Learn how to start your own square-foot garden from Mel Bartholomew, who first introduced the technique over twenty years ago. Mel has literally traveled the globe teaching this revolutionary gardening system to millions of gardeners.
Featured Expert: Mel Bartholomew
Mel Bartholomew a former engineer and efficiency expert didn’t start gardening until he was in his middle-age. After years of using the traditional single row method he felt he was wasting too much of his valuable time and energy. So he decided to apply his skills of finding a more efficient way of gardening and ended up creating the Square Foot Gardening method. Contact Mel at info@squarefootgardening.com
Featured Expert: Karen Bastow
Karen Bastow of Liberty, Utah shares how she has successfully implemented the technique of Square Foot Gardening as taught by its creator Mel Bartholomew. Contact Karen at info@squarefootgardening.com
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Square Foot Gardening
What is it?
Square foot gardening (SFG) is a uniquely simplified method of planning and planting a garden; it’s a whole different psychological approach to gardening.
Mel Bartholomew says he wanted to solve the frustrations of many gardeners, to replace the traditional wasteful single row gardening method with a better way, one that's more efficient, more manageable, and less work.
Typical Row Gardening
We till up a large area to loosen the soil then walk all over it again and pack it down.
There is lots of time and money spent to improve the existing soil when much of it isn’t used.
The area between the rows grows lots of weeds. Then you have to spend a great deal of time weeding.
Single row gardening is a hand-me-down from farming.
Differences
It only takes 20% of the space for the same yield as the traditional row garden.
Square Foot Garden takes about 10% of the work of a traditional row garden.
You grow with a perfect soil mix. It doesn’t matter where you live or what kind of soil you have. If you put 6 inches of perfect soil above the ground you are all set.
With a perfect soil you don’t need to add fertilizer, and you don’t end up fertilizing the areas between the rows where lots of weeds will grow.
You reach in rather than walking on your growing soil, so soil does not get packed down
You use much less water, only about 20% compared to conventional gardening.
Advantages
You don’t need expertise to use the SFG method,
You don’t need fertilizers and you don’t need to handle pesticides-- it's all natural
The SFG planting method requires no thinning and very few seeds.
It can be started at any season, spring, summer, or fall.
Those with physical or mental limitations can do SFG. If getting down is a problem, raise the boxes to a wheelchair level.
Cost
The wood will cost from $10 to $15.
The soil mix from $20 to $30, but the soil never needs replacing, so over 10 years, that's $1 to $1.50 per year
The total cost for one box would be about $40.
Don’t need lots of garden tools. Just a little trowel and scissors.
Selecting a site
You will need an area that gets 6 – 8 hours of sun a day.
Stay away from trees and shrubbery. Shade and roots from trees will affect your garden.
Place your garden close to your house. There you will see it more often, spend more time in it, and enjoy it more.
Materials
Place a weed barrier under your box. You can use cardboard or buy a good landscape cloth.
You will need 2 X 6 pieces of lumber.
Often lumber comes in 8 foot lengths. Most lumberyards will cut it in half at little or no cost.
Avoid using treated wood; it may contain toxic materials that can leach into the soil.
Deck screws work best for fastening the boards together.
Avoid using meat, bones, grease, eggs, cheese, seeds, and fruit pits in your compost.
Only use hot composted manure. Do not use pet manure since it may contain harmful pathogens. Compost has all the nutrients in it.
If buying your compost, purchase a bag of several different types of organic matter.
Peat moss and vermiculite hold moisture and keep the soil loose.
Place the grid so it rests on top of the box or on the soil inside the box.
Grids can be made from plastic, wood, or old blinds.
Planting and Spacing
You will either plant one, four, nine, or sixteen plants per square foot, depending on the size of the plant.
Divide your square up making indentations with your fingers for the seeds.
Place 2 or 3 seeds in each holes, because there may be some seeds that don’t sprout.
Then water with sun warmed water. Cold water may cause plants to go into slight shock.
After the seeds have sprouted take scissors and snip off the extra plants leaving only one plant per spot.
Water each plant individually with sun warmed water at least 1 to 2 times a week.
Walkways should be 2 to 3 feet wide. That gives plenty of space to kneel down and reach into the garden.
Each time you plant a square add a small amount of compost to the soil and mix it in. This adds the nutrients back into the soil that the plants will need.
Close plant spacing crowds out weeds and helps retain moisture in the soil.
2 x 2 boxes work well on patios and a 3 x 3 box is ideal for kids.
Other considerations
The only barrier is mental. People often don’t think square foot gardening will work.
One 4 x 4 box will feed your family a salad every single day for the whole growing season.
Vertical Structures
In square foot gardening the best choice is to grow all vining crops on a system of vertical supports that keeps the amount of ground space required to an absolute minimum.
If you get your vine vegetables up in the air you’ll eliminate so much of the difficult and strenuous work of preparing and maintaining a large garden space.
Any vine plant, such as cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, melons, winter squash, pole beans, and peas can be grown vertically instead of letting them spread along the ground.
Some of these plants will climb all by themselves, grasping the support with their twisting tendrils. Others need to be attached to the support.
Use a frame, and nylon netting then train the plants to grow vertically.
The best material to use for the frame is steel pipe. It is strong enough to hold several full-grown loaded tomato plants throughout the growing season.
Make your pipe 7 feet long so you can drive them into the ground 1 foot.
Use twine or netting attached to the frame for the plants to grow up.
Indeterminate tomato varieties can be grown vertically if you pinch out the side shoots and train the long, central stem to climb a vertical length of twine or trellis.
In Mel Bartholomews book Square Foot Gardening he gives all the details of how to train different vegetable plants up a twine.
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Square Foot Gardening is a uniquely simplified method of gardening that produces 100% of the harvest in only 20% of the space -- AND -- without all the hard work and drudgery of single row gardening.
