Square Foot Gardening is the approach where plants aren't planted in rows, but space according to their regular intervals within a square foot of soil. When I discovered the concept of Square Foot Gardening, I was like "Awesome! Something new!" Then I realized that the technique was older than I am! Back in the 70's, a guy named Mel Bartholomew was a retiring engineer who wanted a garden, but didn't want all the backbreaking work that went with it. His book describes a few of his revelations about gardening, and lays out a few key concepts.
The wrong tool for the job.
Every gardener he talked to was planting crops in beds 30 feet long, with rows three feet apart. Their reasoning was that it had always been done this way. When Mel looked closer, he realized that the concept of row gardening was a holdover from commercial farming, where you need big open rows for tractor tires or oxen and plows. The process of sowing literally thousands of seeds, only to remove good plants and leave only dozens to finish growing was terribly inefficient. |
Nature hates negative spaces.
Nature cannot abide empty space. Plants will grow in bare rock, so why do we fight to keep those wide rows clear of absolutely everything? It's a futile process that will end in nothing but frustration on our part, because nature will always win in the end. Weeds are only the first to grow, but given time, those three-foot-wide expanses of dirt would become a field, tree, or group of bushes.
The numbers don't lie.
By eliminating the inefficiencies caused by wide row gardening, a person can grow 100% of the food a traditional garden can grow in only 20% of the space. Not only does that greatly reduce your wasted workload, but it leaves a lot of room for extra garden beds, meaning more food and a smaller grocery bill!
Check it out!
To learn more about Square Foot Gardening, get involved, or get the book, visit www.squarefootgardening.com.
You can also grab the book on Amazon. It's well worth the money, and I encourage everyone NOT to store all of their knowledge on the Internet. The Net is great, but if anything ever happens, all those web sites will not be accessible. If you want solid information that will last, buy a book and keep it in your home. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a print designer. :)
http://www.amazon.com/All-New-Square-Foot-Gardening/dp/1591862027
You can also grab the book on Amazon. It's well worth the money, and I encourage everyone NOT to store all of their knowledge on the Internet. The Net is great, but if anything ever happens, all those web sites will not be accessible. If you want solid information that will last, buy a book and keep it in your home. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a print designer. :)
http://www.amazon.com/All-New-Square-Foot-Gardening/dp/1591862027