That looks amazing! And if that is a "small" garden, then mine is positively minuscule. My garden wants to grow up and look like yours someday : )

I was also intrigued by and took a four hour road trip for Azomite.

Good luck this season and I hope you post more pics as things get underway.

Chrissy

Your garden so neat, just lovely to look at. Good luck with it, I am sure it will produce plenty of veggies for you. :o)

WOW Julie! Your garden looks great, very promising. And you are doing your homework, good for you. The more organic materials you add to your soil, it will regard you in the long run. You will get fantastic harvests, let us know about your progress.

Silvia

Where in Deland did you find the Azomite?

Love the garden...very orderly (unlike ours)

Trust me, that is not a SMALL garden! LOL I really envy you. It looks awesome.

Azomite in Deland? I'm going to guess "Call Paul 386-801-5833" from craigslist. Though, at his prices I would drive to Debary Nursery and buy it from them. A bit cheaper.

There is also somebody who packages aged compost with azomite and maybe something else in Deland. I'll see if I can find the name.

~dianne

Very nice Julie! You remind me of me before I decided to add flowers to the garden and things became Helter-Skelter :-) :-( It's obvious your work is either in the math or science field ;-)

Tom

Hey! Maybe she's a programmer, all those ones and zeros. A binary code message :)

~dianne

Thank you all for the warm welcome and compliments on our garden!

Starryrider - we found the Azomite from Quality Green Specialists. We called and they weren't open on Saturday but Paul (as gardengimp mentioned) offered to meet us there anywhere since we had to travel so far. He was very knowledgeable and helpful and we very much appreciated his time.

Tom - I'm not in the math or sciences. I'm just kind of a neat freak, lol. Since I have a severe aversion to heat and humidity I really wanted the garden to be someplace nice and inviting so I would actually *want* to go out and visit it. Now that it's built and I've seen how things grow there are some things I'd change but somehow I think if I were to mention it to DH it might prove hazardous to my marriage. :0

I had a little bit of success yesterday. Since we went straight from winter to summer earlier this year my Heirloom lettuce bolted. I saved the heads and have been harvesting seed. I thought it might be a good idea to do a germination test before I spend hours doing all that harvesting and yesterday I noticed they were sprouting. Too early to plant but at least I know my first seed saving attempt was a success. :)

Looking at your garden I wonder if you grow in rows? I think you could maximize your area if u sqaure foot garden.. beautiful garden by the way : ) : ) please keep us updated : )

Here is a link that might be useful: my organic gardening blog

...I think you could maximize your area if u sqaure foot garden.

I disagree, unless you're in N. Florida SFGs invite pests and fungal diseases due to the proximity of plants, lack of air circulation and trapping of moisture...prove me wrong with some nice pictures of a MATURE SF garden here in Zone 9 or 10 Florida.

Tom

seedsnsprouts,
You've done a wonderful job of planning out your garden and setting it up. You will be amazed the amount of food that can be produced there. I see you also took advantage of the chain link fence putting in that long bed next to it for your climbing crops. Keep us posted on your learning curve of vegetable gardening in Florida.

Lou

Thanks, Lou! - We really did put a lot of thought in to the layout trying to maximize our space. And, like you said, using the chain link as a vining tool was one of them. :)

Organicmomma - no...we don't practice SFG. We just plant what we plant in positions where they won't intrude on their neighbors and hope something grows, lol! But doing it Square Foot style has never really been part of the plan. At this point our focus is not *how much* we can grow but more of *what* we can grow. All of our seeds are Heirloom and trying to find an Heirloom seed that says it's hardy in Zone X,Y,Z is almost impossible. I've spent countless hours researching every single seed we have and I've always planted at least two variety of everything so I have some cross comparison. Truth is, I can read this board every day and try to duplicate what someone else does in their garden (like Silvia - drool, drool) but I may not be able to do it because of my micro-climate, my particular soil mixture and any other number of factors. Right now we're still in the learning curve and focusing on quality over quantity...and based on our results so far...neither are winning, LOL! Hopefully that will change this year!!

Julie

Thank you Julie, starting tomorrow I will be helping plant in a very different environment than mine, different compost, place and a lot of different ideas.
The tomatoes that I have been taking care for them are super healthy. I always compare my seedlings with the nurseries and hope to be better than them, whatever don't look good gets thrown out. I am a little bit nervous but hope to learn and post the results. The free compost that they got looks really good, I am surprised. I will be checking how fertile it is. I have an heirloom winter squash potimarron gros fruit aka red kuri, it is one of my favorites and I saved seed from them and will give away tomorrow for planting, it is going to be an exciting season!

Silvia

Hey Tom I'm zone 9 central florida so I'm not sure about pests in zone 10 the most I've had a problem with is I can't seem to get summer squash to grow : ( the small fruit always seems snipped and falls right on the ground (any explination would be helpful)... what I have had good luck sqaure foot gardening here is loose leaf lettuce, beans, carrots, and turnips.. most other plants are 1 per square foot anyway which is pretty much like row but I raise bed garden and use compainon planting as well : ) of course I have much to learn and look forward to reading everyones posts on here : )

organicmomma89,

The immature baby squashes are not getting pollinated and are dying off. If there are no bees in your area you have to become the bee. You will notice on those immature baby squashes they have a flower at the end, the male flowers do not have a baby fruit and sit at the tip of the stem. Carefully pick a male flower and completely remove the flower petal part leaving only the center orange fuzzy part.(like you now have an orange fuzzy Q-tip) Bring that male part to the baby squash flower and gently rub the two orange parts together in the early morning. It is imperative you do this in the early morning as the viability wanes quickly. Each flower whether male or female has a short window of opportunity for complete pollination and you can only hope to hit the timing correctly. Bees on the other hand are busy gathering pollen hour after hour, flower after flower, all the day long and their effort bests our feeble efforts at pollination.

Lou

Thanks! I wonder if I can build a small home for bees and attach it to my shed?? Would something like that help bring bees around?? And if so what some easy to build bee homes.. My fiance is allegeric to stings but I need them for my gardens..

OM89, that makes sense for what you're actually growing, your area must be much more like Silvia's. I've given up on growing squash in containers, they don't do well and I've come to the conclusion that although the roots don't appear substantial they are runners and need lots of space so that would account for them not doing well in a SFG. Also, what Lou says about the squash is true and I have to be at work by 6:00 A.M., by the time I get home in the afternoon all the morning flowers from the squash are already too spent to hand pollinate. The last two seasons I've tried two varieties of parthenocarpic squash but they didn't do well either. Now, the parthenocarpic cukes were another story, they did very well inside my swiming pool cage where I didn't have to spray for pickleworm, the quick nemesis of my garden cukes since the garden is only 8' from the lake...very buggy down there until we finally get a cooling off period overnight.

I keep my tomato plants well spaced from each other due to the gardens proximity to the lake, extremely humid too, and I never have blight and rarely other fungal diseases because of good air circulation around each individual plant, so for me "less is more" but I do see Silvia's plants up against each other so for you that might not be a problem.

Tom

OM89,
Building a beehive will NOT bring bees to your area. It would be a one in a million chance they would settle there and most likely if they did it would be the killer bees and not the docile European bee. Each beehive that beekeepers own have a captured queen-bee at it's center that all the worker bees service. You would have to buy a beehive and a bee colony to bring bees into your area. The best way to lure bees to your area is have plenty of (spring to fall) flowering plants to keep them attracted to your area.

Lou

re: bees
I've had tons out in my front flower bed on my blanket flowers, but rarely see any in the backyard (where my veggie garden is). I'm planning on planting a few seeds by the garden for the spring. I'm sure there are other flowers that would attract bees as well. But this is one I have lots of free seeds and know they will attract the bees.

And now that I know I have lots of time before I need to be planting my fall garden, maybe I'll end up buying another blanket flower plant to go back there.

Hey thanks everyone I'm just going to create a native flower patch in my backyard in hopes of bringing them back.. I have tilled up 95% of my grass to create beds and in the near future are planning on planting 2 fruits trees (im posting a new topic on this next) a grape arbor and planting some more blueberries and blackberries.. Thanks everyone thats why i love it here everyone is friendly and helpful! : )

Here is a link that might be useful: My Blog