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The Basics of Square Foot GardeningThe concept for this type of gardening has been around for years and was re-popularized by Mel Bartholomew through his weekly series on PBS years ago. The concept is really quite simple and it is also known as raised bed gardening and container gardening as they all share one common idea and that is planting in contained or raised areas of soil to make the best use of the space available. Other names for it are compact growing, compact planting, companion planting, small plot farming, or box gardening. It also allows you to easily be able to fully enrich the planting bed soil with all the nutrients plants love. Because you are are planting in contained areas you can afford to purchase the best mulch and natural organic soil enrichment products to add to you garden because you are working with boxed or contained gardening areas. The steps for creating a simple "Square Foot Garden" are as follows:
1 - Create a box from 2 x 4's or 4 x 4's that are each 4 foot long. Nail or screw them together and put a coat of exterior paint or another weather proof coating on the wood to protect it from rot (I prefer landscaping timbers as they are already treated). 2 - Lay the box on the ground where you plan to have your garden and mark the four corners (if you area is already void of vegetation, you can skip this part). Pick up the box and remove any grass or vegetation from the surface area you are going to plant in all the areas between the 4 corners you marked out for your garden.
3 - Lay the box back down over your freshly de-vegetated area. Add one 6 cubic foot bail of peat moss to the box area (peat is a great organic additive and helps keep your soil loose). Turn over the entire are with spade or shovel, thoroughly mixing in the peat moss. 4 - Mark your box every 1 foot and drive a small nail or screw into the box at the marks. Run string across to each nail or screw on the opposite side of the box, both vertically and horizontally, creating your square foot grid. You could also use some type on thin lapping to create your grid if you choose. 5 - Plant your garden. Here are a couple of pictures showing a couple of basic layouts for the square foot garden. Click to enlarge pictures.
For a larger garden you can just add more boxes as shown in the pictures above. If you choose, you can connect the boxes together to create longer boxes, but keep the four foot width when doing this so you can reach everything.
Succession Planting - Succession planting works much the same way as companion planting. You will find when you switch to square foot gardening that an empty square will make you crazy, so you tend replant as soon as the harvest is finished. Since it's not a big crop in each square, the planting is simple. It's no big deal if you have a few too many or not quite enough squares of any one variety. You'll also find that your soil is never empty, but you seem always to have new plants started in flats or containers and waiting to be transplanted. Having new plants on hand will encourage you to harvest sooner, while the crops are in their prime, and before the vegetables become overgrown.
Interplanting - Interplanting is easy because you'll be aware of how much room a plant needs and if you always plant it in its final location or spacing. You will know that peppers, for instance, need 12-inch spacing, so just place one plant in the center of your square. After the plant is in, you'll see that the space around the outside edges won't be needed until it grows larger. Put a fast-growing crops like radishes, scallions, Japanese turnips, or some leaf lettuce to harvest when it's young. Tuck a few seeds of those vegetables in the corners of the square when you plant the pepper plant in the center, and you've got interplanting all taken care of. Since it's wiser not to plant an entire square of quick-growing radishes (16 is usually too many all at once), this method of planting 4 or 8 radish seeds in the pepper square makes a lot of sense. Just remember to mark where you planted the radishes so you won't pull them up after they sprout, thinking they might be weeds.
Some Sample Garden Plans - Here are some charts to help you plan a garden from one, to four people. You can mix and match plants as you choose. Each 1-foot by 1-foot square will hold any of the following plant combinations comprised of small plants, large plants, and vertical plants. Remember to plant your vining plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers, some squash plants, and melons, in the area of your frame with the vertical trellis for growing plants "up" instead of out. You can support larger melons with old panty hose or mesh of any type and just tie it to your vertical fence or frame until ripe. I have grown Tomatoes over 6 foot tall through a summer by trimming the suckers from the crotches of the vines. You will be amazed at how many tomatoes you can produce when grown this way. This is an example of how many plants in each square foot can be planted. You can put this in any combination you desire in your box(es): 16 radishes,16 carrots, 1 cabbage, 1 broccoli, 1 tomato, 2 cucumbers, 16 onions, 9 spinach, 9 beets, 4 Swiss chard, 1 cauliflower, 1 pepper, 1 eggplant, 8 pole beans, 4 lettuce, 4 parsley, 4 marigolds. Have fun gardening and I'd love to see some pictures of your gardens and I'll even post them here on this page. Square foot gardening was originally popularized by Mel Bartholomew and you can get more information here.Written by: WM8C - June, 2006 Not for use without permission.
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