 |
 |
|
|
|
| Deck Gardens |
|
|
|
DON’T HAVE ANY ROOM FOR A GARDEN? YES YOU DO - if you have a deck, patio, porch, or rooftop; Square Foot Gardening fits in anywhere. Now to get started, just build some boxes of any size that fit your space. Give them a plywood bottom at least 5/8” thick with ¼” drainage holes drilled one per square foot and an extra one in each corner. Fill the box with Mel’s Mix, lay down your grid, and start planting. It’s that simple and that easy. How deep does the soil have to be? Six inches is enough, eight inches is better, but in one of these photos we have used 1” x 4” lumber so the soil was just a little over three inches deep. How can the plants grow in such shallow soil? The secret is in the soil. Follow my formula for Mel’s Mix (see our “how to” page) and use homemade compost (more about that in a later column).
With Square Foot Gardening, a deck garden is really no different than a backyard garden. You need room to walk around your boxes so you never walk on the growing soil. You lay down a grid and then you merely start planting each square foot with a different crop. Look up the plant spacing in the book (See Page 101) – remember it’s either 1, 4, 9, or 16 plants per square foot. Let’s go back to the grid for just a moment. In the photographs of these earlier gardens, we used white twine for a grid. Today’s advice is to find a rigid piece of wood or plastic (like molding strips, wood lath or a recycled Venetian blind) for your grid. It’s much, much better. With string you have to put in nails or screws. The string rots and breaks, gets dirty easily etc. etc. So many people wanted the rigid grids but couldn’t find the right material, so we had them fabricated and started offering them on our catalog page as a kit. The
size and type Just think of your next party as your guests step out on your deck and you snip fresh herbs or lettuce or pull ripe radishes from your garden. Won’t they be impressed? Now if you don’t have a deck for a deck garden, well, just get busy and build one! |
|||
What
to plant?
Well it can be all flowers, all vegetables or all herbs but I like
to mix all three in the same garden no matter where it is located.
If you raise your boxes above the floor level, it adds a great deal of
interest to the setting and, speaking of setting – why not provide a sit-down
garden if it’s for an elderly person – or notice the railing boxes in
the photograph for stand-up, no bending over gardening. That will save
those knees.
of lumber
to use for the sides is 1” x 6” pine, cedar or redwood. (We
don’t recommend treated lumber for growing edibles.) The size of
your boxes depends really on the size of your deck and how artistic you
become. 1 foot x 4 foot boxes bolted to your railing are great.
For the open areas, 3 foot x 3 foot or even 2 foot x 4 foot can be arranged
in any different pattern and with plywood bottoms, they become movable
so it will be just like rearranging your furniture every season.