My New Zealand SF Garden

Q: Original Letter from New Zealand:

Hi Mel, your new book has arrived from Amazon.com and has been well read by me and also some of my colleagues at the High School here in Feilding where I teach.
I have established my first two beds under the square foot system. The raised beds are 1.2 meters square and 0.3 meters high. Into the top 6 inches (150 millimeters), I put in Mel's Mix. The squares have been divided into 300 millimeter squares. That is very close to 12 inches. Because my compost heap is not ready yet. (but it is coming on)
I purchased some mushroom compost from a local mushroom farm. It is well rotted straw and other substances and is steam sterilized before I get it. I pay about $20 for half a cubic meter. Vermiculite comes from the local hydroponics supplier (who is now very keen on SFG because I lent him the book) and Peat moss comes from the Hauraki Plains in NZ. It is sphagnum moss and is sold in 100 liter bags for less than $15.
You have asked in some of your articles what people are using to mark out the squares. NZ farmers use electric fences for controlling their stock as they intensively graze parts of fields. To support the
electric fence wire, they use fiber glass rods that are 1.2 meters (4
feet) long and 10 millimeters diameter (about 3 / 8 inch I guess).

They are white and completely unaffected by ultra violet light as they are used outside for long periods of time. For my first two beds, I bought 12 of these rods at $2.60 each. They are just a bit too long for the beds so I drilled some 10 millimeter diameter holes in the timber edging and clicked them into place.

One crop that is grown here in N. Z. is very similar to spinach. It is a perpetual spinach which we (and Australians) call "silver beet". It
will do very well in the SFG. It will stand, without shooting to seed,
for long periods of time with just leaves being taken off for evening
meals. I have also sown some beans that grow here over the winter. We call them Broad Beans. Their pods are furry inside and the beans themselves grow up to an inch long. I've sown them four to the square and have sown radishes at the outer edges.
Hope to add more vegetables to the beds as the autumn (fall)
season comes on.

Kind regards,   Jim.

I Want to Share your Garden Info.

A: Hi Jim, I want to share your garden information.  It was good to hear from you again and glad to hear you have started your SFG. I love the idea of the white fence rods for a grid. Your description of various plants you have put in will be of interest to others and I would like to share your letter with them as well as your description of the ingredients of Mel's Mix.

Good luck with your garden and keep telling others down there about SFG.

Best wishes, Mel.