So for the time being most of my gardening will consist of planning my upgrade from the current 2.0 garden to the new and improved 2.5. The first upgrade will be to my standard garden bed. Square Foot Gardening is a bit gimmicky, but the method does incorporate a few very important insights for home gardeners: (1) Long rows make sense for mechanised cultivation and harvest, but not for home gardening. (2) Planting a small amount of many different crops is more appropriate for fresh eating.
Here's the current prototype-in-progress:
It's 12' x 4' and made out of whatever knock-off of Trek decking boards my local DYI store had when I got it. I've arbitrarily divided the bed into 2' x 3' sections and planted spinach, onions, beets, broccoli and carrots.
Since this is a Fall/Winter garden in central NC (zone 7A) I have to protect against frost and freezing. I have bent an 8.5' piece of 1/2" PVC across every 3 feet and secured them with pipe straps on the top and bottom of the boards thusly
Near the end of October I'll cover it with 6 mil plastic to minimise frost damage. In my growing zone, keeping the frost/freeze damage to a minimum is no problem. The real problem is building a cold frame that can protect the plants from 25 degrees and night, then keep them from overheating when it's 55 and sunny that afternoon. Without some way to vent off the heat, cool season plants burn up pretty quickly. My solution is to create ends out of plywood and automatic foundation vents. But that's another post.
