Building our Square Foot Garden (2)

I ended up not doing much work on the DS1's vegetable garden last weekend. I spent a while chatting with my parents on Sunday afternoon when I dropped DS1 off for a visit, and then when I started digging out the remaining grass and levelling the area I got a bad headache and called it quits for the rest of Sunday afternoon.

I did manage to track down a supplier of 'bulk' bags of vermiculite in Sydney via the internet. On Monday I ordered 2x100L bags for $72 ($24 each plus $24 delivery), which is less than 1/4 the price per L that I paid for the 5L bags from Bunnings on Saturday! The bulk vermiculate was delivered today, so when I have a day off work on Friday I'll return the small bags to Bunnings and exchange them for some additional blocks of compressed cocopeat. If I get the boxes built on Friday and varnished I should be able to mix the soil mix on the weekend and DS1 can start planting out the seedlings he got for his birthday.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2008

Building our Square Foot Garden

I bought more materials today for constructing DS1's vegetable garden. It's loosely based on Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening" concept, but I may end up compromising on the soil composition. The official "Mel's Mix" is supposed to be 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite. I had 1 cubic meter of "vegetable soil" delivered last Wednesday (which is around 75% compost), so today I wanted to purchase some peat moss and vermiculite to make up the required mix. It turned out that peat moss is not readily available, so the closest I could get was Cocopeat, which has very similar properties to peat moss, but is produced sustainably from coconut husks rather than strip mining peat bogs. Although I could only buy it in small packages (a brick that makes up 15L of peat when rehydrated), this isn't too expensive at $1.81 per pack (around $120 per cubic meter).

The vermiculite was another story. Although it's available (in small packs), the cost is very high at $7.51 per 5L bag. That works out the $1,500 per cubic meter, which is ridiculous. I bought three packs, but unless I can source vermiculite in bulk for lower cost I'll have to use around 5% rather than 35% vermiculite in my soil mix.

I'm building two 5' x 3' wood boxes for the vegetable garden, which will fit nicely into the available courtyard outside DS1's bedroom window. I happen to have a few nice 88x44cm granite slabs (benchtops that someone was throwing out when remodelling a kitchen) that will make a nice access path between the garden boxes. Each box has a volume of 1/3 cubic meter and will provide 24 square "plots" for planting a variety of DS1's favourite vegetables.

I also bought a timer tap and a simple sprinkler, so DS1 can just turn on the timer each morning before school to give the vegetable garden a good watering a few days a week. On the days when watering by hose isn't permitted he can keep the plants moist using his new watering can.

Tommorrow I'll cut and assemble the pine garden boxes and give them a coat of marine varnish spray. The boxes will be sitting on a layer of leaf mulch and be lined with a damp course (to make the wood box last a bit longer). Since the varnish takes 8 hours to dry we probably won't be able to fill them with soil and start planting seedlings and seeds until next weekend. We're starting with a selection of carrots, onions, brocolli, cauliflower, corn and chinese cabbage. I'll have to buy a few potatoes with lots of eyes at the supermarket and leave them in the sun to see if any sprout and can be planted.

This vegetable patch looks like it will end up costing a few hundred dollars altogether in materials (it could be built much cheaper using second hand lumber etc) and take several hours work putting it together. It should provide lots of fun for DS1 (and some educational value), but I'll be interested to see how much produce we get from this small area, and will track the quantities and calculate their value (based on the local supermarket prices).



I'll post some before and after shots of the couryard and assembled garden boxes, then some photos of whatever produce we get by springtime.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2008

What to buy the 8-year old that has everything?

DS1 turned 8 today, so we've been watching out for suitable gifts the past couple of months. I don't go too frugal when it comes to presents for the family, but I also don't want to waste money on expensive plastic toys that get broken or discarded after a few days. He already has plenty of "father-and-son" things from previous birthdays, so this year I concentrated on items he can enjoy by himself with minimal supervision or assistance.

He'd received a small digital camera from my parents last Christmas, and had a lot of fun taking pictures at the zoo and other family outings. Unfortunately he'd dropped it one too many times, so it now has the bad habit of erasing all the photos from memory at random intervals. I spotted a more up-market digital camera (5 megapixel, 3x optical zoom, LCD screen, SD-card memory) on sale at Aldi recently, so we decided to buy it for his birthday as a "shared" birthday gift from his parents and grandparents. $159 split between four adults seemed quite reasonable. DW and I will make sure we handle the transport of this new camera, and just hand it to DS1 when he wants to take a photo!

He also likes gardening, although our previous attempt to grow some carrots in our rather poor garden soil wasn't a success. Last weekend I pulled out a couple of straggly plants from the flower bed in the alcove outside his bedroom window, and moved the edging to create a small vegetable patch (2.8m x 1.7m). I ordered a cubic meter of 'vegetable soil' (50% mushroom compost, 50% sand, soil, cow manure and ash) from the local garden centre ($77 delivered) which was delivered onto our driveway this morning for his birthday. I enjoyed telling him he was getting a pile of dirt for his birthday ;)

While searching for information about what vegetables are best suited for a child try cultivating, I came across the interesting site squarefootgardening.com which provides information on grid-based, raised-bed gardens which looks promising. The main benefit of this system is that is doesn't require any digging to try to "improve" your existing soil, and has been used for school gardening projects with great success. In order to mimic the special "Mel's Mix" (1/3 compost, 1/3 peat, 1/3 vermiculite) for this type of garden I'll need to add some bags of peat and vermiculite to the "vegetable soil" - a project for this weekend. I'll also need to finish preparing the vegetable patch by clearing the remaining grass, putting down a layer of leaf mulch, and using some boards to create a couple of 6'x4' garden boxes with an access path down the centre.

My parents have bought a small "greenhouse" for propagating cuttings and seedlings, and will be getting him some small gardening tools. I'll be shopping for seed packets with him next weekend. With any luck we may end up getting fresh, organic vegetables from DS1's garden later this year. As an added incentive I may get DS1 to weigh out his "produce" and I'll pay him the going rate for his vegetables (based on current supermarket prices). The SFG website also mentions selling organic produce as a hobby business, so he may add this sideline to his busking "business".



Copyright Enough Wealth 2008