Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work

The Local Food Production Initiative in Fairhope recommends “Square Foot Gardening”:http://www.amazon.com/Square-Foot-Gardening-Garden-Space/dp/1579548563/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221108310&sr=8-2 by Mel Bartholomew as a good book newcomers might want to look at. Although I wouldn’t call it a “new” way to garden, since it’s basically an adaptation of intensive gardening techniques that have been around for ages, it does simplify the planning. Here’s their review:
In 1981 Mel Bartholomew published a book called ??Square Foot Gardening??, and offered gardeners an alternative way of organizing their vegetable gardens.
The old way of gardening is to plant a long row of seeds, then another long row of seeds next to the first row, and so on, row after row. Among the problems with this technique are the following: the seeds in a row are planted so close together that the gardener must spend time and effort thinning the crop as it starts growing; there is much open space between rows, causing more area for weeds to grow; this open space also increases the amount of compost, fertilizer, and water that must be applied; and to tend and harvest the garden one must walk through the garden, compressing the soil and making it more difficult for air and water to reach the roots of the plants, causing a smaller and less healthy vegetable at harvest time.
Planting a packet of seeds in one of the rows may also mean that you end up with more of the vegetable than you are able to consume during the short harvest period.
The wide spaces between rows may have been necessary when animals or tractors were used to plow the field, but are really not necessary for the small home or community garden. The technique persists, however, because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” The author estimates that the square foot gardening system grows the same amount of food on 20 percent of the land.
The problems with long row gardening can discourage new gardeners, causing them to lose enthusiasm and spend less and less time tending their garden, and perhaps eventually giving up on gardening all together.
The technique of square foot gardening was developed to make gardening simpler, less time consuming, and with a reduced amount of land, fertilizer, compost and water required. It achieves these goals by limiting the size of the garden to the exact size the gardener needs to provide the food he or she wants for his or her family, and planting just the right number of seeds in each square foot to most efficiently utilize the space.
Mel Bartholomew calls his system “square foot gardening” because you build up your garden in a series of squares, each square measuring 12 inches by 12 inches, or one square foot. Each square (or group of squares) holds a different vegetable, fruit, flower, or herb. The number of plants in each square depends on how large the plants become. Tables in his book tell for each vegetable type whether one, four, nine, or sixteen seeds should be planted, evenly spaced, in a square.
The small one-foot squares are grouped into blocks measuring 4-feet by 4-feet square, giving a total of sixteen squares. The back row of the square can have a trellis so that climbing plants can grow vertically.
Bartholomew says this is enough for one person to have a salad every day during the growing season. A family could have two, four, or any number of 4-foot by 4-foot blocks. His 347-page book gives many tips that will enable even a beginning gardener to start an easy-to-maintain garden in their back yard, or as part of a community garden.
The book is available at the Fairhope Public Library (non-fiction section catalog number 635BAR). (The Mobile Public Library has the 2005 edition.) The 1981 paperback edition can be purchased used from “www.abebooks.com”:http://www.abebooks.com/ for less than $3.00 plus postage. Find more details on square foot gardening online at: “http://www.squarefootgardening.com/”:http://www.squarefootgardening.com/.