Urban Homestead Garden (squarefoot gardening abridged)

I'm sure the baby was fine Bobcat - better off than most kids I'm quite sure. Calm the heck down.

And to the wowsers who worry about CCA treated pine - also calm down. The CSIRO says its just fine http://www.csiro.au/content/pt24
Now go back to harming yourselves by stuffing greasy burgers in your mouths and listening to mindless music and leave the poor bloke alone. He's taking time out with the kids and deserves better!

What kind of stuff could you grow in this?

Was just wondering, would it be possible to add some plexiglass (the kind used for shed windows) to the top of this to make it into a temporary greenhouse? Maybe some blocks with notches to hold it in place/slide it out from?

I wouldn't use treated lumber because it might be treated with poisons like arsenic and mercury to keep termites at bay. You can use terracotta troughs instead.

Here is a great article on pressure treated wood for gardening - http://www.finegardening.com/design/articles/pressure-treated-wood-in-beds.aspx

Hey,
This is great! i just finished building this with my girlfriend and it looks great
But a question, my garden, like yours, is also on concrete, how did you find the drainage?

Well its been only 2 days and the water seems to absorbing well or drain away well so i'm sure as soon as i get a large rain ill know more

Great instructable. I love anything that has to do with growing plants, mainly vegetables. However, may I give you 2 small tips.
1. I would make it deep enough where you could put a layer of peagravel, or any kind of rocks to help with adequate drainage, and 2., I would put some form of nonacidic mulch down. You're box looks so nice and neat, I can't imagine what a huge mudddy mess a huge down pour would do to it.
Mulch could be something as simple as wet newspaper.
Just a couple tips, great instructable, I applaud how you have inspired others. Take that as a huge compliment, I normally only make fun of people.

Thanks for these instructions. I printed them off and asked my parents to help me make one for my birthday...now we're making 4 of them because my mom wants some too! This is a really awesome idea and I'm glad I found it.

Amazing project, now all i can think of is fresh strawberries. mmm.... i should start building.

You should put your baby under an umbrella (or at least a hat and gauze shirt) so she doesn't end up covered with wrinkles and spots in forty years.

Awesome, I was planning on starting a SF garden this summer. It's nice to have the steps and pictures of one started successfully. Thanks!

Lovely, favorited. I'd like to have a nice little vegetable garden like this, but I have a tad more room to play with.

The real challenge is to keep my dog from playing in it. Pesky thing that she is sometimes. ; )

I have three pesky pups! My backyard garden has this plastic mesh attached to these posts . The posts work like stakes and just push into the ground. We just overlap one area in lieu of a gate.

I'm sure you could modify this idea to the square foot box by attaching wooden slats, or dowels, to the outside of the box. Then just pull the mesh (or screening would work too) snugly around it.

to keep pests out
1. fencing.
2. raise the bed height
3. training dogs (though 3 year olds, as I equate dogs to being, isn't reliable)

raising the bed 2 thoughts
1. table
2. countertop. table where the space beneath is enclosed and place to store gardening stuff.

whats the best type of wood to use for an organic vegetable garde?

And here's another one our venture partner Claus made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXEJ9OfWBII

SO FUN! xx

Love this!! Thanks for sharing...like the idea of laying the mulch directly under the soil...will be trying this out ourselves, and also the compost box you have in the bed...I did hear that youre supposed to dilute the concentrated compost "juice" 1:10 as it may make your plants grow like crazy but ultimately be just big and not so strong, but I guess yours are going great and trial and error is what its all about! Check out our little video of ours...this was 2 weeks ago now, so we have much more stuff in the bed and more growth now too... http://coexist.es/en/urban-garden-part-one-dani-gary.html thanks again, we'll be back for more! xxx

This is the coolest. Thanks so much.

As a follower of Mel's for over 30 years, I will simply say use whatever materials you have on hand. When laying out the square foot grids, draw a line in the dirt with you finger. Worried about bottom drainage, use layers of newspaper or cardboard. Keep it simple and labor unintensive.

i have an old doorframe. could that be used as a raised bed?

Thanks for the wheelchair accessible tip!

This is going to be my first attempt on doing one of these boxes, can anyone explain how the bottom goes in and what you used?

The bottom as in the to keep the dirt in the box :D, I was thinking of doing one elivated off the ground as I have a lot of foxes going through my garden.

Looks like we have some OSHA peeps all up in this one

I know, it's funny how many comments there were about that and not the project.

I haven't read the book, but this is really a great experiment.
This kind of gardening could make a big difference for potentially millions of people.
The challenge I see is nutrient cycle. There is little soil, so it will quickly be depleted by the vegetables growing in it. So the key is recycling to the maximum. That means all (I mean all) byproducts of growing and eating the vegetables must return to the soil. That includes humanure. So the humanure handbook might be a good complement because there are risks in doing this.
I could see a container, such as a half barrel used to hold the compost on the balcony, at some distance from the planters.
Steve Solomon also has a good organic fertilizer recipe, where you buy bone meal, fish meal, lime and something else I forgot in bulk, and mix it in the right percentage, and then side dress your plants (sprinkle the fertilizer at the sides of the plant).
When the season is over, grow green manure in the same soil, to protect it, and capture nutrients such as nitrogen.
Because it is small scale, the amount of nutrient going out (vegetables) and going in (manure, water, fertilizer...) must be very difficult to balance.
Also, since you don't have must surface, use depth instead to allow your plants to grow generous roots. The way a plant grow is by capturing solar energy in the roots during the day (in the form of chemical compounds, mostly sugar), and draw that energy to grow at night. Plants can't capture sun energy and grow at the same time. So small roots mean small growth. I see soil depth as a crucial parameter of your garden.
To simulate the roots to grow deep, water more generously, but less often, to let the water soak the subsoil, and force the roots to go get it downward once the topsoil has dried.

Andre.

It is also great to kill fungus on fruit trees. Commercial growers use a antifungal that contains urea. Urea is found in urine. Just be sure to cut it 1/4th urine to 3/4 water and don't do it during the heat of the day. If you follow this it won't hurt your plants foliage and it will provide an environment that fungus doesn't like. Plus any that drips off provides nitrogen to the soil.

Actually I've proven that human urine will make grass greener :)

don't ask how I proved that. >.<

On that note, urine should be completely sterile if you're healthy, and is no harm to anybody, unless you enjoy the "zing" of drinking it. Urine also has a helluva lot of nitrogen, and is good for phosphorus and potassium, and it has so much that it can hurt the plants, so it's recommended that you water it down. I found this site, which says it all: http://ezinearticles.com/?Using-Human-Urine-As-A-Liquid-Fertilizer&id=392596

Humanure is a risk for Hepatitis A and other diseases. It must be composted very carefully and thoroughly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanure

this is my garden after two days- thanks again for the instructable.

i just completed my homestead garden and it turned out awesome. Thank you so much for your instructable. I built mine into an 8x4 rectangle (32 1" sections) and i have planeted beets, collards, kale, turnips, and mustard greens. I used Miracle Grow organic garden soil mixed with red georgia soil and some compost- egg shells, fruit and such. I am looking forward to my garden and again thank you. Now i just wish i knew how to build a time released watering system. Any ideas?

just a little tip for anyone having problems with slugs and snails munching their crop -

Put broken egg shells around the edges of your box with something like a hot glue gun. the mix of pointy edges and a porous material means that the slimy buggers dont like it one bit! as for caterpillers im out of ideas unless you cover the area in a fine mesh to keep out all flying critters!

Ha... one time I had a massive amount of caterpillarsjust as I started my crops... not really sure why, but they died off.

and you still ate the crop? u werent worried that maybe thats what was killing the caterpillars

Plus it was far away... they were in a tree stuck in a spider web like thing.

It was in my tree... from what I saw they were kind of... small... almost like they were cut in half... kind of looked like they were in a spider web or something... No I wasn't worried... if it was toxic then all of the other bugs would have died.