Start up costs for small square gardening?

[rafiki]

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[secular_mom]

I don't remember the cost of the materials for Mel's Mix, call around to your local garden centers and get a quote. We ended up letting our 'garden' return to nature for a lot of reasons. I hope to start again after we move from here. I will say that I wanted DH to make a 'cage' to go around our raised beds to keep the squirrels, cats, and birds out of our goods. I sent him to buy chicken wire, he came home with some cheaper roll of plastic 'chicken wire'. Squirrels can eat right through that stuff with NO problem at all, so don't bother with that plastic stuff if you want to use chicken wire to enclose your garden.

I really wouldn't do one big 6x6 plot as a square foot garden, especially for kids to use. It will be a little too deep for them to reach the items in the middle. I'd stick with 4x4.

That's all the help I can offer.

[blondeviolin]

We just started ours this year. Our bed is a LOT bigger than I anticipated, but I can tell you soil prices:

 

Compost: 2 cubic ft was $2-3 depending

Peat Moss: 4 cubic ft was $10

Vermiculite: 3 cubic ft was $30

 

Our box we built was a bit of an usual shape (3' x 24'), but we built it out of untreated wood that ran us about $60 (including hardware and stakes). You can buy 4' x 4' kits at Home Depot and the like that run about $30.

 

So, in total, before the plants, we spent about $300 for a box that is 3' x 24' x 10".

[ChristusG]

I planted a 4x4 foot raised bed last September and I think it cost around $100 or right over to get it started.....maybe $120.

 

I bought lumber from Lowe's and had them cut it to size for me.

 

Here's what I started out with....

 

lumber

wood screws

organic weed barrier (this is really just a roll of biodegradeable paper)

seeds

organic garden soil

a few small clearanced spades/gloves for the kids

 

I wrote a whole blog post about it, complete with photos, when I did you. So you can see what our garden looked like. I wanted to plant a spring garden this year, but with this morning sickness, I'm just not up to it. Hopefully in the fall, but then again, that's when the baby is due. ::sigh::: I think the garden is going to have to wait.

 

Here's the blog post.

[Dobela]

I don't remember the cost of the materials for Mel's Mix, call around to your local garden centers and get a quote. We ended up letting our 'garden' return to nature for a lot of reasons. I hope to start again after we move from here. I will say that I wanted DH to make a 'cage' to go around our raised beds to keep the squirrels, cats, and birds out of our goods. I sent him to buy chicken wire, he came home with some cheaper roll of plastic 'chicken wire'. Squirrels can eat right through that stuff with NO problem at all, so don't bother with that plastic stuff if you want to use chicken wire to enclose your garden.

I really wouldn't do one big 6x6 plot as a square foot garden, especially for kids to use. It will be a little too deep for them to reach the items in the middle. I'd stick with 4x4.

That's all the help I can offer.

Chicken wire keeps chickens in a space. It is so flimsy however that any predator that wants in your garden, except maybe a bunny, can rip thru the wire.

 

Call around for supply costs. We can get compost free from a local place. I used it instead of peat. Vermiculite was about $30 for a huge bag. We bought scrap lumber from Habitat ReStore. We found that dirt was cheaper by the dump truck full so we split a load with a friend.

[rafiki]

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[prairiewindmomma]

I can tell you our costs from this spring:

2 4x4 bed kits on clearance from Home Depot---the lumber purchased separately priced the same as the kits ($60)

 

We mixed our own soil from top soil, peat moss, and manure plus a bit of 10-10-10 for about $100--we put the kits together to form one 4x12' bed.

 

seeds + supplies = $15

[Tammyla]

We went with inexpensive wood and our total cost the first year was about $60 per box. The seeds set me back an additional $20, because I went with heirloom seeds. However, I still have plenty of seeds three years later.