Hi From NZ

[Chickenlady]

Welcome to the site. I once stayed in a lovely youth hostel on the lake in Taupo. Fab place.

Jane

[Peggy Sue]

A suqare foot of veg is better than a square foot of nothing to eat

[Jack]

Gidday

I hope nobody was offended by my reference to Poms, but it is simply so ingrained in our language that few people use any other. Here is a link of a search I did;- http://www.answers.com/Pom

Funny thing is I remember my father also often using the word Tommy for the English and he used to say it came into general use in New Zealand during the First World War, even though it may have been used a lot before that.

[Millymollymandy]

Interesting reading Jack. There's nothing offensive about the word Pom as far as I'm concerned!

[ina]

And at least now I know what it means!

[hedgewitch]

Hello and welcome to the ishers.

[HelloKiwi]

Hi Everybody,

I been lurking for a while, and hopefully if I'm not too silly, you seem like you won't bite my head off, so I decided to post (even if I *am* Margo).

Living in a house in suburbia with a small veg plot. Recently decided to give the square foot gardening style a try.

Talk to you more again soon.

Hi mrmushy, glad to read your post, I am down here in Nelson and I have just bought the book of square foot gardening. Are you getting anywhere with it? I'm very keen but can't decide how to convert it to metrics - should it be one square metre (with three, or four squares per side?) or 1.2 metres (with weed mat sold 1m wide?)

If you didn't want to get the book, they have a website of the same name that is worth a visit, I think its Squarefootgarden.com

[mrmushypeas]

Hi mrmushy, glad to read your post, I am down here in Nelson and I have just bought the book of square foot gardening. Are you getting anywhere with it? I'm very keen but can't decide how to convert it to metrics - should it be one square metre (with three, or four squares per side?) or 1.2 metres (with weed mat sold 1m wide?)

If you didn't want to get the book, they have a website of the same name that is worth a visit, I think its Squarefootgarden.com

I don't have any of the books, but there are plenty of resources on the web, like the one you posted.

It started off quite well, and still seems to be ticking along quite nicely, although it may be a matter of balancing the watering & feeding, as I saw somebody else mentioned, some plants seem to do really well, and others struggle a little, although that could be to do with the weather we have been having, and my inexperienced response to it.

Don't worry too much about the conversions, its 30cm (or a standard ruler length) squared. I didn't set my beds up with this plan in mind originally, so it is a little longer than they recommend.

All I did was bang a nail in the walls of the garden (it's a raised bed) every 30cm, then I ran some twine around the nails in each direction.

Because I had not set the beds up with this in mind, I had 6 inches (or 15cm) left over, so I made sure that this was at the back, next to the trellis on the fence for the beans.

I think I planted too many brassicas in this bed, which have shaded some of the other thiongs, but then breaking off the lower leaves is supposed to make them 'heart up' anyway - isn't it?

I've also planted some gherkins in hanging baskets. Since they are smaller than cucumbers, I have been using them as cucumbers and its been great, I take 1 gherkin to work, and it does for a couple of sandwiches, and there is no left over to worry about. The plant is light enough for the baskets, and all in all, I'm pretty happy with the set up.

Cheers
MMP