Tonight Mike and I went to a Date Night at our Bishop's house where we had a great presentation about "square foot gardening." Barbara Layton told us all kinds of things we needed to know to get started and to be successful in growing our very own vegetable garden. We also went to several homes in our ward neighborhood and checked out some of the gardens already underway and successful - - what an inspiration!
Mike is going to make us some square foot gardening containers so we can get started. I wanted to have some 4' X 4' ones, but Mike wants 4' X 12'. He'll probably win out since he's the one making the containers. We also found out that the City of Mesa will give you containers to create your own compost (fertilizer). You have to have special soil called Mel's Mixture which consists of Compost, Peat Moss, and Vermiculite. In your containers you have 6" of this special mixture and put your little "starter plants" in and start growing!! The neat thing about doing it this way is that YOU DON"T HAVE ANY WEEDS! I hate trying to figure which green stuff growing is "weeds" and which is my plant.
This weekend, we'll probably discuss what kinds of vegetables we'd like to grow. I was thinking along the lines of peppers, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and a few other things that would be appropriate to plant now. (I've got to check the list of choices before I try to plant something that won't make it this time of year.) Wish us luck - - I'll write more when we're doing it or have it done.
Special note about the compost bin. You have to put stuff like grass clippings, shredded newspapers, and kitchen scraps like vegetable and fruit peelings (no eggs shells or any meat type scraps) and keep it watered down and keep mixing it around and it will turn into great fertilizer. OR if you're not up to that, you can go to a reputable nursery and buy 2 or 3 different kinds of their compost and mix them together and use it in your Mel's Mixture soil. I'll write more about this topic later too.
