My Square Foot Garden

It has been a week or so since I posted…so sorry!  Life has been a bit hectic, a week of a hard freeze every night…and this in Florida!!   My new job started and in the middle of it all I had to get row covers and blankets for the garden.  Here is what my garden looked like for a week.

I made it through, only lost one sweet potato plant.  Here is a pic of my row covers;

Last July I went to work at a health food store here in Jacksonville. Everything served in the deli there is organic, so I began bringing home some seeds and scraps home. I sprouted peppers, then an onion.  Then I started bringing home huge bags of veggie and fruit scraps and put them in my compost.  It was about this time that I discovered Bokashi composting. It is a way to take kitchen scraps and get compost from them in 4 weeks!  You may not know that normal outdoor composting can take up to a year to get ready to be put into the soil.  This method is odor free and can be done indoors.  

In August I laid out my garden, in an L-shape. I got garden timbers and put them in place, covered the soil and weeds with unwaxed cardboard.  I got potting soil, put it about 4 inches deep and started adding ground egg shells,coffee grounds, compost, manure and vermiculite.

In August I planted sweet potatoes, onions, and bell peppers in one end of the garden and started building up the soil in the longer section.  In September I planted flowering kale, Swiss chard, basil and red potatoes.  This week I planted tomato seedlings, nasturtiums, lavender.  I have been going to a produce market near my house few times a week and getting veggie scraps for compost.  I am getting coffee grounds from Starbucks each day.  My soil is looking great!

Peppers, Marigolds and beets I have been eating greens from since September!

Lettuce in homemade grow box

Lettuce with cover

Compost Bin is mostly for grass and yard stuff as I compost all kitchen scraps by the Bokashi method of composting.  For the outdoor bin I add coffee grounds and boxes of veggie scraps from a local produce store.