square foot variation

[solway cropper]

I thought I’d share my idea for a variation on the square foot gardening theme with you all. You’ll see from the pics that each ‘square foot’ has a real physical boundary in the shape of an upturned plastic fruit/veg box. The advantage of this is that it provides a barrier against pests/predators. This is something I need as I live in the country surrounded by hungry birds!

It is all a bit experimental and I must admit it’s a bit of a hotch-potch and will need a little more thought if I’m to pursue it next year but some of the squares are already on their second crop and will likely produce a third by the end of the year.

I know roughly what a plot the same size produced last year by conventional row planting and I’m waiting to see if I can exceed that this year. The onions, by the way, were overwintered and in the ground before I decided on this experiment.

Pics show various stages of development.

[chengjing]

Nice. It looks really pretty with blue edge.

[Suky]

Looks good. Do the crates have their bases removed?

[maytreefrannie]

It looks great - where did you get the boxes/crates?

[maytreefrannie]

Another sorta-variation I have is a bin with carrots, surrounded by onions. In the middle is a flowering apple twiglet from an apple stick I used to support peas previously. In between the carrot tops and onions are loads of borage leaves, self seeded around the garden.

It looked so neat originally when I sowed carrot seeds around the tiny apple twiglet, then did a ring of onions on the outside (to deter carrot fly).

Now the whole thing looks wild but lovely, I wonder what it'll look like when the borage flowers.

[solway cropper]

I forgot to say that I cut the bottoms from the boxes with a craft knife. I scrounge them from the local open market traders but you might get them from supermarkets, not sure what they do with theirs.