The Basics to Starting a Square Foot Garden

As I mentioned at the end of this post, I am attempting to grow a square foot garden this spring. I’ve had vegetable gardens before, but I always felt intimidated by square foot gardening. I would see other bloggers post pictures of their gardens, and I assumed it was super difficult and that I would have to buy lots of book to learn how to grow a square foot garden.

I am sure some books wouldn’t hurt, but I was surprised to find everything I needed to know on www.squarefootgardening.org. This website is maintained by Mel Bartholomew, the inventor of square foot gardening. Here are some of the important benefits and features of SFG...

• Square foot gardening requires less work than conventional gardening. You don’t need any heavy tools to loosen the soil because the soil is never compacted. Also, square foot gardening requires very little weeding because of the loose soil and raised beds.
• The size is an important feature of the square foot garden bed. Since you won’t walk on your garden, the garden must not be wider than 4 feet. Any wider makes it too difficult to reach across and tend to the plants. Mel recommends making 4’x4’ garden beds, although you could do something like 4’x6’ or 4’x8’.
• Fill the garden box with a mixture of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite. No dirt is needed! It's best to make your own compost from many ingredients so that the plants receive all the nutrients they need. The peat moss and vermiculite help hold moisture and keep the soil loose.
• A 4’x4’ square foot garden will produce more than a normal 8x10 foot garden! The grid is the unique feature that makes the whole system work so well. It is very difficult to organize and manage a 4’x4’ space unless it’s divided up into squares. Without the grid, you will be tempted to plant in rows, which is a poor use of space.
• The grid divides a 4’x4’ garden bed into 16 easy-to-manage spaces. You can up to 16 plants in one of the 1’x1’ spaces! You can grow 1, 4, 9, or 16 equally spaced plants per square foot. If the seed packet recommends to plant the seeds 12 inches apart, then plant one seed per square foot. If 6 inch spacing; 4 per square foot. If 4 inch spacing; 9 per square foot. If 3 inch spacing; 16 per square foot.

If you’re interested, go here to check out Mel’s "three basics" and his "ten steps."  I decided that I should start small this summer. So I am using one 4’x4’ box. This is my planting grid...

While on the subject of gardening, check out this post from the archives. I love writer Wendell Berry's seven tips on how to eat responsibly.


Spring Vegetable Garden

Those of use who live in the south are already thinking about our gardens. My spring vegetable garden will include broccoli, red peppers, scallions, and various spices. I’ve found that rosemary and thyme grow really well here. I have never grown broccoli before, but I am hoping that we can eat lots of fresh broccoli this spring. Last spring I grew red peppers, and they continued producing through early fall!

Last weekend I leveled my garden bed and covered it with compost. I started my seeds a little later than I should have, but I still hope to transplant my vegetables into my garden by the second week of March. That might be wishful thinking.

On Eating Responsibly

Wendell Berry’s collection of essays published in What Are People For? includes a particularly interesting essay entitled “The Pleasures of Eating.”

In this essay, Berry asserts that our culture has turned the act of eating into an utterly passive act so that the eater becomes merely a passive consumer. This problem results from how little most eaters know about the agricultural process of producing food. He writes, “When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous” (What Are People For?, page 146). He warns that there is a danger in not knowing about the food process, whereby we support an industry that only concerns intself with volume and price.

Photos by my husband.

Berry gives seven tips on how to eat responsibly:

1. Participate in food production to the extent you can. He suggests having a little garden and making your compost to fertilize it.
2. Prepare your own food. This gives you measure of “quality control” because you know what has been added to the food you eat.
3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home.
4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist.
5. Learn as much as you can about the economy and technology of industrial food production. Berry says this is a matter of self-defense.
6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.
7. Learn of the life histories of the food species.

Limes

We have pretty limes growing from our lime tree. Now I just have to decide how to use them, although I already know that I’ll make raspberry-lime freezes. They are so tasty!

Photo from Martha

A Theology of Beauty, Part II

We spent most of the Memorial Day weekend working outside. In many ways, we’ve done a good job improving our rental property. We have planted five trees, several shrubs, and some flowers. We also started a vegetable garden. However, we have not done a good job taking care of our grass. In fact, it looks really horrible. And the southern heat is really hot. I was convicted by this passage from The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer:

“A Christian individual or organization should not move into a property and turn it into shambles. The opposite should be true. It should grow and blossom into a place of beauty, demonstrating something of the wonder of the One who made plant life to produce seeds in the first place. Christians should have more beautiful gardens, should be more careful to build without cutting down the lovely trees, should be more sensitive about keeping the brook unspoiled as it bubbles through their lands…it seems to be that the beauty which causes strangers to stop and enjoy a garden provides a background and already ‘says something’ which gives an emphasis to what is important to say” (page 88).

So this weekend we decided we better start watering our grass.

Click here to read Part I.

Learning Patience

I get really discouraged when I go to the grocery store and see already-grown spices and vegetables that are ready to be purchased and planted by an aspiring gardener like me. They are very tempting.

As for my vegetables and spices, they seem like they have a really long way to go...