OCD! Should I see a doctor about this?

ok, so yes I am very obsessed! OCD maybe? I must admit that I may have gone a little too far but I just started getting pretty pumped about the whole idea. I mean who wouldn't want to go to all this effort to make sure things were going to be just right. And besides that how can you go into any project not knowing what the costs are going to be? So what the heck am I talking about...

Yes it is confirmed. I am my father and I'm growing a garden!

There I've said it. whew!

Sorry to disappoint. Nothing exciting about that I suppose but I sure have been obsessed for about a week with it. I've actually been tentatively planing to do this for months now but only in the last week or so did I actually start getting some real ideas down. And of course a spreadsheet quickly became necessary to track the material and costs associated with starting this garden... And it didn't stop there.

Before I go any further I should mention that I've decided to follow the square foot gardening method for growing a garden in my backyard. The method really seems pretty practical and makes a lot of sense. It goes against some of the traditional row based, amend your existing soil ideas I was more familiar with but all in all nothing too radical. The basics are that you build boxes 4 ft x 4 ft x 6 in deep. I decided to use 2 x 6 lumber so mine are a little deeper. I would have gone for the 2 x 10 lumber but I decided to try and keep costs as low as possible. Once the boxes are built you put weed cloth across the bottom of the box and build a grid on the top so you end up with 16 1 x 1 ft squares to use for planting. Once the boxes are built you mix a combination of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite in equal parts to get the volume of soil you need to fill you boxes to the top edge and you ready to plant!

The real story here is how much time I've spent plotting out stuff on graph paper, working on spreadsheets to calculate material needs and costs, and drawing a diagram of my backyard layout. I even had my beautiful wife out in the yard with me late last night helping me measure the dimensions so my diagram would be to scale. See the result of that effort to the left.

As you can see from the diagram, I've got 5 boxes built and have put together a "strategic" 3 year plan to build additional boxes. We also have plans to one day have a fence around our backyard, hence the long narrow box on the North (left in this case) side of the property. As for the crops I plan on growing, here is the list:

• asparagus
• bush beans (green beans)
• broccoli
• carrots
• corn
• cucumber
• hot peppers
• lettuce
• okra
• onion
• peas
• potatoes
• strawberries
• sweet peppers (bell peppers)
  
• sweet potato
• tomatillo
• tomatoes

I have some detail on exactly where each plant(s) will go but I have not created that digitally...yet so I'll have to post that detail later. I'd also like to take some pictures to I'll have as much of a visual log as anything and I'll post those when I have them.

Stay tuned....

Oh yeah and here is my blog! Blah blah blah not sure what all I'll post here but here it is. How's that for a first post intro.