Start Your '4 by Whatever' Garden Today!

An excellent size small garden can be created easily and quickly by taking 2 lengths of 2x4x8 lumber (non-treated) and cutting each in half to create four 4 foot lengths. Simply nail the pieces together to for a box and lay this somewhere close to your house where it will get at least eight hours of full sun each day during the summer months. (Make sure you dig up and turn over any grass that may be growing inside the box). I like to use wood that has not been treated even though I know it will last only a few seasons before rotting away. That’s fine with me because construction of a new replacement box is relatively easy and I do not have to worry about arsenic or mercury leaching from treated lumber into the garden soil. Of course, you can just berm up some soil and forget about the lumber all together. I just feel that the box structure looks really nice and professional.

What’s really nice about such a small area is the amount of veggies you can grow in this space. You can feed a family of three with no problem from just one of these. In order to do this, however, you must consider using three very important techniques; inter-cropping, succession and companion planting. Oh, and yes, you must water if things get too dry.

Intercropping is nothing more than having the knowledge as to what plants grow at what rates so you can take advantage of every bit of space. For instance, if you plant out lettuce starts in neatly staggered rows, you will initially have a lot of space between the plants. Lettuce will take 45-55 days to mature and fill up this space so, why not strategically plant a fast growing crop like radishes in these spaces that will be up and harvested in about 30 days. This is the way that you can keep every bit of garden space up and in high production.

Coupled with this concept is succession planting that as the name implies helps you to fill a space vacated by a harvested planted with another in its place. The seedling may a younger version of the same plant that was there before or it may be another species that will do better later in the season. For instance, I will grow a run of lettuce plants that are immediately followed by pepper transplants that were started a month earlier. Or, I may just go ahead and put in a heat resistant variety of lettuce to harvest during the summer months. In order to pull this type of activity off, you must become aware of germination times, temperature preferences and even whether or not the different plants which end up next to each other will be happy. That last point is what companion planting technique is all about. Fortunately, there are many books that offer this information in table form to allow you to quickly and efficiently draw up your own unique show. For my part I first list the types of veggies I want to grow that season and then organize a plan around them that allows me to max out the crop yields, keep the garden full of plants while doing little or no weeding. If you make this plan correctly, you will find you have relatively little work to do while harvesting up to 100 pounds of produce from a 4x4 foot area. The only thing you must worry about is making sure you keep you little plot well furnished with compost and other amendments to keep the soil healthy and happy.

One note concerning the soil is that you really do not fertilize the plants with amendments; you actually are feeding the microorganisms in the soil that make nutrient ions available to the plants. This topic alone could fill a book and if you are interested certainly read up on the subject. The bottom line is that healthy, fertile soil has literally billions and billions of micro-organisms living it while unhealthy soil does not. Healthy soil will make you healthy plants whereas dead soil will not – no matter how must fertilizer you throw on it. If you experience problems growing stuff, make sure you get a sample sent in for analysis (soil test locations are listed in the tallow pages or you can go to your local extension office) and then make the needed corrections. Oftentimes, it is just a case of the pH being too high (alkaline) or to low (acidic). In order for effective exchange of ions and cations to occur between to soil and the plants roots, you must have the pH somewhere close to 7.0 (neutral) or perhaps a little on the acidic side. Once again any good gardening book will list the proper pH range for stuff you want to grow.

So let me summarize why 4x4’s are so wonderful; 1) they are easy to create, 2) they don’t take up a lot of space, 3) you can get gobs of food out of them and 4) because of the way you plant, you rarely have to weed them. Not too shabby a state of affairs is it? They also make a perfect area for any young gardeners you might have around the house. Just build one for each future master gardener and let that become their special area. You would be amazed at how creative some kids are when challenged in this way. One child I know of planted a different seed (actually a combination of peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and radishes) randomly across the entire 4x4 surface. Surprisingly, everything germinated and grew really well. As a bonus, because there was not much of any one plant located anywhere in the garden, the little tykes garden did not suffer any of the usual pests that summer. My carefully planned gardens which were located just next door however were subjected to wave after wave of chewing insects. Yes, you can learn a lot from a child.