.

This bin has marigolds, romaine lettuce, cucumber, peas, onion, and 3 sweet pumpkins (for pies and such). The pumpkin is out of control. The peas are not doing well, the lettuce seems barren, and I don't know much about onion.

We don't really like cucumbers, but I did experiment with making homemade pickles and canning them and they turned out great! So, if we produce any cucumbers and you want either cucumbers or pickles, we just might have plenty.

Here's our little raspberry patch. It is dormant right now and all the green you see is new growth, which we're excited for. We're hoping it will flower and give us a second crop this year, but for now, we're just glad its surviving the summer.

Speaking of summer, May was a bad month. 2 full weeks over 100 degrees. Well, June blessed us with 1 week in the hundreds and then 16 full days in the 90s! It was WONDERFUL! Unfortunately, that ended last weekend and we're supposed to be up to 110 by Thursday. Still, I am so grateful for a mild June. The monsoons should be starting soon, which definitely makes July a little more exciting.