Digging it out and Starting Over

Well, it feels like we are starting over. In the past two weeks, I have dug a 17 foot by 2 foot section out of my front grass. My husband installed an almost-invisible trellis. And, to top it off, I have been clamoring to get my Square Foot Garden moved from the area it lived last year into an area of our yard that gets more sunlight.

Unfortunately, only after spring gardening, summer gardening, and fall gardening last year did I realize that I had planted full-sun things in a part-sun location. Maybe you admire my perseverance, or maybe you shake your head at how hard it was for me to figure out what was wrong. (I tend toward the latter. Light. Duh. The most basic requirement for a garden.)

I decided to walk the property every 30 minutes from sunrise to sunset for a day and note the places that had sunlight at those times.  (For those of you who care about labels, this is called "sun mapping.")

This led to the discovery that there is only one place in my yard (besides the very front by the road) that I get enough sun to grow tomatoes, eggplants, squash, zucchini and all the other plants that say "summer" to me. The place I had planted my garden last year only gets between five and six hours of sunlight. Argh.

I didn't take pictures of the process of starting over, but here is the finished product.

Front garden bed with the almost invisible trellis lines. Look
for the shadow lines on the brick to see the trellis. The area
that has been mulched will be the path I walk to harvest my
Scarlet Runners. 

This is my new and improved Square Foot Garden! Thanks
to my husband's really diligent and hard work yesterday, I now have
a place to put my vegetables. They will get between 8 and 10 hours
of sunlight in this new location. My husband mis-measured and
dug out a place about 14 or 18 inches longer than the beds we had available.
He said I could plant something there. Yea! 

Here is the old bed location. Formerly, I had made these same
Square Foot Beds in a checkerboard pattern, because I thought it was
pretty. This same amount of Square Foot Garden boards
will make 20 feet of garden when laid end to end. Three beds to five
beds, simply because of layout. It pays to know your math. (My husband
figured it out, and explained it to me.) 

In other Harvest Monday news, I am busy hardening off my tomatoes to plant them outside. Bill Finch of the Mobile Botanical Gardens (Mobile, Alabama) posted this wonderful Plain Garden Planting Cycle for the Mobile area. I don't know if you can read it very well at the link, but it says that tomatoes should be planted as close as possible to the first of March in this area for best production before the sweltering days of summer.

As soon as I get my tomatoes in the ground, I plan to start hardening off my eggplants for transplant to the prepared beds. (Thanks, again, honey. Go take another Aleve.) The Wheel shows the eggplants should be planted abut 2 weeks after the tomatoes, so I will plant them as soon as I get the tomatoes ready to plant.

Joining with Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Mondays. Go check out what others are planting, harvesting, growing, canning, etc. It's really great fun to see what others are doing. We even have at least one who gardens in Melbourne, Australia.  I love to read her posts because it is summer there when it is winter here.