My Square Foot Garden Success

In my first year here in TX, I picked up a cheap Aerogarden Ultra at a local overstock store.  It was cheap because it didn’t have a box or instructions and had intermittent electronic issues, but mostly, it worked fine.  I bought the special seed pods that create miniature plants and had myself a little salad garden with lettuce and tomatoes in my kitchen.  But what I really wanted was a full-blown square foot garden like I’d always had in VA.

So last year, which was 2 years into living here, we came up with a solid plan for a garden and spent our Mother’s Day building it as a family.  The irrigation system was the key to success.  I had a great harvest last summer and fall, so I knew we’d implemented a great setup.  In fact, this summer, I’m still harvesting strawberries and kale from last year’s crop, which is still going strong!  I cut back the dinosaur kale, and it quickly grew monstrously large and abundant all over again.  My strawberries are way more productive this second season than in the first, also.

This year, I wanted to use seeds to start my own garden plants indoors instead of picking up plants from the local nursery, so I ordered a seed starter tray that overlays the top of my Aerogarden.  It turned my 7-pod system into a 50-pod seed starter!  The early part of the year was really chaotic at my house, so I got my seeds started a bit late.  But germination is so fast and easy with the Aerogarden system that I quickly made up for lost time.  I planted in late March, and 27 days later, I had already begun transplanting into the garden and still had this left growing in my Aerogarden.

The tomato plants quickly got so tall that I could no longer raise up the light hood, which meant they, too, were ready for transplant! 

It’s been 3 months, and I just transplanted the final 2 pepper plants into the garden.  They were so lush and green and already had peppers and many blooms growing on them!  Taking them from a hydroponic environment into soil in the scorching TX sun is always a big shock to the plants, so I make sure I turn on the irrigation system right away to give them a good soaking.  This really helps with the transition.

So here is what my garden looks like today.  I’ve got squash, zucchini, strawberries, bell peppers of all kinds, green beans, three kinds of tomatoes (cherry, Roma, and 4th of July hybrid), kale, cucumbers, lettuce, and the herbs I planted last year (rosemary, Italian flat-leaf parsley, and chives).  It’s going strong!  We just make sure we water it for half an hour every day.  Again, the irrigation system was the key to success!

I’m very pleased with how well my square foot garden has worked out here in TX.  My neighbors warned me that it was difficult to grow much, and that while plants might be green, they don’t produce because of the harsh sun.  But we seem to have overcome that obstacle!  I’m looking forward to a great harvest this year.