I grew up in the country — gardening meant a large plot, plowed and raked, and then planted with long, widely-space rows of vegetables. It also meant weeding and hoeing, weeding and hoeing. Gardening was a chore.
When Kris and I bought our first home, we both wanted a vegetable garden, but we didn’t want the drudgery that came with it. Besides, we didn’t have a big space in the country — we had an average city lot. Fortunately, we discovered Mel Bartholomew’s Square-Foot Gardening.
The square-foot gardening concept is simple: Build a raised bed, divide the space into sections of one square-foot each, and then plant vegetables (and/or flowers) in just the amount of space they need. The advantages of this system include reduced workload, less watering, easy weeding (and not much of it), and easy access to your crops. This is a great way to learn to grow some of your own food.
We built our square-foot garden one Saturday in mid-April. I spent the morning constructing three raised beds out of two-by-sixes. Each bed was twelve feet long, four feet wide, and twelve inches tall. I am not a handyman, yet I was able to build these in just a few hours. It was fun.
Digging was less fun. I spent the afternoon double-digging three patches in our lawn. We maneuvered the frames into place, leveled them, and then filled them with rich soil (purchased from a nearby nursery-supply center). Finally, we created a grid over each bed using tacks and twine. When we were finished, our raised beds looked similar to the one my friends Andrew and Courtney built recently:
After we built the raised beds and outlined the growing space, we followed the guidelines in Bartholomew’s book. (A revised edition was published last year. It’s lovely, but if I were looking for this book I’d buy the older version, which is available cheap. Your public library should even have a copy — it’s a classic.)
According to the official site, the ten basic tenets of square-foot gardening are:
- Layout. Arrange your garden in squares, not rows. Lay it out in 4′x4′ planting areas.
- Boxes. Build boxes to hold a new soil mix above ground.
- Aisles. Space boxes 3′ apart to form walking aisles.
- Soil. Fill boxes with Mel’s special soil mix: 1/3 blended compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite.
- Grid. Make a permanent square foot grid for the top of each box. A MUST
- Care. NEVER WALK ON YOUR GROWING SOIL. Tend your garden from the aisles.
- Select. Plant a different flower, vegetable, or herb crop in each square foot, using 1, 4, 9, or 16 plants per square foot.
- Plant. Conserve seeds. Plant only a pinch (2 or 3 seeds) per hole. Place transplants in a slight saucer-shaped depression.
- Water. Water by hand from a bucket of sun-warmed water.
- Harvest. When you finish harvesting a square foot, add compost and replant it with a new and different crop.
You might, for example, plant a single tomato in a square, but you’d plant 16 carrots in another. Using this system, you can cram a lot of garden into a small space and still get excellent yields. For more information, check out:
- Journey to Forever: Building a square-foot garden (excellent tutorial!)
- Steven and Paula Hicks: Our square-foot gardening experience
- GardenWeb: Square-foot gardening forum
- Tim’s square-foot gardening page
If you don’t have the time or space to construct raised beds, consider starting a container garden. We’ve never done this, but I’ve heard reports from apartment-dwellers that good results can be achieved from plants grown in large self-watering pots on a patio or balcony. (Edit: In the comments, Beth recommends the book The Bountiful Container for those interested in the subject.) Find more information at these sites:
- Texas A&M University: Vegetable gardening in containers
- Garden Guides: Guide to container gardening
- West Virginia University extension service: Container gardening
- Arizona Master Gardener manual: Vegetable garden: Container garden
- Virginia Tech extension service: Four keys to successful container gardening
Now’s the time to get your garden space ready. The danger of frost has passed in many parts of the United States. Garden fairs and plant sales have begun to pop up like weeds. Get out there and grow some food!
April 21st, 2007 at 7:42 am
We built our raised beds last week and are going to be getting them into position this weekend. My dh bought Square Foot Gardening for Christmas this year, I love it! We just moved and knew we had to start from scratch. We are currently trying to figure the best place to put them that will get the most sun. We have a wooded lot and will be taking down trees to help get more sun. I can’t wait to start growing things!
April 21st, 2007 at 7:42 am
I’ve been square foot gardening for years.
Rather than double dig all that ground, I just laid newspapers and (livestock) feed bags on the ground and covered them with good soil. I bought a truckload of mushroom compost from a local mushroom farm for my soil.
Be sure to mulch, and if you install drip irrigation on a timer you can be a lazy gardener, like me.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:53 am
I love Sq. foot gardening! Especially the information about growing musk melons on trellises. I’ve never had the chance to try it out yet.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:57 am
I’ve been doing square foot gardening for three years now. It is so simple, and I’m still amazed by the amount of food that can be grown in such little space. I have two 4×4 beds and end up giving food away every year. Planting a few marigolds and sprinkling some red pepper flakes have kept most of the pests at bay and weeding has been minimal. By the time the garden fills in there is no room for weeds. Square foot is to gardening, what index funds are to investing: good returns, minimal effort, no guess work, and low cost.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I’m glad to see this topic come up as this is ‘where I live’.
To tell where the sun will be at noon on any day of the year, check the shadows cast by the moon at midnight, 6 months earlier. It’s that simple.
I’m familiar with Bartholomew’s methods but have taken them a couple steps further. Your readers might be interested in this.
Mels’ methods are an adaptation of a form of cultivation known as “French intensive”. You might also research the writings of Jon Jeavons for another variation on this theme.
Both of these methods produce yields that are difficult to believe. They are the only methods that make sense for home gardeners with just a few hundred square feet at their disposal.
But both of those methods involve too much stooping to suit my tastes. Additionally, under Mel’s scheme, the lower portions of the soil are allowed to compact and become less penetrable by roots. Thus his emphasis on watering … all his roots are shallow.
Mr. Jeavons is considered as something of ‘the dean of organic gardening’ but his methods call for frequent digging and is also too low for us aging baby boomers and for the increasing numbers of people who either get around in wheel chairs or count on electric scooters for mobility. My method solves those drawbacks for a few days of hard labor while one is still young to engage in such … but old enough to look ahead to a day when that will no longer be true.
I built 2′ tall bottomless boxes of ordinary pine which were then doused liberally with raw linseed oil. I use 1×4s nailed to 2×4s because that was what I could afford at the time. Heavier lumber would certainly hold up better. In any case, use raw linseed oil, liberally, as a preservative. In your design, make the overall length a multiple of 4′ and allow for cross-bracing between sides every 2′. Alternate the top brace and the bottom brace to also serve as a support for the trellis uprights, spaced on 2′ centers. These general dimensions allow for the least material waste.
Mine were also given reinforcing cross beams to hold 2×4 masts upon which to hang a wire mesh for trellising plants. I don’t have a large yard, but I have as much sky as King Solomon did. The beams are 12′ long and reach 10′ above the boxes. This isn’t excessive … higher would have been even better. Pole beans, cucurbits such as cucumbers and squash, and (indeterminant) tomatoes will outgrow the trellis. I’m writing this from a motel room in Eagan, Minnesota, but somewhere around my home I have a photo of ripe tomatoes at the top of that trellis and the whole plant, 15′ of it above ground and another 3′ of the roots, stretched out on my lawn.
THEN I dug. In fact, I dug deeply enough to completely bury a bale of hay laid sideways … and then lined the holes with just that, bales of hay laid sideways with the twine left in place.
I then set the boxes in position over the holes. Mine were 20′ long by 4′ wide. I did it myself, but could certainly have used some help. The boxes were then leveled such that the trellises were straight up & down.
Then, after screening, the displaced soil was crudely mixed with compost and placed in the new bins until they stood a couple inches proud of the rim. By ‘crudely mixed’, I mean simply to just throw a couple shovels of soil into the hole and follow with a couple shovels of compost. I probably have about 40 hours of honest labor into the project … but I garden standing up now and everything, from planting, to weeding (not much of that, to tell the truth) to picking starts at mid-thigh level … although picking after mid-summer calls for the use of a ladder.
As the compost and the hay continue to decompose, the soil will continue to settle … and remain loose for years. Each spring I top dress with about 4 inches of compost and each fall I bring the surface back level with compost, turn the top 12″ with a soil fork and replant with garlic just before the hard freeze makes the ground unworkable. This is then given an additional top dressing of straw and compost to limit frost heaving of the bulbs. By March, the garlic is back up above the blanket and it is time apply a top dressing of blood meal and to plant lettuces!
That early-spring blood meal (~$5.00) is the only investment I make in fertilizer. One bottle of BT v. berliner and another of BT v. San Diego are the only investments I make in pesticides. Compost tea keeps mold & fungus down to acceptable levels and nutrient levels topped off.
Note that an east to west orientation of the bins will allow the sun to warm their sides … giving a two month (or more) extension of the growing season in the cooler latitudes. The higher the sides of the boxes, the more area there is for the sun to hit and the earlier in the season you can plant, later in the season you can harvest. And consider this … cold air falls. That means that the higher your plants are, the later it will be before they get a killing frost. My garden usually skips the first hard frost, which, where I live, can be followed by as much as another month of fine weather. Here, in Detroit, I can actively garden 10 months of the year without so much as a plastic sheet for a cloche. With a cloche, my garden would never shut down but I think it wisest to give the garden, and the gardener, a short rest each year.
I’ve been doing this for nearly 15 years and, without making allowance for the fact that I also use organic methods, I figure that my wife and I shave our grocery bill by about $3,500 a year simply by preserving the output of our 640 square feet of raised beds. And … we eat like royalty all summer while having more than enough to give with an open hand to our friends and the less-fortunate in our congregation.
I figure that it costs me about $200 to build each bed. They will last, it would appear, about 10 years as I have constructed them. Your expenses will vary by location and choice of materials. And how long they last will also vary. But figuring $20 per bed / per year and 80 (horizontal) sq ft per bed I find an amortized cost of about 25 cents per square foot. That, all by itself, is reasonable expense for organic produce tended while standing. But there is an additional 160 sq ft of trellis space per bed, also … so the amortized cost per square foot of growing surface (horizontal + vertical) is only about 3 cents per year.
Using USDA numbers, my wife and I figure that canning the food then adds about 10 cents per quart … making our total expense for the garden for a year come out to less than $50 for a yield of at least $3,500. (Making no allowance for the value of what was eaten fresh through the season.)
DO you know of any other investment that yields that return. Consistently? Without significant risk of loss of capital?
Some of the people we associate with snicker at the thought of a garden. They think this means we can’t afford grocery store food. Well, they are right about one thing … my money has better things to do than buy food.
My wife and I eat much better than those who are doing the snickering. We don’t mind paying less.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Sorry for such a long post above. I hope it was informative enough to justify its length.
I’d also like to point out that the spacing given on the back of seed packets is based on row. Don’t use it. Instead, use the average of the between row and within row numbers to derive a spacing to be used with triangles. You will get about 50% more plants in the same square footage without excessive crowding. Also, research interplanting for some tips on really great yields for every single inch.
Examples to consider:
Leaf lettuce beneath climbing peas / beans.
carrots (deep rooted, late maturing) with garlic (shallow bulbs, pulled early summer in northern latitudes)
hot peppers interspersed with other plants to throw bugs off-course
Plant a garden. Pay attention to it. Learn from this and plant wiser next year. Many people skip the learning part and that’s why they continue to get small yields of puny vegetables from their weed patches.
And here’s the mantra every good gardener lives by:
“I feed the soil. The soil feeds the plants. The plants feed me.”
Feed the soil intelligently, reap accordingly.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:32 pm
@BillinDetroit
No worries about long comments like yours when they’re that good!
You mention that you figure your raised beds will last ten years. Ours lasted exactly ten years at the old house, and then we moved. Two of them had several more years of life in them, but one would have needed repair if we’d stayed.
I can’t remember how much we spent to build them, but I know that to build my three beds, I used:
* 16 non pressure-treated 2×6
* 3 non pressure-treated 4×4
* a lot of nails (I would use wood screws if I were to build them now)
I didn’t follow a plan. I just made them up off the top of my head. It was easy!
Because the wood was not pressure-treated (you don’t want that stuff next to the soil where you grow your food), the boards rotted with time. If the lumber had been able to withstand the Oregon rain, those beds would probably last twenty years or more!
April 21st, 2007 at 2:33 pm
“For all things produced in a garden, whether of salads or fruits, a poor man will eat better that has one of his own, than a rich man that has none.”
-J.C. Loudon, An Encyclopedia of Gardening (1826)
April 21st, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Wow, BillInDetroit should do his own gardening blog! I bet it would be great!
Anyway, J.D., all I wanted to add is that I found it a little funny that you recommended passing up the newest edition of Square Foot Gardening, but then lamented the amount of digging you had to do. The new edition has a new soil-enrichment method that doesn’t require digging into the existing soil! Heh! Oh well, hard work is good for ya.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
The great thing about this type of gardening is that it is so adaptable to any shape or size of container or bed that you want to have.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:42 pm
[...] at 7:42 pm by LeisureGuy The Younger Grandson is getting into gardening. I thought he might like square-foot gardening: When Kris and I bought our first home, we both wanted a vegetable garden, but we didn’t want the [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Wow! Thanks for all of this! We bought a house last fall that has one spot in back, and were not quite sure how to go about this. I am starting tomorrow!
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:29 am
[...] The article itself is only somewhat informative, but there are tons of good links here about “square-foot” and other forms of restricted and container gardening. [Get Rich Slowly] [...]
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
[...] spices. If you don’t have a backyard but have a balcony or terrace, you can try to build a square-foot garden. [...]
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
[...] An Introduction to Square-Foot Gardening ? Get Rich Slowly easy option for gardening, even in small spaces… (tags: gardening garden food diy home howto tips advice compost environment fitness freedom) [...]
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Thirty Three Things (v. 8)…
1. The New Criterion’s Roger Kimball on conservatism: “Conservative”: that means wanting to conserve what is worth preserving from the ravages of time and ideology, evil and stupidity. In some plump eras, as Evelyn Waugh observed in one of his……
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 am
I love the concept of square foot gardening. has anyone heard of a company called nurtur (i think its spelt like tht)? they make products that use this sorta principle. i dnt think it gets release for a while tho. there website is http://www.nurtur.co.uk . great blog guys!!
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:18 am
For those of us city-dwellers that don’t have space for raised beds, The Bountiful Container is a *great* book on container gardening.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:33 pm
[...] An Introduction to Square-Foot Gardening ? Get Rich Slowly someday (tags: gardening diy) Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:23 pm
[...] An Introduction to Square-Foot Gardening ? Get Rich Slowly Sounds like a great idea, and a cool project to start with the kids. (tags: gardening home diy howto tips) Posted by Richard@Home Filed in [...]
April 26th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
[...] each, and then plant vegetables (and/or flowers) in just the amount of space they need…”read more | digg [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 11:07 am
You can grow most anything in a container on your patio/balcony. I’ve had success growing tomatoes, carrots, hot peppers, eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, scallions and tons of herbs. Buy the plants at a decent nursery. Invest in some large plastic self-waterning pots (with the chamber at the bottom).
April 27th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
If you don’t care for the expense of a self-watering pot, you can poke a small hole in the cap of a soda-pop bottle, fill the bottle and upend it in the soil surface near the plant. Make sure the hole is small, though … about 1/8″ or less … so the bottle doesn’t empty all at once. Most plants don’t need “dunk & dry” … but grow most rapidly when the soil is kept uniformly moist. And constant healthy growth will thwart a lot of bug & disease attacks before they even get started.
Many times you will see advice to wait until leaves droop before watering. That’s too late … the plant is already stressing and weakened. Bugs & disease are how nature clears out weak plants. During the heat of the day it is natural for plants to conserve moisture by wilting simply because their roots can not supply enough water some days despite adequate levels of soil moisture. But if they are still wilted after the heat of the day, they are water-stressed and the bugs are on the way.
The nice thing about the bottle is that it’s easy to glance over and check whether you need more or not.
The self-watering pots can look nicer, but the key point is to get water to the soil at the root level or beyond.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:55 am
[...] Master “square foot gardening.” [...]
April 30th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
All of the methods you mention work
However if you take some time and research you will find most of these methods originated from Dr. Jacob Mittleider Even Mel worked with the Dr. I use the Mittleider method and get about 8 times the yield of my old traditional garden. Do not starve the plants for light, like us they need “elbow room:
May 14th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
[...] And lots going on! Moi and I are working on setting up a garden according to the square foot gardening method I saw on Get Rich Slowly. With luck in a few months we’ll have some fresh veggies. Moi [...]
May 17th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
[...] Grow your own vegetables. [...]
May 26th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
[...] of this in one 4ftx8ft garden, quite to the amazement of Moi’s mother. If the square-foot gardening system works as it should, we will be swimming in vegetables in a few months. The way the peas are [...]
June 17th, 2007 at 4:58 am
[...] article with pictures and a detailed list of links on square foot and container [...]
July 6th, 2007 at 8:50 am
[...] enough to buy a cheap television, pay for clothes for growing children, or start a super cool vegetable garden. So I have to stop. How can I preach about a budget if I keep wasting money at the company [...]
August 17th, 2007 at 11:52 am
[...] An introduction to square-foot gardening. Yes, it’s probably too late for this year. Plan for next year! [...]
November 19th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
[...] An Introduction to Square Foot Gardening (frugality: 734 diggs) [...]
December 29th, 2007 at 10:22 am
[...] An Introduction to Square-Foot Gardening [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Hey there. I see it’s been awhile since the last post, but I have a question I hope someone will answer for me. I have just built a raised bed. It is 2′ tall, 6 x 3′ and I have it filled with lasagna layers up to about 4-6″ from the top. Should I fill the thing completely, or leave some room at the top? Mel talks about “side dressing” some things with compost, which I take to mean scooping some compost around the plants. The Lasagna Gardening lady also mentions this. So should I leave the room at top or no?
Thanks!
L
February 19th, 2008 at 7:00 am
No. Fill it. In fact, crown it over.
Then rake it slightly concave to assure maximum absorption / minimum run-off of water. The edges should be slightly higher than the center.
The lower layers WILL recede enough by fall that, even crowned over, there will be room to dig in additional material.
I garden in wooden boxes. My boxes are 2′ deep by 4′ by 20′ and I am speaking from approx. 10 years experience with them.
In the fall, cap them with as much compost as you have … ready or not (this is a new garden so you won’t have much, if any, that is finished) and then, in the spring, work that cap DEEPLY into the soil -at least the depth of your spading fork- to finish composting (think ‘green manure’ … in fact, Google the term). Then plant and, once the plants are up and identifiable, mulch to a minimum depth of two inches, preferably 4, keeping the mulch slightly back from the tender young stems. To the extent possible, keep the mulch this thickness … it will subside over the season from moisture loss, vibrations of the earth and earthworms eating the bottom of the layer.
Ignore advice to let the soil dry out between waterings … the maximum growth and yield come from uninterrupted growth and this requires constant availability of moisture. This is also one way of avoiding blossom end rot (hard black spots) on tomatoes. (Working dried eggshells into the compost pile will keep the soil calcium levels up, but moisture is required to get it to the fruit.)
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 am
[...] Official Site of Square Foot Gardening An Introduction to Square Foot Gardening Building a Square Foot [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 6:32 am
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April 11th, 2008 at 11:49 am
$9 chicken: What to do when food prices are rising…
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April 13th, 2008 at 5:01 am
[...] An Introduction to Square-Foot GardeningThe Year-Long GRS Project: How Much Does a Garden Really Save?Fact or Fiction: Can a Rain Barrel Save You Money?Daily Links: Ask Tim Ferriss about His 4-Hour Work WeekGardening 101: Plan Today for Summer Success [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 11:25 am
What should I add to my SFG before planting
for the summer?
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Can one grow corn in a SFG?
May 14th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
SFG is definently the way to go - would of never gotten into gardening without it. Great article, though I think the new book is the better one to buy (even if it is a couple bucks more).
~plantgirl of http://squarefootgardenblog.com
May 30th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Thanks for all the invaluable advice. About to start, but due to back problems am getting the hard work done for me. Has anyone ever block built the beds for SFG? Want something permanant without much/any maintenance.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] An Introduction to Square Foot Gardening at Get Rich Slowly. Ah, the post that started it all! For those that weren’t around I took on my own square foot gardening project based on J.D.’s post. My own “how-to” post was featured on Lifehacker.org, and 15,000 overnight visitors later Frugal Dad took off. Interestingly enough, this article remains one of my most popular posts, as does J.D.’s at his own blog. [...]
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
It seems to me like square foot gardening would combine very naturally with the theories behind self-watering containers. Has anyone tried to build a square-foot garden with some kind of water reservoir and wicking system on the bottom?
And how about modifying the construction so it could be used as a cold frame (some way to put a glass roof on it for the late winter to start seeds early). I just moved to Colorado and maximizing my short growing season and minimizing water use are a priority. Thanks for any help!
heidi
June 4th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Heidi,
Raise the boxes higher than for SFG. Orient them east-west so that the south side of the box is the long one to capture max heat from the sun. Keep a LOT of rotting vegetable material / manures worked into the soil as a natural heat source. We just had a pretty hard (and very late) frost in Mich. while I was out of town and I lost NOTHING. All I had for heat was some half-finished compost … but my beds are ~2 ft above the ground and the cold air sinks BELOW the level of the plants.
You can certainly make a cold frame from salvaged windows / patio doors that is more than serviceable.
I can recommend the Irrigro (tyvek tape) low pressure weep irrigation system. It has always worked well for me … my plants never realize that we have a drought every July / August … they just keep plowing ahead. The tomatoes, especially love it.
Keep LOTS of mulch on top of the soil to minimize water loss. I plant, lay the tyvek in place, adjust the water flow to just enough to keep the tape a little ‘weepy’ and apply a thick mulch over everything. Done. Few weeds - no drought stress - great yields.
June 4th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Bill,
Thanks for the advice! I think building the boxes high up is a great idea, and I was just thinking last night that since I’m going to have to replace the windows in my home soon, I could adapt them to put a temporary cold frame over the whole structure to grow from seeds and then remove it when they get too tall. Temperature here drops all summer long, so the more time I can give them…
Heidi
June 4th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
[...] An introduction to square-foot gardening [...]
June 6th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
This will be my first vertical garden. I want to trellis pick-n-pick yellow crookneck squash from Burpee. Will it take to a trellis?
If not, I can trellis butternut, but I’m going to plant new seeds for the trellis, and crookneck is what I don’t have much of.
Thanks,
Mary
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
There is a great tutorial video on how to put in these beds, for those more visually inclined: http://www.mindbites.com/lesson/454-square-foot-gardening
It was made by a restaurant in Austin, East Side Cafe, that uses square foot gardening to grow veggies for their kitchen.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:00 am
[...] An introduction to square-foot gardening [...]
January 12th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
What type of wood are the raised beds generally made of? I imagine people just use pine, but here in the south I think I would only get a couple of years out of pine. Just wondering if something like cypress might be better. Any thoughts?