From “square foot” gardens to gardening in pots, I am a big fan of growing fruits and vegetables at home.  Does having backyard chickens and a garden make me some kind of granola nut crunchy hippie? Nope.  Am I a part of the “prepper” movement?  Nope.  I’m just a guy who is having fun on his acre of land.  If you must put a title on it, I prefer “urban hippie.”

I have fond memories of maintaining big gardens with my parents.  Walking through corn plants that were well over my head.  Getting itchy arms from reaching into the squash plants to twist off yellow and green squash.  The time I put a spading fork through my shoe right between my toes.  Now I spend a lot of time outside with my girls letting them garden as little or as much as they care to. They get super dirty, run through freshly planted rows and spill seeds…but it is truly a blessing!

We have two gardens out back.  One is a square foot garden behind our house and the other is a large garden behind my parent’s house.  (In case you’re new here, my wife and I built our house next door to my parent’s house.)  Let’s start off by talking a bit about the square foot garden….

Square foot gardening is a fun and easy way to start a productive garden in any amount of space.  There are kits out there for building a garden, but don’t waste your money on those.  I used some reclaimed wood from a construction site for the sides of my raised bed garden.  Sometimes if you find a house that is being framed you can nicely ask for the scraps from the rafters.  As long as the boards are about 4′ long and 8″ across you should be in good shape.  If you know someone in the construction industry they might be able to grab these scraps for you too.

The garden we have out back is 4′ x 4’…that’s 16 square feet of productivity.  Find yourself a relatively level spot in your yard with a fair amount of sunlight.  I cut the boards to a uniform length and shot three screws through each corner to make a quick square.  I didn’t even bother clearing the grass out where i was going to place the garden.  I laid down 3 or 4 layers of newspaper and plopped down my square.

For dirt I went to a great place in the DFW area called Living Earth.  There are multiple locations but the one I went to is in the back of the Arlington municipal dump.  They take wood, grass, leaves and other organic materials to create their own organic soil mixes on site.  A 1/2 yard of of their vegetable garden mix ran about $32 and was actually enough dirt for close to two square foot gardens like mine.  Call ahead to check pricing and availability.

Once the soil is in the frame, you can mark off the squares with string like I did for the first few years, or not.  There are plenty of sites that will help you figure out how many plants of a certain variety can be planted in a square foot.

Quick tip: For best results cover the surface of your garden with chipped wood once the plants are established.  Don’t use mulch, use chipped wood.  Living Earth has chipped wood and if you are driving a truck you can usually work out a deal to get a little bit to go along with your soil.  More info on chipped wood later in this post.

To fully automate the system you can either install a drip irrigation system, or a soaker hose which is the method I use.  Put the soaker hose on a timer on your faucet and you’re fully automated.  A square foot garden with chipped wood cover only needs to be watered once (maybe twice) a week even in the hottest weather.

I also mentioned that we have a big garden.  It is the same plot of land that we gardened in when I was a kid.  Big plot gardening can be much more expensive and challenging.  The first thing you’ll need is a tiller.  Dad had used Troy-bilt tillers for years but recently bought a Craftsman rear-tine tiller.  This Sears tiller is the best one I have ever used.  It makes breaking new soil effortless with a gear setting that allows the tines to dig in reverse while the wheels are going forward.  This forces the tiller to dig deep into the soil.  Just the other day I pulled the tiller out for a quick 15 minute till to turn soil for some new plantings.  The only problem…good tillers are expensive machines.

Working organic material into a large plot garden can be a challenge too, because it takes so much!  We work in leaves, chicken manure, compost and other material that we generate.  Weeds and efficient irrigation also tend to be an issue in larger gardens.

I recently watched the “Back to Eden” movie online and it has challenged my thought process on gardening.  Once I find a reliable source for large quantities of wood chip, I plan to try this method on half of the large garden.  It sounds a lot better than what we’re doing now.

Currently we have onions, tomatoes, peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, butternut squash, watermelon, yellow corn, glass gem corn, snap peas, black eyed peas and pumpkin planted in the big garden. We have spinach, kale, carrots, tomatoes and herbs in the square foot garden.  We also have apricot and peach trees out back.

Will you save money running a garden in your backyard?  Probably not.  Will the produce be some of the best you have ever tasted? Absolutely!  Will you know what has been done in the production of that food? For sure.  Will you be more connected with the earth and God’s process and time for making things happen? Definitely!

If you’re pretty frugal and can scrounge up supplies, you can setup your own square foot garden in your backyard for just the cost of soil.  Some cities (or their waste providers) even have organic compost for free or ‘dirt cheap.’  You might check to see if your city or waste service provider has a program like that.  You could potentially get going for just the cost of seeds.  Happy gardening!

Here are some of my favorite shots from gardening over the last few years…