Square foot gardens sing the blues

You’d never guess by looking at our cheery herb garden that only a few feet away…our pretty square foot gardens are singing the blues! We finally figured out what went wrong when we pulled the mulch away from the boxes. And like most problems in life it was self-inflicted…not by the vegetables…but by the gardeners!

The problem is they’re not draining properly…they’re like plastic pots with no holes. We made our boxes this spring. When we placed them in the garden we realized that the ground wasn’t quite level. We decided to put a bed of mulch down under them to level them up. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the mulch is acting like a giant sponge. We’re even growing mushrooms along with the onions and squash!!

The plants were doing fine for a while, but now are looking pale and some of the stems are rotting. The purple Italian beans in the square foot bed are a pale color and the leaves are small. The same bean I transplanted from the square foot garden to the dirt is lush and green and growing up the bamboo tee pee.

So early this morning before the sun hit the backyard, we started digging mulch out from around and under the boxes. The mulch we pulled out from under the beds was soaking wet…the veggies were drowning. Chuck left for work and I spent the morning digging and hauling the wet mulch to a nearby flower bed. The heat and shoveling sent me inside before lunch but at least air can get under the boxes now and they can dry out. We’ll keep at it in the cool of early mornings till we get the mulch all out. Hopefully, balance will return to our plants before it’s too late.

They say if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing anything. Well, we’ve made a lot of mistakes in our first attempt at vegetable gardening…but we’ve learned some valuable lessons, too. And you know, even when things aren’t going well in the garden, we can’t think of any place we’d rather be! Maybe soon the square foot gardens will be singing in the sunshine again! Stay simple…and may your worst gardening problem be what to do with all that zucchini!!