With the memories of last summer’s disappointing harvest still fresh in our minds, Kristen and I began our garden planning yesterday.  This is the only time of year when the garden can truly be perfect, because so far it exists only in our minds.  The various forces of nature – the sun, the rain, the wind, the bugs, the birds, the diseases, the temperamental irrigation system, the neighborhood cats – have not yet begun their efforts to destroy everything we try to create.

The key highlight of this year’s plan is to put most of the vegetable garden up on top of the garage roof.  We hope to transform an otherwise bleak and useless space into something beautiful and useful. 

Last year we more-or-less followed the Square Foot Gardening method, which we find is ideal for an urban garden where space is at a premium.  Actually, according to Mel Bartholomew, SFG’s inventor, it is ideal for any garden because it not only uses far less space than a conventional garden, it uses far fewer resources and requires less maintenance.  This year we plan to follow the SFG method as closely as possible. 

The roof of the garage is about 450 square feet.  In that area we will build eight planter boxes covering a total of about 160 sq ft.  We plan to have four more boxes in the main yard for another 64 sq ft.  This gives a total of about 220 sq ft.  Hopefully we are not making a common rookie-gardener mistake and biting off more than we can chew.  But most of this additional space, closer to the house, will have flowers, not vegetables.  Flowers don’t require nearly as much work as vegetables do.

The boxes will be filled with a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite and compost.  There is no actual soil, so the boxes will stay relatively light weight and won’t collapse the garage roof.  Yes, vermiculite and peat moss are non-renewable resources, but the theory is that you use far less of it than you would with a traditional garden and because you reuse this same mix year after year, just adding new compost each time you plant.

Our first step was to draw out our plan on graph paper and plot the location of each plant.  Then we made a calendar of when we should be taking each step.  The SFG book tells you how many plants to put in each square foot: 16 carrots per square, 4 corn, 1 basil, 2 sunflowers, etc.

• This weekend we will be building a seed starting rack with shelves and lights for starting our seeds inside.  A few weeks ago we purchased a whole slew of heirloom seeds from Seed Savers Exchange.
• Each week from now until early April we will be starting different seeds indoors, starting with broccoli and kale this weekend.
• April 10 is the estimated date of the last frost in DC.  We’ll actually start planting some of the hardier plants outside before then.
• Prior to that, by the end of March, we will have to have shored up the garage roof (it has a few rafters that need to be replaced), built some steps from the main yard to the roof (only about 3 feet high), and built at least some of our planter boxes.
• Some of the first plants to go outside will need to be protected by cold frames that will keep them from getting killed by the cold weather.  This is basically just some plastic sheeting on a frame that protects them from the wind and cold air overnight.
• Starting in late March we’ll start planting seeds directly outside, and when the weather starts to warm up by the end of April, we should start to get our first harvests of lettuce and other greens.
• By May and June everything should be growing like gangbusters, and we’ll have our first tomatoes in June.  The corn will be taller than us (or Kristen, anyway) and we’ll have more squash and cucumbers than we can handle.

Of course reality will intrude on our plans soon enough.  Last year we had a very wet spring, which nearly killed all of our tomato plants.  They never really recovered in time to give us more than a few tomatoes each.  Then, atypical even for DC, we had a week of 100 degree days in June, which caused all of our cool-loving lettuce, broccoli and greens to bolt before giving any produce.  The little that remained was mostly eaten by harlequin beetles and slugs.

I’m sure we’ll have many of those same challenges again this year, but at least we won’t be handicapping ourselves by starting everything too late and not planning properly.  Hopefully we won’t get too lost in weeding and squashing bugs and we’ll have time to update the blog with photos and descriptions of our progress.