Wow!  I gave up on blogging for quite a while!  I'm back now, mostly because I have begun a square foot garden this year and want to keep a log of how it goes.  I'm excited about having lots of veggies to eat.

For the past two years I have tried the straw bale gardening method.  Basically, that method involves placing straw bales on their sides and planting stuff in them.  It's pretty water intensive, but as the wet bales decompose from the inside the rotting bale is supposed to provide nutrients for the growing garden plants.  The first year it worked pretty well, and although I only had eight bales I got a lot of tomatoes.  The peppers didn't do well, but I have never had peppers do well.  I had a few green beans too.

Last year I had good plants but low yields.  Dunno for sure why.  Fewer bees to polinate?

Anyway, Cathy and I were in Salt Lake City earlier this year, and during our obligatory visit to Deseret Book I found a book on the New Square Foot Garden method by Mel Bartholemew.  I bought the book and became fascinated by his method.  As soon as it started to warm up I got busy and began building garden boxes.  I ended up with four, pictured below.

The only things planted so far are strawberries and garden peas.  It's a little early in the season to plant much else yet because it's probably going to freeze again.    I will update as I get things going.

I also recently found an item called the Grow Box.  I ordered my seeds from Gurneys and when the arrived the came with an ad for the box.  It looked really good too, so I bought three of them.  What's cool about the grow box is that it can be used anywhere, and contains its own water supply.  I am going to compare the square foot garden to the Grow Box garden and see how they do.  Below is a photo of a grow box ready for planting.

The square foot boxes are situated so that the irrigation for the lawn will also water the boxes.  The Grow Boxes have their own four-gallon water supply in the base.