The garden ready for spring

Here in southern Virginia, the last frost date is about May 1, so we’re not quite ready to stick plants or seeds in the ground yet, but when the time comes, the garden is ready!  Debbie and I spent all day last Saturday in 45-degree weather finishing up the square-foot garden plot.  Spring seemed very far away on a cloudy, windy, cold day, but here’s how the day went –

 First, we made a trip Friday to the beautiful, but remote, Seven Springs Farm to buy vermiculite.  While there we also bought twenty 40-lb bags of McEnroe Compost, which is some of the best organic compost you can find.  The mix used in square-foot gardens is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost from various sources.  We also added leaf compost from a local gardener here in Chatham.

On Saturday we finished the square-foot box placement.  For two of the boxes, we dug the grass out from under them, but on the other two we decided to use a heavy layer of mulch to kill the grass.  You can see from the photo how the grass under one of the boxes is yellowing, plus we have weed cloth on the bottoms of the boxes, and wire mesh to discourage voles and moles.  We finally decided to put all 4 boxes on a heavy mulch base, which made leveling them easier.  Drainage should also be better, too.  In the process, we decided that the entire garden area should be mulched, so we then spread mulch around all the boxes.  We’ll have to get two more loads to cover the entire area with enough mulch to kill the grass, but we can do that later. 

 Then, with our square-foot boxes ready, we mixed the ingredients for all 4 boxes — 42.6 cu ft — on one tarp.  This was a mistake!  Too much material to mix by pulling the tarp over itself, so we had to regroup and remix along the way.  We used 16 cu ft of peat moss, about 12 cu ft of vermiculite, and probably 20 cu ft of compost.  Our mix was off just a bit, but heavy on the compost side which is what counts.  Vermiculite holds moisture, and peat makes the soil friable, so a little extra compost is okay (we hope).   Debbie mixed and smoothed the ingredients into each box as I wheelbarrowed them into the garden spot. 

 Finally, we had to have a garden gate, so we made one out of found materials.  Debbie did a sketch of what she wanted, and it turned out pretty much like we planned.  We used old lumber left in the garage by the previous owners — or maybe even longer ago than that!  All we had to buy were hinges and screws.  The gate stands 6′ tall at the peak, but we have to keep deer out, so we thought a 6′ gate would do it — we hope.  We secured the bottom of the fence with rocks where needed to keep the cats out, and even Pretty Kitty couldn’t find an opening — yet. 

Our seeds for tomato plants, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, and melons are already sprouting, so we should be ready in about 5 weeks to set these new plants in the ground.  We’ll probably plant lettuce and cabbage pretty soon, as they handle very cool, even frosty weather okay. 

Tomorrow:  seed trays in progress.  More photos of our garden  here.  Stay simple.