Less unique aspects of square foot gardening
I
think that Mel Bartholomew could have summed up the unique
aspects of square foot gardening in about fifteen pages. So in
order
to turn his idea into a book, he had to add about 300 pages of
fluff ranging from basic seed-starting advice to how to weed and
water. While I wholeheartedly agree with many aspects of his
method, none of them is really new. In addition to permanent
beds, he advocates:
- Heavy mulches to keep down weeds
- Starting only the seeds you're going to have space for in your garden rather than planting dozens and thinning
- Succession planting so that your garden is full from early spring to late fall
- Vertical gardening by running tomatoes and cucurbits up trellises
(which is a method I need to work a bit harder on myself)
On the other hand, I
can't get behind some of Bartholomew's other assertions. He
thinks that crop rotation will take care of itself since you're
constantly filling up new squares and are unlikely to put the same
plant family in a location twice in a row. In a mathematical
puzzle, that might be the case, but in a real life garden you'll
discover that your carrots like the spot with deep soil and the spring
peas like the sunniest area by the trellis, and you'll tend to
plant each crop in the same place from year to year. Keeping
track of planting
locations is
essential to prevent a buildup of diseases in the soil.
I think the point where
Bartholomew really lost me, though, was when he asked who
would want more than four heads of broccoli in a year.
Um, me?!!! I know that Bartholomew's goal is to cut down on work,
but after a while, I started to wonder if he really
likes vegetables.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I grew a couple types of carrots in a 5 1/2 deep box. Grew just fine, no problem. grew a crap load of peas in and all around box garden. I do crop rotate though.....do agree on that. I will never go back to traditional gardening. I am in my rd years box gardening by square foot. We have never had so many vegetables in the backyard and have never worked this easy at it. My experience with it has been the most positive.