I filmed a quick video of my home testing garden. We’re hoping to get our video skills up to the mediocrity of our photography skills, but for now you will have to bear with us.
Jackson (my almost 2 year old son.) is “helping” me in the video. Right after I finished filming he “helped” me harvest some onions earlier than I planned. 
I’d love to see a your of your gardens, just email me a link or leave a comment.
You read our first article on potatoes, you have your potatoes planted in your container and a few weeks have passed (You’ve been watering often right?) you should be seeing potato sprouts. Let these sprouts grow until most of them are about 12 inches tall. Now it is time for a process called “earthing up.”
Earthing up is the prime reason I grow my potatoes in tall containers. It makes this process especially easy. Just take your compost mix and add one trowel full at a time - being careful not to damage the leaves. Keep doing this until you have added four inches of compost.
Now is a good time to fertilize. If you can find it, add 10-20-20 fertilizer as the instructions reccomend. I could not find it so I found a slow release tomato fertilizer that is 3-4-6, that should be fine for this application and great for my tomatoes. A fertilizer like this is great for potatoes because it does not focus on Nitrogen (The first of the three numbers.) Nitrogen is what you add when you want the plant to really focus on putting on new leaves. Leaves are not your focus with potatoes.
Water well.
Repeat the earthing up process every time your plants reach 12 inches from the surface of the soil. Stop when you have four to six inches remaining in the container.
Now that you are an expert, let me tell you how not to plant your potato box.
I made a mistake. There, I admitted it. My first real mistake of the year. I mean, aside from not netting my strawberries soon enough, planting radishes too close to the soaker hose, planting old spinach seeds that only germinated 50% of the time, forgetting to start seeds indoors this year, not clearing the maple tree seeds before they sprouted, failing to get my lemon cucumbers to germinate, not having my tomato cages ready yet, losing a piece from my EarthBox and underfilling both of my self watering planters. Other than those things, this is my first real mistake of the year.
When I bought my seed potatoes this year I was tempted by variety. I bought four varieties of potatoes. Three varieties went in one box and the remaining variety went in to the other box. With most crops you can plant this way with no reprocussions, but since potatoes require the addition of more soil over time, this is a bad idea.
What happened to me is that some varieties shot up to 12 inches tall in no time while others were just sprouting. That meant that for one plant it was time to add 4 inches of soil and for another it would be a week or more before it’s turn.
Everything turned out fine as I earthed up, I was just not able to add soil as consistantly as I had hoped to. That means I may not get quite as many clutches of potatoes.
In the box with one variety I am seeing even growth and it very easy to keep things growing. (Pay no attention to the blue container, my 2 year old garden helper likes to throw things in the potato bins.)
Side note: Potatoes can take a beating from 2 year olds. Look at him looming ominously gazing in the background of the picture below. What is he going to throw in next? Tennis ball? Toy shovel? A bucket? His bubble mower? Could be anything.
I’ve gotten out of the habit of eating salads in the last few months. When I was really focused on my health I tried to eat a salad every night, but lately I am lucky to eat one a week. In the early summer it becomes really easy to make a great salad in no time when you have a garden.
When the spinach is ready to be thinned you end up with a handful of tender young spinach that is best the same day it’s picked. These are the times that it is nice to have a big variety in the garden. Take a walk around the garden and grab a little bit of anything you like. Here’s what I added to my salad:
Bring it in the house, chop everything up - make sure that the more flavorful herbs are chopped fine and evenly distributed.
For a dressing, simple is best. Just remember you want three parts oil to one part acid. Here’s the ingredients I used.
Mix it up lightly with your fingertips, add some toasted sesame seeds and enjoy.
A man cannot live by gardening alone. What? Did you think that all I do is garden? I’m a complex man, there are layers and layers to me man! Depth I say! For example, sometimes I play gardening related video games.
Plants vs Zombies is the latest PC and Mac game from PopCap games. They have made several hit games and I would wager that most people – even those with just a passing interest in games - have played one of their titles. These games include Zuma, Bejeweled and - what might be the seminal work in Unicorn related gaming - Peggle.
From the start, Plants vs Zombies is brimming with personality. The task at hand is to defend your home from brain-starved zombies.
Surely you – being my well educated reader - have taken the standard zombie apocalypse precautions. I assume your kit contains all the standard items:
What Plants Vs Zombies taught me is that I forgot about my most important self defense skill. Square Foot Gardening.
In the game you place plants in a grid to defend against a relentless onslaught of the undead (Just like Square Foot Gardening sorta!)
Plants vs Zombies does a great job of holding your hand in the beginning of the game. One plant at a time it increases your arsenal, but it limits you to selecting a subset of plants for the task at hand.
The game keeps the maps fresh throughout the game and slowly introduces the cast of enemies to make sure you are always on your toes. They Zombies are seriously funny, not video game funny, actually funny. When the Michael Jackson zombie appeared on my screen I actually laughed out loud. He is glorious.
The game has crisp colorful graphics when ran at it’s native (small) resolution in a window, but I do wish that when I ran the game full screen that the graphics would scale up smoothly. Instead the graphics just look pixelated.
Since I am an iPhone user and a Nintendo DS owner, I do keep thinking that this game would be a good fit for either of those systems instead of PC. But the low system requirements and the well designed automatic pausing when you click on another window convinced me that the PC version is perfectly usable.
At just $20 you will surely get more bang for your buck than almost any other game. I suggest installing it on your laptop, plop down in a nice chair in your living room and kiss the hours goodbye.
Remember when you were in second grade and you thought you were awesome because you stuck toothpick in a potato, sat it on top of a cup of water and watched it sprout? Well you were awesome. You never let anyone tell you different. Even if you were wearing a Hypercolor sweatshirt with Zubaz pants. Those pink pit stains were sweet.
Well, tiny container gardening can still be awesome. There are just some challenges to overcome. Small volumes of soil dry out fast and it can be more challenging to keep them well fed.
Well, I found a great website with some details on how do keep a small container garden healthy, and even how to mount it vertically. Check out the article here:
http://containergardening.wordpress.com/great-ideas-for-container-gardening/
Every week we make ourselves available for Q&A on Twitter. Here are some recent tips.
Join in the conversation! Talk to us on Twitter or leave a question here for the next Twitter Tips post.
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Now that you have read part one in our series and you have collected all the materials that you need, you are ready to assemble your Square Foot Garden. First let me say that anyone can do this. Seriously. I am more awkward in a lumber yard than Michael Vick at Humane Society convention.
That joke work for you? No? Too dated? It’s okay, I have more.
I am more awkward in a lumber yard than Sandra Huxtable when she told her parents Clair and Cliff that she was going to skip graduate school and open a wilderness store.
Wow, a Cosby Show reference. That was really dated.
I am more awkward in a lumber yard than Willy Wonka at an Oompa Loompa union meeting when they realize that they are being paid in cheap chocolate and demand a living wage with full dental.
Too obscure? Okay, I give up, but you get the point. I am totally awkward in a lumber yard.
1: Cut the Boards
First you need your boards to be the right length. You will need two 8′ boards (You can buy them at that length) and two 4′ boards (My incredible math skills tell me you can buy one 8′ board cut it in half.)
Notice: My instructions will technically give you a box with an interior space that is 4′ x 7′ 9″. If you really need it to be exactly 4′ x 8′ then you probably should not be getting your construction instructions from me.
2: Drill the Holes
Next you need to drill some holes where you are going to insert screws. That means three holes at each end of the 8′ boards about 1/2″ from the end.
3: Screw the Boards Together
Now that you have the holes all pre-drilled it is time to line everything up and screw the box together. I suggest laying the boards out on a flat surface to make sure everything will line up well enough. The box does not have to be perfect, but if any of your boards are too warped you will have trouble getting the corners to align.
Dufus alert: Make sure you are using the appropriate bits for the screws you bought. The appropriate bit is almost for sure a #2 Philips head. Also you may want to not skimp on the screws like I did. I got the silver colored inexpensive deck screws. Some people have advised me that you should get the darker more expensive screws. This will hopefully let you avoid stripping one screw after another. Did that last sentence sound dirty to anyone else?
4: Seal the bottom
Now that you have a totally awesome box you need to seal off the bottom so you can keep your soil mix separate from the native soil.
For this step I am assuming your box will end up on the ground where some grass currently is. There are other methods for special situations. For example, people that have trouble bending down - the elderly for example - can use boxes that have a solid wood bottom so they can be lifted to table height.
Roll out your landscape fabric and make sure you have enough to cover the entire bottom of the container. Now staple the fabric to the box every 12″ or so all the way around.
Bonus Infestation Tip: Have that gopher from Caddyshack always popping up and gyrating all over your yard to classic Kenny Loggins songs? You may want to add a couple of layers of chicken wire along with the landscaping fabric. This will create a physical barrier that will keep burrowing animals from getting in to your raised bed.
5: Add the Growing Mix
Now that you have your raised bed fully assembled you need to put it in place. After we add the soil-free mix it will be more challenging to move it than a… nevermind. No more “jokes”. Just put the box where you want it.
The mix is very simple. It is:
Pour the ingredients in to make three even piles and then mix thoroughly.
When you are done your mix should look something like this and it should be almost to the top of the box.
6: Build a Grid
Now you have something that looks like a garden! Time to setup the grid. The grid is the part that makes this technique go from raised bed gardening to Square Foot Gardening. You can make this grid any way you like. Some people seem to prefer hard materials for the dividers. They will use things like thin strips of wood, cheap window blinds, etc. But I prefer something I can easily remove and replace whenever I want.
What I use as a divider is Mason’s string. People installing concrete use it to mark the lines where they will be doing their work. It’s a lot like me. It practically glows in the sunlight, it’s durable, it does not move much once you get it installed and it’s cheap.
Measure at the center of the boards on the top of the box and mark every 12″. These locations are where you are going to install screws to mount the Mason’s string on. Now predrill each mark as close to the center of the board as possible and insert a screw in to each drilled hole. Make sure you leave a centimeter or so of the screw above the surface so you can tie the string to it.
Click here to view a video of how I installed the grid. After I was done I tightened the end screws to make sure the knots hold.
In the next post in this series I will tell you how to plant in each square. To hold you over until then check out my article on Planning your Square Foot Garden planting in Excel.
Planning out a timeline for each of a few dozen squares in a Square Foot Garden can be daunting. There are a lot of variables to consider.
When do you have to pull out the plants to still have time for the summer plants?
Do you have time to fit three plantings in one square?
How do I get that hottie at Starbucks to pay attention to me?
Do these pants make me look fat?
Is it weird that touching cottonballs grosses me out?
NOTICE: My solition will not answer all of these questions.
Visualizing the data is key to understanding it. This year I used Microsoft Excel with some special formulas and formatting to see where I could fit in all the crops I want. Just click the link below to download my template. I left some data in the sheet to help you get started.
Here’s how to use it:
Have any questions? Just ask here or on Twitter.
Potatoes suck to grow. There, I said it. There’s a laundry list of problems with them:
But after reading about a couple of other methods like this one I decided to try them out.
I found a 36 gallon Rubbermaid storage container on sale for $9 and thought it would be a good fit. The nice thing about containers for potatoes is that you can dump the soil on a tarp at the end of the year, separate out your potatoes and you are done. No shovels involved!
36 Gallon Rubbermaid storage container
Here’s what I have done:
Bought a few pounds of seed potatoes and left them on a sunny windowsill until sprouts were coming out of the eyes.
Drilled holes all over the bottom of the container every few inches to make sure water could drain.
Here are the holes when I finished.
Put a layer of landscaping fabric to make sure the soil does not seep out of the box.
Mix some soil for the box that is half compost. Put 4 inches of compost in the bottom and distribute your seed potatoes as seen here.
Now when you cover the potatoes with a thin layer of soil you are all set for a while.
Soon the plants will sprout and start growing quickly. When they are 12″ tall, add 4 more inches of dirt. Repeat this step until the container is full, add some fertilizer a couple of times throughout the season and you should have more potatoes than you know what to do with.
As my crop grows I will share pictures and add a second post about the harvest.
How do you grow potatoes?
Click here to read part two of our series. Growing Potatoes in Storage Bins - Part Two: Earthing Up
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