Category Archives: square foot gardening

Look at this square foot garden….

3 Replies

While I was looking for a new camera card at Costco today I came across this little nifty item. When you read that Mel Bartholomew is the father of raised beds this is proof. This unit is composed of 2-4X4′ boxes that have been placed on top of each other for display purposes. It’s made out of some kind of plastic or vinyl and as it shows comes with a slick cover to protect your gardens for early/late gardening. The price? It’s $99. So for this you end up getting 2 boxes. That’s a fantastic deal! It’s made by a company called Lifetime. You know the return policy of Costco-it’s great. Although these are not like the white ones you can buy through the SFG foundation, this does give you a great and very affordable option. I actually like the colors. If I had room in my backyard I would buy them. On the personal garden front, today I planted 4 more squares of lettuce(2 Romaine and 2 Red Cross)along with 4 squares(36 plants) of space spinach. I say plants but they are started from seed. When they grow it will be 36 plants. The soil took me about 5 minutes to turn over with my trowel-1 of only the 3 tools you will need in a square foot garden. It was watered in and then covered. I have some great things that are going to be presented in the “members only” section portion of my site. I have had a lot of questions lately about how I cover my gardens without using the “wagon-cover” method. While I am certain these work fine, they do take a lot of extra work on your part. I will be detailing and showing-with pictures-the method that I use with my gardens. It’s very simple and fairly inexpensive. In time I have discovered an even better way to cover your gardens that’s every bit as effective, but costs even less money….more to come later

[ois skin=”below post”]

Planting sugar snap peas in your SFG….

Leave a reply

From the previous picture you can see that I have repositioned the vertical grow tower.  Now I can cover everything perfectly.  But since sugar snaps are a cold weather crop I won’t need to cover them-unless we get a lot of snow.  In past years I have planted these only to have them sit under 6-8 inches of snow for an extended length of time.  Even though they’re a cold crop, if they’re exposed to this much water for this long without any sun or the chance to dry out, they will end up rotting in the ground.  These seeds have been soaked in water for 20 minutes.  You can also see that I only put 2 seeds per hole.  This is a new variety that I’m trying from Johnny’s.  I liked the other variety that we’ve always grown but when I read that this was more prolific and sweeter I had to go with it.  Let’s see how long these take to come up and let’s see how much we get.  Today I’m starting my 2012 SFG diary.  Us square foot gardeners aren’t used to keeping charts because it’s such a simpe method of gardening without all the fan-fare.  I will be logging everything I do in the garden and keeping track of the yields.  Along with these sugar snaps I also planted 16 heads of lettuce in my 1X4′ box.  We should have another great year in the garden.  By the way-has anyone seen the price of loose-leaf lettuce lately?…..

[ois skin=”below post”]

My first square foot gardening mistake this year….

Leave a reply

is this.  I hope I can explain it clearly.  This is a portion of my 2X16′ bed thats been covered with 6-mil plastic in preparaton for heating up the soil.  As you can see from this picture the plastic can’t cover the last 4′ of my box completely.  The reason-and this is the mistake-is that I put my tomato tower in the wrong place.  This was used last year to grow sugar snap peas.  It will be used again for them in the next few days.  My mistake was that I put the tower to much in the center of these squares instead of the back of the box.  Things grew great on the tower last year but because I didn’t move the tower toward the back of the box, now when I cover it with plastic I can’t cover it entirely.  The tower is in the way.  It’s an easy enough fix though.  As soon as the soil heats up I will pull off the tower, remove the 2 pieces of rebar which reinforce the tower and then move everything back to the edge of the box.  I will then be able to completely enclose my 2X16′ square foot garden.  I hope you can see the advantages with limiting the size of your garden.  In a traditional single row garden you couldn’t do this.  First, your soil is nowhere near being ready.  You’re neighbors are at least 2 months away from rototilling their garden area.  Second, how do can you protect those kinds of gardens?  Maybe there’s a way but it’s got to be a huge thing to figure out.  There’s lots of huge things about traditional single row gardens…including the huge amount of time you spend pulling weeds while us SFGers are out enjoying and harvesting our organic veggies and produce….

[ois skin=”below post”]

I just got my seeds and then…

Leave a reply

It does this!  It’s about time to start thinking of planting sugar snap peas.  A little later today I will make my way out to the garden and cover it in preparation for heating up the soil.  The weather is reporting that by Sunday it should be in the low 50’s.  With that, my 2X16′ garden will be ready to plant in about a week.  I’l try to get some good pictures of the apparatus that I use to protect my gardens.  It’s all rather simple and just takes a little bit of time to put it all in.  I have a series of three pictures in gallery 1 that shows what I have done to amend this particular bed.  I do the same with all of my beds but this gives you a visual of how it’s done.  The picture is a 2X4′ bed that has been emptied of its contents, leaves added and then finishing the whole box off with homemade compost.  All those leaves?  When I turn the soil over with a trowel-the only tool you’ll need in a square foot garden-all of them will be gone.  They will be completely decomposed.  The result is a rich, vibrant and healthy soil that you can grow just about anything in.  Because you never walk on your soil and you’ve amended it with compost you no longer have a need for heavy equipment like rototillers, shovels, etc.   That soil is going to plump right up.  It’s so lose, friable and even fragrant that you can almost hear it saying back to you ” please plant me!”  Start thinking of having your own square foot garden this year.  It’s the only way to go.  No weeding, no heavy digging, no hard work, no kidding….

[ois skin=”below post”]

Vertical gardening…

Leave a reply


adds a third dimension to your garden that really sets it apart from any other kind of gardens in your neighborhood. I grew a couple of these birdhouse gourds one summer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with all of them outside of using them for, well, birdhouses. I ended up using two of them and giving a few more away. We’re all looking for little ways to make some extra cash so I ended up selling the leftover ones on eBay. I think I sold them for $15 dollars each, and I had several of them to mail off. Who would have ever thought that someone would pay money for those things? It turns out that there are people who do this for a hobby with the different kind of gourds. With these they coated them with some kind of varnish, drilled holes in them, painted them, and then put them out for birdhouses or bird feeders. Wow. That was a surprising thing. As we speak I am trying to sell two of them that I had from last year that I forgot about. They are a little smaller but someone will end up buying them. If I remember correctly I think I planted 1 seed per 2 square feet. You can see it really starts to grow. There are a lot of advantages of vertical growing. For me, I don’t have to worry about going out there in late summer and turning my ankles on vining plants covering the ground. Anything that vines you can grow vertically. That includes the obvious things like tomatoes(indeterminate varieties), cucumbers, all the varieties of squash, etc. When I teach I always get someone who wants to argue about zucchini. “You cant grow zucchini vertically.” Yes, you can. And, you can do it in one square foot to boot. The argument always goes away when they see the pictures of it. The other advantages are that you get better air circulation, better exposure to the sun, and you end up giving your garden a cleaner look. Who wants to step over things while your making your way through the garden? If you have any critters causing trouble it’s also easier to find them on the vertical tower. Otherwise you end up looking all over the place in your garden if you have any kind of infestation. For squashes, I usually don’t even waste time starting them early inside-I just plant the seeds right in the soil. There have been some years when I have made an arbor with vining flowers. I think the most dramatic time I did it was when I grew angels trumpet. The variety I grew that summer flowered at night with silver and blue pedals. It is a very, very fragrant flower-every bit as aromatic as something like nicotiana, which I also love to grown every other year.  It made me want to go out and spend time in the garden when it was getting dark-a strange thing.  But, it smelled so good!   So, don’t limit your vertical garden to just veggies-let your imagination run wild. Give vertical gardening a try. Once you’ve been successful with it you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it all along….[ois skin=”below post”]