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Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening is an idea made popular by Mel Bartholomew in the 1980s. It is ideal for the smaller organic garden, because it is an intensive method of gardening based around ideas of companion planting, water conservation and avoiding pesticides and weed killers.

Square foot gardening is especially good for certain kinds of people, too. Using raised beds means that disabled and elderly people can garden without having to get down to ground level. The method involves minimal work, making it very attractive for those with busy modern lives. It is great for kids too because there will be a lot of plant variety in a small area, easy for kids to reach so that they can help out, and always something to new to see.

To create the raised beds, planks are joined to form an open bottomed box. Initially the recommended size is 4 x 4 ft, divided into a grid with string to make 16 sections of one square foot each. The box is then filled with new soil, purchased from a nursery so that it is nutrient rich. Compost will be added in future years. This means that it is not so important what type of soil was originally in the garden. Square foot gardening can be done over polluted land or even desert.

Then a different kind of plant is planted in each square. Of course, some plants need more space than others. Some such as broccoli or a tomato plant would need the whole square foot for one plant. Other types of plants can be set two, four, nine or even sixteen to a square, depending on size. Just be careful not to plant anything invasive such as mint which will try to take over the whole bed.

Taller plants would be at the north side to avoid shading others. You could run a row of corn or beans all along the north side of the 4 foot area, for example. Plants that normally take a lot of space, such as zucchini or cucumbers, can be grown vertically on a strong supporting frame instead of spreading over the ground.

With this size of bed a gardener can easily reach everything without trampling the earth down. So if you add more beds later, it is important to have paths between them. If you cannot move all around the bed, for example because it is against a wall or a fence, make it just two or three feet across so that you can reach everything.

The close planting means that there are very few weeds. Of course you will need to remove weeds from time to time but once every 10 days is enough, and it is an easy job. Once the plants have begun to grow they will crowd out most weeds. The variety of plants stops plant diseases from spreading easily, and discourages pests. All in all, square foot gardening is a very efficient and pleasant way to produce an interesting and productive garden in whatever space you have.

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