Has anyone tried "square foot gardening"???

[momofdrew]

The gardening book is by Mel Bartholemew [sp?]

The concept interests me...I dont need a lot of any one veggie except for tomatoes and corn and cucumber...most of the house hold wont eat most of what I grow...like kale and parsnip and brussel sprouts ...I am going to try it in one of my 8 x 4 foot raised beds...

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i've been doing mostly companion planting all these years. but this year when i was looking for a program to lay out the garden beds i found Gardeners.com had something that set up by sq foot spaces and indicated how many plants in each square! my sister was planning on doing the sq foot gardening this year but now her plans have drastically changed.

 

[vfem]

There is a few thread on here by people who have... its not as popular as you would think though. Some of his stuff is just GREAT, but other bits I think you could do better then what he suggests.

Anyways, would love to hear what you end up trying and what your successes are!

 

[Collector]

I have read about it and visited some blogs about it but have not tried it . It sounds like a good idea

 

[hoodat]

I don't have a large garden but it's big enough to get all the veggies I need using regular methods. I take a more laid back approach than square foot gardening demands. If you're using raised beds and don't have much room it would probably work.

 

[hangin'witthepeeps]

It's really expensive I found out. You have to buy the peat moss, vermiculite (if you find it), and several different kinds of compost. Then there is the math. How many cubic feet in a bed? How many beds do I need and how many cubic feet (which is how bags are sold and there is 0.03889 cubic feet in 1 quart, lol).

I would have to buy a $40 bag of vermiculite, several $10 bags of peat moss, a BUNCH of $5 bags of compost just to fill at few beds. Then you need to buy the wood for the beds, mulch between the beds, hand water as needed. Buy and install trellis. The initial set up cost is way out of this world and my pocket is not that deep.

I just made some raised beds, put in a bunch of topsoil amended with a few bags of compost, my homemade compost, leaves, and spent hay from the goats and I'm doing alright. I did add some fertilizer this year to my beds along with lime and of course my homemade compost which is not a rich and diverse as I would like. I will have a more "black gold" type of compost next year to add and won't need the fertilizer.


Good luck!

 

[patandchickens]

It is only expensive if construed as a religion

If you just take it as a book giving you some useful ideas to consider regarding intensive growing -- as opposed to a package deal 'all or nothing' -- then it is quite useful. You take what fits for you, you leave the rest. (Personally, I leave the Mel's Soil Mix part, the raised beds, and many of the obsessively micromanaging aspects )

So I would suggest being reasonable about it. I know he is a super-duper Type A personality salesman, and gets um very very enthusiastic... but you can perfectly well learn some useful things from him without actually DOING the whole system

JMHO, good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[thistlebloom]

I am of the same opinion as Pat, there are a lot of instructional
"methods" out there that can be adapted in part or in whole.( I'm thinking also of "Lasagna Gardening" ) If you relax a bit and discard some of the fluff and use what is doable in your situation you can't help but benefit.
The thing is to just start and use your experience to learn.

 

[oberhaslikid]

Yes, I have done it .I didnt follow his rules but made my own. I filled my raised beds like the lausgana garden the first year to get converted into raised beds.
Once I saw that was gonna work .I then tried the square foot. I liked it I just didnt make the grid permanent. I did it with string and stapled to the box . Then I could fill the box and rotate plants easier.
I filled my beds with newspaper and barn waste and then layered grass and leaves. I did add peatmoss to some. My Dh could not grasp the idea of this layer method and went and got top soil to put in the last 2 beds. Hes cursed them ever since.LOL

The top soil was too heavy to turn by handso we have been ammending those beds each year.

 

[ToxinFreeRainforest]

I've done (and will continue to do) SFG.

I found that a four foot wide bed is too deep for me to garden comfortably, so I will make all my future raised beds no wider than 3'.

I also used string instead of 'permanent' grids. However, last year I made 'grids' using window screen slats and rivets. They sort of look like an old fashioned child's safety gate. I just placed them on the ground for reference, and then removed them for ease of weeding when I was done planting.

Just prepared some of my beds today and laid out the grids, hoping to get some onion and radish seeds planted before the weather turns wet - again!

I also agree with the comment that it can be pricey IF you go to the bother of purchasing the exact materials recommended in the book. I started my last bed with sod (turned upside down) and covered with compost.

I especially like SFG for planting my tomatoes and peppers - the center of one foot is tomato, the next pepper and so on. The next row is the opposite - pepper then tomato. The benefit is the tomatoes get big enough to lightly shade the peppers so the chance of sun scald is reduced. Then I plant onions, leeks and whatever else strikes my fancy around the peppers and tomatoes. It is intensive gardening, and requires compost or fertilizer (organic) throughout the growing season, but I got a real nice amount of produce from my 2' by 10' concrete block bed. Did not pick my leeks last fall, and they made it through the winter and are already growing again! Just hope they continue to produce stalks and don't go to seed.

Whatever you decide to do, just enjoy the process - L