The end of the year has been busy but we have managed to continue movement on the Square Foot Garden Project.  Here are the major developments that have occurred.  

Garden Planning

Mel found some cool software called Garden Planner (click logo for link) that will allow us to plan out the beds using actual planting cycles and pairings that are important in Square Foot Gardening (SFG).  She is now beginning the process of laying out the beds and securing seeds.  We need to be planting some items as soon as the third week in January in order to ensure we have good seedlings prior to the early planting season.  This also allows for some insurance if we don't get our seeding process just right, we can miss the early growing season and still hit the main part of the growing cycle here in TN. 

The Shop

I have been busy getting the shop setup to allow me to utilize all the wood that I have been accumulating over the last several months.  I have been getting some really good deals on materials from the local Home Depot.  They regularly put out culled wood for purchase at pennies on the dollar.  Typically it is all cut to four foot lengths, which in my case is perfect for building our beds.  I will also be able to use some of the spoils for building cut tables and more permanent shelving and benches.   Jensen and I had a good bit of fun building and mounting the peg shelves that we built using dowels and 2x4's.  Makes for very sturdy and efficient shelving.  

My plan is to have one side of the shop that is more of a clean area and all the wood working will happen on the uninsulated side of the shop.  I have a large kerosene jet heater that warms the space in about 3 min even when it is freezing out.  The clean side of the shop will be where I will build out the Arduino based monitors that will be setup on each bed.  The monitors will allow for easy tracking of soil moisture, temperature, amount of sun reception, and wind.  This part of the project is mostly just gaining an understanding of Arduino and how it can be used in small scale growing like we are planning to do.

Garden Beds

• pests
• animals
• drainage
• sloped ground (our property)
• difficulty maintaining large numbers of beds  

These drawbacks coupled with a desire to ensure that the Garden Project was a very "present" in our day to day lives, we decided to go with the standing beds.  This is the same method that most green houses utilize.  They have many benefits including:

• ability to have beds close to high traffic areas around the house.  
• utilize our back deck cover as a trellese for vining plants
• ability to move beds to cover if needed - storms, frost, etc.
• easy to maintain without lots of bending over
• easy to move in and out of shade as needed
• recapture water from irrigation and keep nutrients circulating in soil
• Ability to easily convert to mini greenhouses if needed  

Using some ideas from other gardeners, I designed a simple bed that will allow me to utilize my culled lumber and at the same time provide some flexibility for reuse if we find the standing beds are not working from some reason.  The basic design is shown on the right.  This design will allow the grow box to be taken off of the stand if needed.  The stand will act as general storage and eventually drawer units will be built for each.  

Not yet designed, will be a green house cover that will allow for early and late growing of plants as well as frost protection covers.  This will sit on top of the grow box and will be made of lightwieght materials that will allow for easy install and removal.  One interesting idea that I recently came up with was to create an inflateable greenhouse frame that stays attached to the table sides and when needed is simply inflated.  It has a heater for keeping the plants warm as well.  It could be easily made out of the same kind of material they use for the blow up yard monsters.  It will be interesting to see if I can pull that one off.  

The bottom shelf will be held in place with bolts rather than screws like much of the table.  This will allow for easy movment up and down if needed.  I will likely drill several levels of holes in the legs when I am building the table.

Layout of Garden Beds

Using Google Sketchup, I have managed to model out the shop and the back porch area where we plan to place the garden beds.  Currently we have plans for four 4' x 3' beds and two 4' x 2' beds.  We made add others along the west side of the porch if we have early success with the first growing cycle.    

Sketchup allows for some really interesting modeling of things like sun patterns, ground elevation, placement of trees and the shadows that they cast.  It is really and amazing program.  And it is Free! It really helped us to determine the best placement on the deck area where we will be able to engage it daily.  It also will make it easy to run irrigation to the tables as well as electricity if we have to install heater blankets under the beds (a possibility for cooler parts of the year). 

In addition to the 6 beds (totaling 64 square feed) we have another 4' x 8' space near the base of the porch that can be used for something like strawberries or melons.  While not technically a SFG bed, we suspect that it has good soil for planting as it currently has flowers in it.  

We are not so concerned with big success the first year, just some success.  Fortunately Tennessee has a long growing cycle that is great for many plants, so we have a couple of chances this first year.

I am hoping that this week I will get the first couple of beds built and lighting in the house garage ready for getting seedlings started.  This will be crucial to getting a good first pass at the early part of the season.  

Well, that concludes this update.  I will likely be posting more as we push forward with seeding and indoor starting.