One Plant at a Time – Our Patio Garden and Square Foot Garden Update

It’s almost summer over here in south Florida, I can’t believe days are so hot already. Just a couple of weeks back, I had to wear a sweater while coming back from a late night party. Nonetheless, our garden is enjoying the weather. The seeds I sowed early March was not growing much beyond tiny seedlings till beginning of April. Now they are growing thick and fast

We are growing Basil, Cilantro, Eggplants, Tomatoes, Peppers and Lettuce this season. Since we are renting a second floor condo it’s a tough job to grow so many vegetables in a limited 7′ X 12′ space. I have grown vegetables and flowers in our patio since last few years. But, not so many in a single season. It’s kind of self test of my skills in gardening you can say.

I got my interest in gardening from my father, who was famous for his gardening prowess, we always had the best garden in our township.

Living in a condo and that too, on second floor is a big barrier as far as the gardening is concerned. We already have 12 pots by now and couldn’t buy any more without sacrificing the overall ambiance and cleanliness.

Thus came the idea of having a square foot garden set up, to save space. We learned A-Z of square foot gardening through YouTube and blogs, except how to do it in a patio, especially when you have 12 other pots occupying the space. I had to improvise.

We couldn’t afford a 4′ X 4′ sq. foot garden, the ideal size for it, so had to settle for lesser space. Space was eventually made for setting up a 2′ X 2′ square foot garden. The nails, lumbers and plywood came from Home Depot. Now, when it is finally ready, the garden looks really nice. It took half of my Saturday to finish the wooden structure and half of Sunday to buy and mix the soil.

You can judge yourself from the picture above. This is entirely self-made from scratch. I’ll write another post soon to describe step-by-step method to create one for your patio.

To buy one such ready-made garden container we had to spend over $100, where as, this self crafted square foot garden costed less than $25 and we had a lot of fun in the process of making it. I had a taste of plumbing after a long time as an added bonus.

The seedlings are growing in side the small green-house seed container. I didn’t buy any of the plants, rather I ordered seeds online. Total seed cost was around $12, where as local Home Depot charges $12 for two tomato plants alone.

So far the Burpee seeds produced excellent result with more than 80% of seeds germinated and all of them are in healthy condition.

This year we put up some Marigold as a protection against white flies. Last year, our egg-plant and chilies were badly affected by white flies and I had to resort to insecticide. I ordered some white fly traps as well from eBay, they arrived last week.

So far all the plants are growing well without any sign of insect attack, I think it’s still not the white fly season yet. Whenever they come Marigold and traps would wait for them!

Looks like this season’s first harvest will be Basil. On the bottom left corner of the sq. foot garden picture you can see some basil leaves. We have around 30 Basil plants which we can’t use our self. A few of the plants would go to our friends and neighbors. A bunch of them would go to our first floor neighbors as they are the victims of my frequent over-watering. 🙂

It’s so much fun to see the plants grow, every day before leaving for work and after coming back, I spend few minutes observing and inspecting the plants. I so love to just look at them growing!

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you about Kafir lime plant we bought from Home Depot couple of months back. The plant had flowers when we bought it, now they grew in to limes. I just can’t wait to pluck them, a few more weeks looks like before we can pluck the biggest one (the one in the picture). Looks so juicy and fresh!

I started drafting the post on our square foot garden already, stay tuned for that. This was my first post on gardening and I thoroughly enjoyed writing this. All pictures were taken by SMB and I, with our cell phones. If you want to reuse the pictures, do contact us first.

Readers, what are you growing this season? Do you like me to update on our garden on regular basis?