Square foot gardening
The
method's founder claims that square foot gardening allows you to grow
the same amount of food in 20% of the space, saving time and money in
the process. Although several people I know swear by it, I find
it hard to believe that square foot gardening lives up to the
hype. Is square foot gardening a trend or a useful technique?
Mel Bartholomew outlines
his method at great length (sometimes much greater then I'd prefer) in Square
Foot Gardening.
He divides his garden into beds four feet on each side, then subdivides
each bed into sixteen blocks, each one square foot in size. These
small sections are devoted to single crops --- big plants like cabbage
fill an entire square while smaller crops may have several evenly
spaced plants in the square. That's pretty much all there is to
it.
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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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Square Foot Gardening is the most effective way to garden in large or small spaces. Not only does it only use 20% of the space a traditional garden uses, it also saves on water, not to mention time and energy spent digging and weeding. For more information please visit our web site http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ Happy Gardening Everyone!
Well it worked for me. Spent years traditional gardening before moving to Mels square foot gardening. I will never go back. Easier, produces more. Can't say enough. I don't understand people who are "stuck" on something or against something to comment "I don't see how"??? Very odd when one has the tunnel vision and hears people swearing by a subject but still makes the statement based on nothing. I could understand the comment of, I don't see how if you never heard anything about it. But, Thousands of photos on net of square foot gardening. you know what tools I use now? One trowel for adding compost in a square, a pitchfork for turning compost piles, a basket for harvest. Basically thats it. All in all, if someone can't get around not understanding how you can plant more in a square foot. They just aren't going to consider it any further. It is simple math. e.g. a 4x4 box can contain 144 bean plants, the same space i planted what was recommended in traditional gardening 48 plants.......6 in apart in rows 3 foot between. Tilled all that dirt for most of it not to be used. Now if you use 8x4 boxes you begin to multiply the difference. A full box garden reaps tons more than traditional in my experiment and experience over the past 20 years and BEST of all.......lots less work!!!!! I worked for me. Before judging and denying what others say........... Try it yourself.
Oh no! You've got a picture of the OLD book which teaches the ORIGINAL method. It's so much simpler if you use the All New Square Foot Gardening book - especially the 2nd Edition.
Now I haven't gotten this confirmed, so take it with a grain of salt, but author of Sustainable Food for the Globe: Everyday People Producing Food In Abundance, Norma Burnson said today that the UN mentioned Permaculture AND Square Foot Gardening specifically as sustainable methods.
BTW I'm a SFG Certified Instructor but I also teach a class on Small Veggie Gardening and feature Back to Eden, Hugelkulture, using squash arches as well as Square Foot Gardening. We all do what we can and anytime anyone grows any food themselves they are helping solve the problem.
Oh, and I love the rebuttal post.