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Why I Love Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening, at its most basic level, is just what the name implies: dividing the garden into one-foot squares and planting a particular crop in each square.

I first heard about it on an online forum. I skimmed over the thread, and thought, Na, don't need it. Having just read The Postage Stamp Garden Book: Grow Tons of Vegetables in Small Places by Duane Newcomb and Great Garden Companions by Sally Cunningham, I was eager to begin gardening using the companion method and the biointensive method.

The spring and summer I made my first serious attempt at a garden as an adult, I struggled. I wanted to do sequential plantings of carrots, but I didn't mark off the boundaries very well so I was never quite sure where to sow my next batch of seeds.

My spinach and lettuce had no sense of order, and my zinnias and marigolds had gotten out of control by the middle of the summer.

Plus I was trying to garden in slightly amended north Texas soil. My sugar snap peas did not do well at all, and the germination rate for my carrots was pathetic. Let's not even begin to talk about my poor tomatoes.

Determined to do better the next year, that fall I did some further gardening research. A book about market gardening referenced Mel Bartholomew's book, Square Foot Gardening, and I decided I had nothing to lose. I found a copy of the newer version, All New Square Foot Gardening, and dug into it.

And immediately began drooling over the photos of the lush, weed-free gardens taken straight out of Mel's own backyard.

Could I have a garden that looked like that? That was as low-maintenance as he claimed? That was so...so...ORGANIZED?

Basic tenets of Square Foot Gardening

The principles of Bartholomew's method are similar to the ones in the books I'd read the year before. Let plants grow close together to confuse insects, keep out weeds, and keep the soil more moist (if that's at all possible where I live). Practice companion gardening--grow plants next to each other that provide mutual benefits (Carrots Love Tomatoes is the classic companion gardening bible).

But Bartholomew goes a step further. First, he says, build your raised beds out of high-quality organic material. Don't even think about using the native soil in your yard.

Next, create square foot grids. Each grid contains a particular crop; for example, four lettuces in one grid, one pepper plant in a another, sixteen carrots in another, etc. As you harvest one crop, plant another in its place.

This is where I go crazy about Square Foot Gardening. The organization. But as I go through my first season of using the SFG method, I find more and more reasons for falling in love with it.

My top ten reasons for preferring SFG over any other gardening method

1. There is a place for everything, and everything in its place. No more, "Did I already plant carrots here?" or "Gee, I wonder if I can fit a couple more heads of lettuce here?" Not only do the grids keep everything visually organized, but Bartholomew tells you exactly how many of each plant you can have in a given square foot.

2. Sequential planting is a snap. With square foot gardening, I knew to plant sixteen carrot seeds in this grid this week, and sixteen more in the neighboring grid the next week.

3. The plants like the potting mix much better than they like the native soil. Disease and insect problems are down considerably this year from last year, and I know it's because the soil is a lot healthier. (P.S.--"Mel's Mix", as Bartholomew calls it, gets very pricey. Hint: I read on another forum that someone just used pure compost and was getting great results.)

4. No weeding. Not like when I was growing up and my parents planted in traditional rows, anyway. Once in a while I see an illegal seedling. It pulls up easily out of the loose soil. No back-breaking required. (And I haven't even done a good job mulching this year.)

5. Companion gardening is a cinch. SFG takes the guesswork out of how close companion plants should be. Plant four carrots with one tomato, then plant a couple marigolds in the grid to the tomato's left to keep away pests, and a couple of basil plants on the right because basil and tomatoes benefit each other's growth.

6. Easy, cheap ways to protect plants from animals and weather. In the All-New Square Foot Gardening, Bartholomew illustrates how to build hoops out of PVC pipes in order to cover a raised bed with frost blankets or shade cloths. He also shows how to build a cage to fit over the bed to keep away everything from rats to deer. (Although I'm guessing it'd be a bit tough to build one large enough to cover an indeterminate tomato.)

7. Lots of homegrown food in a small amount of space. My original plan was to turn our entire side yard--which isn't very large--into nine raised beds, ranging from 16 square feet to 32 square feet. I killed the grass, built the beds, and then sat down to plan the garden on a sheet of graph paper.

Only to find out that if I were going to fill all those beds I would have enough food to feed a small army.

I pared it down to three beds, and planted in the two smaller ones. (Busy building a website and running after a toddler, that's all I had time to do.) Even though I didn't plant as much as I would have liked, lettuce has been abundant and we're about to have tomatoes coming out our ears.

square foot garden

8. My garden does look lush and beautiful. Edible landscaping. How much greener can you get? ;-)

9. Easy to get children involved in gardening. Next spring, my son will be almost three-and-a-half, old enough to take care of a square or two. I will use old blocks or lincoln logs to mark off "his" space, and he will be able to plant, water, and otherwise tend to his plot with a minimum of supervision.

10. Anyone, anywhere can do square foot gardening. Apartment dwellers can build a 4X4 wooden box, put it on their patio, fill it with potting mix and have a constant supply of greens and herbs (maybe even some tomatoes!). Suburbanites with tiny backyards (welcome to my current world) can provide most to all the vegetables their families can eat using only four to eight 4X4 raised beds.

Eventually, I plan to grow at least 75% of the vegetables my family eats--and we eat a lot of vegetables--and still have plenty of room for my son to run around and play.

May I coach you? Whether you are a beginning gardener, or a seasoned veteran looking for a more efficient and enjoyable way to grow food, square foot gardening is the method I recommend above all others.

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