Mitch Davidson - Square Foot Gardening: A Beginners Guide to Square Foot Gardening at Home

Square Foot Gardening

A Beginner's Guide to Square Foot Gardening at Home

Mitch Davidson

Introduction

T his book is for experienced planters, people who have only recently decided to start a backyard garden, and the curious. Even as a hobby, the benefits of having a flourishing garden at home are numerous. You could teach your kids the gratification of nurturing plants, instill in them a respect for biodiversity, and show them the importance of eating fresh and nutritious foods by having them assist you in the garden.

You can also save money by growing some of the food you consume, or by selling some of your produce to make extra income.

Whatever motivates you to grow and tend to a garden, you need a strategy that will not only provide order but also help your crops mature quickly and healthily. While you may have heard of numerous planting techniques to achieve an abundant, healthy, and fast yield, very few are as successful as square foot gardening for small-scale gardens.

Should you keep reading, you will gain such knowledge as which crops are most suitable in a square foot garden, and how companion planting can be incorporated to boost the results of this gardening technique. This book will not only leave you with an appreciation for square foot gardening, but provide a detailed roadmap on how to set it up and get the best results from it. So, without further ado, lets get digging!

Chapter 1: What Is Square Foot Gardening?

W hen compared to other traditional methods of gardening such as planting vegetables in rows straight into the soil, square foot gardening, or SFG, sets a different pace. Not only does it require significantly reduced efforts to manage and run the garden, but it also results in bumper harvests by the end of crop cycles. The reason why this system works is that the growing medium used in SFG is more manageable and lighter than traditional mediums. As such, requirements like the backbreaking work of weeding and the use of heavy gardening tools are eliminated.

Additionally, the medium used in square foot gardening only requires a relatively small area, which allows gardeners to better maintain both plant and medium. This portability ensures that gardeners are allowed ease of access from all sides of the medium to tend to their plants, allowing for better concentration and attention, which leads to healthier harvests.

Square foot gardening also involves combining complementary gardening techniques that decrease or entirely scrap the need for measures for controlling pests or boosting growth with chemicals. What makes SFG even more appealing is the inherent satisfaction that comes with the entire process of growing, harvesting, and consuming the foods you produce; and this is without taking into account that the foods produced with square foot gardening have richer textures and tastes when compared to traditionally made foods.

S FG was a concept promoted by Mel Bartholomew in the 1980s. He is responsible for coining the term and honing the craft that has since been passed down generations. The logic behind this method of gardening is simple: to grow plants devoid of toxic pollutants (fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc.), as well as to save time, money, resources, and the environment at large. This logic was enough to make the concept an instant sell, with its popularity growing with time. With this widespread acceptance and fame, square foot gardening has since become ingrained in the minds of gardeners as the best way to improve plant health and production. Whats even better is the promise of utilizing less space for a greater harvest.

Square foot gardening derives its name from the concept of a small frame of 4 feet by 4 feet being enough space to produce a rich variety of plants throughout a planting season. The belief is that the harvest would suffice to meet the feeding needs of a small family. The frame or box is divided into smaller square foot sections, equaling a combined planting area of sixteen square feet.

These subsections are perhaps the most important part of square foot gardening, as they are used for intensive rotational planting which forms the base of this gardening concept as a whole. When shown with the right amount of care, such a small area is capable of producing many nutrient-rich vegetables.

The idea of square foot gardening first struck Mel Bartholomew in 1975 after having been frustrated every other year by a defective gardening system. His local community garden was no stranger to wastage, and Mel was tired of seeing many good, ripe plants go to waste. To prevent such happenings from ever repeating, Mel brainstormed a more efficient system of gardening.

He was an engineer with a mind for math, so everything needed for a successful system boiled down to getting the right numbers. Mel desired a garden system that produced more rich and ripe foods in every square inch, unlike other gardening systems available at the time.

Aside from his desire for an extremely productive gardening system, Mel wanted a system that demanded less effort and energy to maintain. This addition was to counter potential inefficiencies in gardeners. For this to work, he decided on a medium that was both good-looking and self-contained this would also remove the stress of weeding and having to use chemicals.

Mel was quite fond of the environment, and so he also wanted to create a system that was eco-friendly in and of itself. As such, the system had to use up to 90% less water than any other traditional row gardening system around. Mel was a well-rounded gardener who loved the fun of working on a garden; however, he hated the repetitive and demanding labor that came with incompetent gardening systems. Thus, he got to work on a system that captured only the joys of gardening, and what he created was the square foot gardening system we know today.

Chapter 2: Benefits of Square Foot Gardening

A fter reading about the history of SFG and all that it entails in the preceding chapter, you can probably list a few advantages that this gardening method has over many others. This chapter might confirm some of your excitement about square foot gardening, and it will certainly give you more than a few reasons to begin applying the technique immediately. Here, we will take a look at the biggest advantages of square foot gardening.