Square Foot Home Garden Yields More Vegetables

Many people want to grow their own vegetables, fruit or fresh herbs in their home grown garden but feel they can’t because they don’t have enough space. With the method called “square foot gardening”, a garden can be grown anywhere by anyone including children, seniors and people with limited mobility or function. This garden can be grown inside or outside.

Using this method, gardens can be grown inside near a sunny window or outside on a patio, door stoop, balcony or even a large acreage. Even without a sunny window, fluorescent lights can take the place of sunlight providing the gardener the ability to grow vegetables year round.

Square foot gardening is vastly different from the traditional row garden. It is ecologically friendly because it takes less space, fewer seeds and much less water. It also takes much less time to maintain and less work for the gardener.

Mel Bartholomew, a retired engineer turned avid gardener, community garden coordinator, and gardening writer and teacher tired of seeing the wasted seeds, energy, water and space associated with conventional gardening was determined to invent a method of gardening that would be less costly, require much less work and gain higher yields with less waste of resources and human energy.

“I set out to devise an easy, no-work, foolproof, continual harvest garden method that would work in a small space for beginners and experts alike,” says Bartholomew in his book Square Foot Gardening – A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work. And so he did.

The Basic Ideology

To grow a garden using Bartholomew’s method, the first requirement is a four foot by four foot box marked off in square foot grids. (This size is for adults – for children make the box three feet by three feet so they can reach into the middle.) The box needs to be six inches deep if it’s being used outside on the ground. If it is going to be set up on table or saw horses making it suitable and accessible for those with less mobility or flexibility, or for persons in wheelchairs or walkers, it needs to be twelve inches deep and will require a bottom.

Once the box is divided and marked into one foot squares separated by string, or some other material to outline each block, a certain number of seeds are planted per vegetable per square. Again, this is not at all like row gardening where the grower puts all the seeds in the packet in the row, waits for the seeds to germinate, then thins them…what a waste of seeds, money, time and energy!

Square foot gardening is simple, ecologically friendly and mess free. Imagine growing a garden with 50% less cost than traditional row gardening in only 20% of the space needed for row gardening, using only 10% of the water, and producing 100% yield with only 5% of the seeds and 2% of the work that goes into conventional gardening!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Bartholomew has grown many gardens this way and teaches others around the globe to use this method. He knows firsthand exactly how many seeds of each vegetable to plant in each square. In other words, the research and development has been carried out. In each square foot plant:

• One seed to grow a broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, corn, pepper, eggplant or tomato plant.
• Two seeds per square foot to grow summer or winter squash.
• Four seeds to grow romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, salad lettuce or Swiss chard.
• Nine seeds grow spinach, bush beans, or Japanese turnips.
• Sixteen seeds to grow carrots, beets, onions, or scallions.

Creeping or Vine Vegetables

Vegetables like cucumbers or squash can be grown to crawl up (vertically), not out (horizontally), by building a simple frame at the back of the garden box. Use a frame already built and available from a local supplier, or make one using metal and twine.

Soil

Bartholomew has developed a soil mix that works. Here is the recipe:

• One-third compost
• One-third vermiculite
• One-third peat moss

Watering the Garden

The square foot garden requires much less water than the traditional row garden. This is another reason that this method is kinder to the environment. All that is required is a bucket of sun warmed water, or water that’s been drawn and left to sit for a while to get to room temperature, and a container of some kind to dip into the bucket. Each square foot requires one cup of water a few times a week. The water is gently poured from a cup directly into the area where the root is growing. This way, the water gets directly to the root. There is no need, in fact it is not recommended, to water the foliage. Wet foliage leads to spots, spores and rot. This watering method is simple, easy and mess free.

Square Foot Gardening Just Makes Sense

More and more it’s becoming necessary for people to grow their own food, even in urban areas. The cost of moving food around the continent to the grocery store shelf is making many fresh foods too costly and out of reach financially for many families. With water becoming less available, with space for growing food diminishing and soil becoming less nutritive, fresh vegetables may become less available adding to the necessity of home grown food. This gardening method is now being used world wide, even in countries where good soil and water are scarce and growing conditions are difficult.