SFG: Mistakes, I've Made a Few

Okay, I've made more than a "few" mistakes. I admit it.

Reader iEye commented: "...I actually live in the same area and I'm about to start square foot gardening myself... Considering we are practically neighbors; do you have any concerns, problems, or advice that are more specific to this city and environment?"

Not sure how many of my problems are specific to this local environment. This is more a listing of my regrets. Here is my wisdom, for what it's worth, as a veteran of 2.2 years of SFG in Vancouver. It may be a case of the blind leading the not so blind, but here goes.

Location

If I had to do it all over again, I would definitely choose a better location for the garden. When I moved the garden, I found that the soil was overgrown with a strange root system, very strong and fine roots, that managed to grow up through the landscaping cloth.

I figured out later that it was the tree roots from the neighbour's forest. Somehow the trees managed to find my trove of fertile soil and shot out roots 5m away into my yard and up into my raised bed. The solution is either to get better landscape cloth--mine was quite weak after only two years--and to locate it further away from any nearby trees than you might think necessary. There were no visible above ground roots anywhere near my garden in its first location. I bought the cheapest landscape cloth. This time out I bought professional grade landscape cloth.

Planting Too Late

I tried to follow the advice this year of not planting until after a certain nighttime temperature was held. That was a mistake. Every year I don't plant early enough. This year I planted in mid-May. One of my expert gardening friends planted theirs a good 3-4 weeks before me. Do you think *they* waited for the right nighttime temperatures? NOPE. Their garden is doing much much better as their plants were already very far along before I even planted a single seed. Already my spinach is bolting and looking gangly. I should have planted it much sooner, and planted new plants every two weeks after. Next year I'm planting in April.

Patience: Compost Not Ready

Second point. This year's garden is doing fairly well, but the percentage germination seems to be lower than I remember with my older seeds. The carrots are maybe at 50%. Neither of my kabocha (squash) came up at all. Either the seeds are too old, or maybe the compost was not quite ready yet when I used it. If I did it over again, I would wait at least a few days before planting the seeds, and wet the soil thoroughly. At least that would eliminate the soil as being the problem.

The Grid Material

I originally used thin wood dowels from Kerrisdale lumber for the grid system. It fell apart two years later. I'm now using wild bamboo harvested from my neighbour's invasive bamboo which is growing in my backyard. It's free and it's not likely to fall apart. The wet weather in Vancouver was just too much for the thin wood dowels.

Sharing Seeds

I now have about 10 envelopes of seeds. I bought too many seeds for such a small garden. I should really split the seeds with a fellow vegetable gardener, because even the smallest quantities I bought from Westcoast Seeds are too much. Seeds have a shelf life of a few years at most (some longer) and as they age, fewer will germinate.

Strawberries

This is my third year and finally I was able to harvest a few berries without the animals getting to them first... Containers off the ground are better for strawberries in my "wild" urban backyard in the middle of the city. I'm not sure what is eating my berries, but my guesses are: rats or birds. When I transferred the garden over, I potted some of my strawberry plants and put them in a raised area under netting. So for the first time, some berries coloured and were eaten by me. Unfortunately, the berries are sour and not sweet like store bought, so it is the first instance where what I have grown is not as good as the store. I bought the strawberries from David Hunter Garden Centre, and they are just not doing all that well under my novice care.

Zucchini
This is my first year growing zucchini. The plant is already taking over a substantial amount of real estate and no zucchini yet. I should have planted it in another location, because those big leaves shade so much of my other plants and make those squares useless.

Planning

Okay, well this is not a mistake I made. It's just a great place to share this fantastic planning tool I found at Gardener's Supply Company. This tool allows you to map out what you're planting. Very cool.