PocketCoinage

It’s early February and spring is right around the corner; even though Milltown Mel predicted six more weeks of winter!  I already placed a seed order with Park Seed and I will need sow some of them indoors by the end of the month.  The last day of frost for Central New Jersey is approximately May 15th.  Starting certain seeds indoors, such as tomatoes, will yield crops earlier.  I plan on using my sun porch with a seedling heat mat to start things off.  Last year I did it without the heat mat and had great success.  However, it was nothing like a hot house!

Last year I build a raised bed with my dad to plant tomatoes, peas, spinach, and radishes.  It is a 16′ x 4′ full sun garden, surrounded by deer netting, that produced a lot of vegetables!  This year, I want to try Square Foot Gardening to make better use of this space.  Square Foot Gardening involves creating 1′ x 1′ squares within your raised bed.  The concept here is you can make more efficient use of the space when you break it down into smaller plots versus having a large one.  For example, you can fit one tomato plant per square foot and about twelve onions (depending on type) per square foot.  The raised bed we built last year is approximately 64 square foot.  In theory, I should be able to make 64 separate gardens and rotate them accordingly.  So if I wanted to, I can plant 64 tomatoes or 768 onions!

This year I want to build a few more raised garden beds.  Instead of making one long one, I would like to make multiple small ones.  This way, it will be easier to tend from all sides.  It was a big pain in the neck to walk through the tomatoes last year.  I’m thinking about making them 4′ x 4′ or 16′ x 2′.

I will have more updates once I start the seedlings and build the raised beds!