This is an article about 100 square feet of square foot gardening. The boards you see here are 2″x12″x10′ and 2″x12″x5′ Treated pine. I am combining SFG and Hugelkultur. The goal of SFG is to maximize the space. The goal of Hugelkultur is to make good use of waste wood from around the property and create a spongy mass underneath the garden bed for holding water. So the foot or so below the garden bed will be wood such as rotting pine, manure or bird litter and small bit of top soil from the hole. On top of that will be the 1 foot of garden soil mix. This will be 1/3 top soil, 1/3 manure, 1/3 composted leaves, wood chips, grasses and such. In our case the manure will be horse manure that has been composted. The Chicken litter that I will add to the Hugelkultur section has been composted as well.
We will get the compost for the soil mix from the city land fill at $20 per pickup bed load. I intend to sift this a bit and add the larger pieces of unrotted wood to the Hugelkultur section. We hope there will be little to no weed/grass seeds in the soil mix when its done.
We will not plant this year anything that uses up a lot of square feet per plant unless we can have it grow vertically. Some unusual things I’d like to try will be wheat, barley, buck wheat, oats, cotton, sugar beats, sugar cane. Everything will be annuals. No fruits to speak of, just survival veggies and foods mainly.
If I can get everyone’s cooperation we will log harvest by day, with plant type and weight in pounds and ounces. At least until we get good solid data on each plant type. In this way we can report on pounds of whatever per square foot harvested here on the blog.
Next I flagged out the 2nd bed location.
Next I flagged out the 3rd bed location.
Next some wilderness hikers came along and I recruited them to help with digging efforts, at gun point of course. (joke) The big guy on the left was singing “Swing low sweet chariot.” as he swung the pick axe. (not a joke)
Next you see some roots that we will have to deal with. And a hole, The hole goes down to 2′ deep. The main section is only about 1 foot deep. We were getting into some red clay/gravel/stone mix at this depth though it was not too hard to dig. If we go deeper it will take longer than the first foot though.
Again here I show the 2 foot deep hole. I first intended to go 2 foot deep with the hugelkultur section below ground level. I may change my mind and do only 1 foot however.
This is about a yard of dirt that was removed in 4 hours with a little help from the hikers.
This is the 4th bed flagged out making 200 foot square. The beds are 5×10 and set 3 feet apart.
The below chart is a list of plants that I propose we plant this year, at least some of them. I just took my best guess for yes plants based on what I have studied. Opinions and even facts may very a little from the chart below. If anyone notices any major blunder, let me know.
- SHTF (Stuff hit the fan) Survival foods (bad economy etc.)
- Protein (plants with higher protein content)
- Vitamin(plants with higher main vitamin contents)
- Sugar (plants high in sugar or starch)
- Aromatic (plants with mainly color or flavor enhancing qualities)
- Fiber (plants high in dietary fiber)
- Nitrogen (nitrogen fixing plants)
| Plant | Group | SHTF | Protein | Vitamin | Sugar | Aromatic | Fiber | Nitrogen |
| Red Potato | 1.1 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Sweet Potato | 1.1 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Idaho Potato | 1.1 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Russet Potato | 1.1 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| White Potato | 1.1 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Carrots | 1.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Beets | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Turnips | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| White Onion | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Purple Onion | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Yellow Onion | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Sugar Beet | 1.3 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Garlic | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Radish | 1.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Peanuts | 1.4 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Green Beans | 2.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| English Peas | 2.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Black Eye Peas | 2.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Snap Peas | 2.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Snow Peas | 2.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Pinto Beans | 2.3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Lima Beans | 2.3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Soy Beans | 2.3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Black Beans | 2.3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Large Tomato | 3.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Med Tomato | 3.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Cucumber | 3.2 | Yes | ||||||
| Egg Plant | 3.2 | Yes | ||||||
| Yellow Squash | 3.2 | Yes | ||||||
| Pumpkin | 3.3 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Cantaloupe | 3.3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Small Tomato | 3.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Corn | 4.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Sugar Cane | 4.1 | Yes | ||||||
| Sorghum | 4.1 | Yes | ||||||
| Celery | 4.2 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Asparagus | 4.2 | Yes | ||||||
| Bell Pepper | 4.3 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Okra | 4.3 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Banana Pepper | 4.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Cotton | 4.4 | |||||||
| Roman Lettuce | 5.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Iceberg Lettuce | 5.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Kale | 5.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Collard Greens | 5.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Spinach Greens | 5.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Cabbage | 5.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Broccoli | 5.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Cauliflower | 5.3 | Yes | ||||||
| Brussels Sprouts | 5.3 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Wheat | 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Buck Wheat | 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Barley | 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Oats | 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Here I am getting chicken litter from this 100 foot long 6 foot high pile inside an old chicken house. The guy I’m getting this litter from has 10 houses, each 500 foot long and 50 feet wide with about 50,000 birds per house.
Next Tommy Lane is loading it in a trailer I borrowed from my brother. This trailer has 1 foot sides its 16 feet long and 6.5 feet wide. If we leveled the chicken litter in it with the top of the sides it would hold 3.85 yards of litter. This would be around 3,850 lbs of litter. If we heaped it a little we would be hauling 2 tons of litter. I figured this by weighing a 5 gal bucket with a fish scale. It weighed 25 lbs and 1 cubic foot is 7.1 gallons. So 1.4 times 25 is 35lbs per cubic foot. I rounded it up a bit to come up with 1000lbs per yard (27 cubic feet) of litter. My van with a 350v8 pulled it fine. I stopped him about about 2.5 yards of litter(6 tractor buckets) thinking it would take us hours to unload it. I bought two plastic scoops to unload it with.
This litter had been composted 4 weeks and was fairly dry. It took two of us only 30 minutes to unload it.
Here I traveled to a nearby lawn and gardener guy named Smiley Vinson from London Arkansas. He has huge mounds of compost. I was charged $40 for one bucket of his loader that should be about 3 yards of compost. This is leaf, grass clippings, twigs that has been turned routinely for over a year. It was nice and black and looked like manure. I weighted this out at 1350lbs per yard and it was a bit damp and wet.
Next we begin unloading with scoop shovel and snow shovel. Took us about 30 minutes to unload it.
Now we need horse manure for the 1 foot deep soil mix. There is a neighbor with a nearby horse barn that needs to be cleaned out. The horse manure was amazingly light. It weighed in a about 600lbs per yard. Took about an hour to load and 30 minutes to unload it.
Here we have piles of rice hull chicken litter on the right, compost on the left and horse manure in the back.
Here is the pile of horse manure.
And again here is horse manure on the left, compost on the right and chicken litter back left.
Here I have a chart showing plant types and planting arrangement and density. Circled number means number of square feet for one plant. Number without circle means number of plants per one square foot. I have a 3 letter designator for each plant type. There is no logical arrangement for the chart below, its merely an example. Light Green means spring planting(mar 1 to apr 1), and Dark Green means Summer planting (apr 1 to may 1) as a rough guide.
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And this shows four beds 5×10 or 50ft2 and 200 ft2 total
Next I show more digging. Russ Terwillinger made sides for one of the boxes using sand bags. Because we were digging this seemed logical. We will have to find a way soon to UV protect the sand bags. Dry stacked stone would probably be the cheapest method. I began filling in wood and chicken litter in the first box.
Soil Sample Test Results
Understanding Soil Test Results PDF
Of the images below we see 3 test samples. The first is 1/3 top soil, 1/3 leaf/grass/twig compost, 1/3 fairly old horse manure. The second is 1/3 top soil, 1/3 leaf/grass/twig compost, 1/3 4 to 6 week old rice hull chicken litter. The 3rd would be from last years beds which were made up of horse manure and soil and city wood chip compost. These 3 test were free. We also sent off a sample of chicken litter only but it cost $18+other fees and totaled $23.50 per non soil type sample. I wanted to test also the leaf/twig/grass compost but haven’t done that yet. I wanted to test the horse manure but have not done that yet either.
Concentrations Conversion Calculatormight be helpful.
Got the chicken litter report in. Remember this report cost $20 per sample (one in this case) and total of $23.65 with shipping.
| PH | 8.9 |
| EC(Electrical Conductivity micro mhos/cm) | 8820 |
| %water | 28.99 |
| nutrient | dry | as is(29% water) |
|---|---|---|
| %N | 3.37% | 2.39% |
| %P | 1.39% | .99% |
| %K | 3.03% | 2.15% |
| %Ca | 2.42% | 1.72% |
| %Carbon | 31.96% | 22.69% |
| N | 47.8 |
| P2O5 | 45.3 |
| K2O | 52.0 |
| Ca | 34.4 |
| Total Carbon | 453.8 |
I did a quick search on the net and came up with these examples for nutrient contents of given nutrient sources. With the commercial fertilizers you can get just about any mix such as 10-20-10 or 20-50-10 or you name it.After talking with a man at the extension office I have a few things to share. First the Nitrates and Sulfates are a constantly mobile value. They go up and down depending on conditions. They basically are measuring gasses. I suppose certain nitrogen containing molecules or sulfur containing molecules give off nitrogen or sulfur as gas. The plants then absorb the gas through the roots.
| Source | N-P-K |
|---|---|
| Commercial Nitrogen | 37-0-0 or 27-0-0 |
| Urea | 54-0-0 |
| Blood meal | 13-0-0 |
| Fish meal | 10-2-2 |
| Bone meal | 4-12-0 or 1-13-0 |
| Feather meal | 13-0-0 |
| Chicken Litter | 2-1-2 to 3-1-3 |
| Wood Ash | 0-1-10 |
| Muriate of Potash | 0-0-60 |
| Phospate Rock | 0-32-0 |
After talking with a man at the extension office I have a few things to share. First the Nitrates and Sulfates are a constantly mobile value. They go up and down depending on conditions. They basically are measuring gasses. I suppose certain nitrogen containing molecules or sulfur containing molecules give off nitrogen or sulfur as gas. The plants then absorb the gas through the roots.
The values in the reports above that have — “dashes” instead of low, med or optimal or above optimal mean that they are in normal ranges. The NO3-N value for the Old bed was near optimal. The other two were OK but much lower. The recommendation to add urea or nitrogen fertilizer of 2 to 3.5 pounds per 1000ft2 is a minimal amount to add. Its only meant to bring the nutrients up a bit. To find out more on what plants can tolerate or need search the web for “plant nutrient sufficiency and requirements”.
We have 200ft2 of beds of which 100ft2 is going to be square foot gardening. At any rate we were going to use the horse manure mix for these beds. 200ft2 is 1/5th of 1000ft2 so 2lbs divided by 5 is 4/10′s pound. or 1/10th pound per bed. Its recommended we sprinkle this on top and water and mix into the top layer of soil. We may use feather meal or blood meal instead of urea. In which case the amount will go up by about 5 times. Or 5/10s pound per bed. We will also add muriate of potash to the beds 1/10th pound per bed. Its not more complex than that unless you use something other than what is recommended in which case the recommendations serve as a guide for calculating how much more or less you might need of something else.
In the following photo’s you will see us completing the Hugelkulture beds and then finishing off the planting soil. I was going to mix it but pressed for time I decided to layer it lasagna style. There was 4 layers of (top soil,horse manure, compost also layered) for 1 foot of bed depth. It took us probably 5 to 7 hours to fill in one bed. We were resting as much as working, being out of shape.
Below is the layout for garden box 1. 50ft2 or 5×10. MUG is mustard greens, COG is collard greens, LET is lettuce, TUR is turnips.
Apr 20
May 1
May 5
May 10
