Squarefoot Gardening

So for the last five years or more I have been planning to start a garden. Every year I talk to my dad to get suggestions on how to start one, but in the end I wait too long and then it is too hot to do anything. Siena also decided she would like to start a garden to work on her 10-hour YW project for "Faith" so with that added emphasis, this year I started early. Towards the end of January I called my mom from Home Depot to ask yet again for suggestions from her and Dad. Mom happened to have an extra Squarefoot Gardening book and went to the PO to send it to me that day. (How nice is that!) So the last couple of weeks I have been at hardware stores about every other day figuring out how to make a garden.
I've decided that starting a garden in the suburbs of the desert isn't the best idea because you have to buy everything. I didn't just want to dig a hole in the ground because I actually want my vegetables to grow. So I'm making a raised garden. First, Siena and I cleared all our rocks away.

Then since I couldn't find any free wood as the book suggested, I bought Douglas fir instead of Redwood or Cedar because of the cost and yet I still had to spend about $28 on wood. Next, I had to buy dirt, of all things. What is up with buying dirt? Oh yea, I live in the desert! So I spent over $100 buying compost, peat moss, and vermiculite. Most of the people that worked in the garden centers didn't even know what vermiculite was. So I guess it wasn't just dirt, but special earth ingredients to make my vegetables grow. I've figured out that gardening doesn't save any money, it just helps you know where your food comes from.

In the meantime, I built the boxes, then the kids and I painted them to make them especially pretty. That was a lot of fun, actually.

Now I've just got to get Paul to help me figure out how to install the irrigation drip. We had the line run years ago when we put in our yard. See, we actually have been planning on doing this for years and years. I'm going to try to get him to help me today. I'll keep you posted on how it continues.