Senga's Blog
Eco-chic Outdoor Living & Exterior Design
Mar. 8/2010 – The Planting Stage: Square Foot Garden On Edible Green Roof
Edible Green Roof as Food Producing Machine!
Today I was working on my edible green roof. Despite the fact that it is only March, I am optimistic that spring has come early. So I decided to lay out my grid lines as per my square foot gardening strategy and started sewing my cool season crop seeds.
First published in 1981 by Mel Bartholomew, grid patterns instead of rows to grow your fruits and vegetables reduce wasted space by eliminate aisles and at the same time decreases the amount of weeding. Growing plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash vertically (on a 5-6’ trellis system) at the back of each bed frees up much covered horizontal space. And for greater efficiency interplant fast growing and maturing crops like radishes and leaf lettuce with slower growing plants such as tomatoes. By the time the tomatoes fill out their space, your faster growing crops have been long consumed in a gourmet dish!
Using the square foot method and five raised planters (total of 228ft2) filled with only 10” of light weight green roof soil mix can easily supply a family of 12 (allow 16ft2/per person) each season with produce to spare for many dinner parties! A word of advice, you may want to start of smaller!
Step 1 - Set Out the Grid
Despite the Mr. Bartholemew's recommendations for using strips of wood to partition off one foot squares, I opted for a more subtle look. Using wood screws and hemp I fastened screws at 1' intervals on top of the planter beds as shown on the right.
Step 2 - Layout Out Grid With String
Then I take a roll of hemp and use the screws as hooks and start to string one foot grids length and crosswise on each raise planter bed.
Step 3 - Finish Grid System
Finish pattern and you are ready to... Here is one of my vegetable beds laid out and ready to plant seeds.
Step 4 - Start Planting Crops
Each square can be devoted to one crop or interplanted with other faster growing crops. Today my list of crops included the cool season vegetables. Fingers crossed we will have no hard frosts until the fall. Crops planted today include:
2 Squares = Swiss Chard 'Pink Flamingo'
2 Sqares = Swiss Chard 'Silverado'
2 Squares = Beetroot 'Chiaggo'
2 Squares = Radishes 'Easter Egg'
2 Squares = Carrots ' Purple Haze'
2 Squares = Heirloom 'Cutting Leaf Varieties'
2 Squares = Turnip 'Early Snowball'
2 Squares = Snowpea 'Snowflake'
4 Squares = Broccoli 'Sorento Raab'
Nest Weekend - The Bees!
A minor setback - my bees are coming from Chile and due to the earthquake their arrival has been delayed until only (fingers crossed) next week!
