What’s So Special About Square Foot Gardening?

If you’re into gardening at all then you’ve probably heard about the new craze called Square Foot Gardening. It seems to be on nearly every gardener's lips (new or old), but it’s actually not a very new concept. The concept was started back in 1981 by Mel Bartholomew and his book All New Square Foot Gardening.

The concept is to create a compact garden that is divided into one-foot squared sections. Each section can hold a few plants, making this compact garden concept great for people with small yards or even residents in apartment complexes. Not only is this a space-saving method of growing your own food, but it’s also much less labor intensive.

How Does Square Foot Gardening Work?

Unlike regular garden beds where you typically dig out rows and plants your veggies in these rows, leaving space in between to weed, water, and harvest, the square foot garden starts with a 4’ by 4’ square. In this small section, you divide it up by square feet, giving yourself 16 sections.

In each section, you can plant either a single plant or many more depending on the mature size of the plant. For instance, a tomato, pepper, or cabbage will take up an entire square by itself, whereas smaller plants such as radishes, or spinach can hold 9 to 16 plants per square foot.

You can plant carrots, peppers, lettuce, bush beans, pole beans, peas, cucumbers, eggplant, and the list goes on. There are some limitations though. Deep-rooted plants like potatoes, and corn, or large vining plants such as sweet potatoes, and some squash varieties will do better in a traditional rowed garden.

You can still grow potatoes without digging up a deep garden by planting them in buckets. Check out this step-by-step guide right here: How to Plant Potatoes in Buckets or Small Containers

Regardless, square foot gardening has plenty of benefits, the biggest one being you can grow your own food easily, within a very small space. Once you taste your own freshly grown vegetables compared to the forced ripened vegetables in the store, you won’t go back.

Is Square Foot Gardening Worth It?

Some naysayers will try to tell you that starting this gardening method is expensive. You have to purchase the boards or pre-built trays, then you need to purchase the soil that goes into the container. Then you have to buy a grid to separate everything out, not to mention the seeds or plants to get started.

What would it cost to start a regular garden? You’ll have to purchase tools, depending on how big you want to go, you’ll probably need a tiller. Even renting one each year can set you back about $100. You need a shovel, a garden rake, and a hoe, each of these can cost $15 to $30. Then if you come across tree roots you’ll need something to cut them out, leading to more money and more tools.

Just starting off with a traditional garden is already more expensive than the square foot gardening method because you won’t need any of those tools. In the beginning, you may end up spending $100 to $200, but you’ll make up that money in the back-breaking work you don’t have to do, as well as food savings when you start harvesting.

Also if you’re a frugal shopper and you’re handy with some basic tools, you can slash that price by building your own raised beds. For those who love to save and are constantly looking for bargains, check out Where to Get Free Seeds for Gardening. You don’t always have to pay for seeds if you know how to get them for free!

Food prices are only going up, and once they rise, they rarely go back down. Would you rather pay $4 for one tomato, or buy a tomato plant for the same price? Answer that when you end up getting 10 pounds or more from one single plant! And tomatoes that have ripened on the bush are so much tastier than the soft, mealy tomatoes that you get at the store.

So to answer the question, “Is square foot gardening worth the initial investment?” I’d give a loud and hardy YES! You’ll make your money back and then some in the first year alone. Not only will you save money on your food bill, but you’ll be eating and feeding your family healthier meals with the vegetables that come straight from your garden.

What Are The Benefits Of Square Foot Gardening?

This is where this concept really shines. There are several wonderful benefits to square foot gardening.

• No Digging—Unlike traditional gardens you don’t have to start by removing the top layer of grass and weeds. Then once that’s done, you have to either hoe the ground or till it to loosen up the dirt so you can finally plant. This is very strenuous work that can take up your entire weekend.

With the square foot gardening method, there is no digging. You just purchase equal parts of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite and mix them into your 4-by-4 container.

• Fewer Weeds—Since you’re beginning with a weed free soil mix you won’t have to battle weeds from the onset. The last garden I planted I felt like the majority of my time in the garden was fighting weeds. I pulled, cut, swore, and fought with weeds so much that in the end, I gave up on it. They took over and won.

Sure, you’ll get an occasional stray weed because seeds get dispersed by birds, wind, mowing, and other ways, but since your beds are raised off the ground, you’ll get significantly fewer weeds than in traditional gardens. What weeds you do get are easily pulled out, especially if you yank them up as soon as you see them. The soil doesn’t turn into concrete from walking on it daily.

• Quick setup—It only takes a few hours to get everything set up and ready to go. After you get your garden planned out, you’ll get your bed built, add the soil, separate the one-foot sections, and start planting. You can get all of this finished in one day and still have time for a few celebratory brewskies or glasses of wine.
• Starting with healthier soil—From the very beginning, you will have nutrient-rich soil that your plants are going to love. Most gardens in the yard need plenty of additives like compost and organic matter to grow healthy plants. At the very beginning, your plants are going to have an advantage over traditional gardening.
• Easy to maintain—Even this soil will need to be replenished from time to time, but that’s easy to do by adding more compost or other organic matter every year. If you’re saving your kitchen scraps and creating your own organic compost, that’s one less thing you have to buy. One year’s kitchen scraps will create more than enough compost to replenish your little square-foot garden.

With the small 4’ sections, you can reach everywhere inside the garden easily. Getting to weeds and harvesting is easy with the small raised beds.

• Easy to water—With the compact planting method, you don’t have to waste water watering empty rows or pathways. The garden soil mixture you make helps to hold in water. And the compact plants help shade the ground resulting in less evaporated water.

Granted, in the hottest part of the summer, you will probably have to water daily to keep your plants healthy and strong. You can, however, cover the soil in a layer of mulch or newspapers to help hold in the moisture.

• Bigger harvest—Since you utilize nearly every square inch of the garden you’ll get more food from a smaller space. Also, with the soil mix and all the organic matter mixed in your plants will produce more, leading to another benefit, healthier plants.
• Healthier plants—Your veggie plants won’t have to compete for nutrients with weeds, and they have better soil so they will be stronger and grow much faster.

Healthy plants are one of the best ways to fight off the inevitable pest invasion. Strong plants can usually bounce back from hungry pests that want to eat your plants before you’re ready to harvest. Weak plants also tend to attract pests. Nature has a way of getting rid of the weaker specimens.

Works in small spaces—You no longer need to own property and have a big yard to grow a garden. Even if you have a tiny yard or no yard at all, you can still grow a lot of your own vegetables. All you need is a space that gets 8 to 10 hours of sunlight and you too can have fresh, home-grown vegetables.

• Less soil compaction—In typical gardens, you will spend a lot of time walking between rows weeding, checking your plants for pests, and harvesting which can lead to major soil compaction. When weeds get established in this hard dirt, they can be a nightmare to remove.

To get the entire root out you may have to employ tools like hoes, garden rakes, shovels, or other weeding devices to get rid of them all before they overrun your garden. With the square foot gardening method, the soil is never walked on, and barely ever gets compacted.

The soft loose soil is perfect for plant roots as they can grow freely, and find plenty of water and nutrition.

What Are The Cons Of Square Foot Gardening?

I have already outlined the major cons above. You can’t grow everything in the typical square foot gardening method, but there are ways around that. You can increase the depth to a foot and grow deeper-rooted plants. You can grow potatoes in buckets or other containers, or do a traditional garden for spreading plants.

You might even be able to trade some of your veggies for some of these if you know other gardeners. Maybe you have an excess of kale and bell peppers, but you’d love to have some fresh sweet potatoes that your neighbor is growing. See if they will swap with you.

Watering can become a daily chore, but leaving out a soaker hose on a timer could easily remedy that situation. You can also use a rain barrel to capture free water to make up for the extra watering needs. Mulching the ground works wonders to keep more moisture in the ground instead of evaporating out.

The last con is the initial setup cost. The money you’re going to save on groceries will quickly make up for that first hit. When you see how easy it is to grow your own food using this method, you’ll end up expanding to grow more crops next year.

Get out there and start growing. And don’t forget to follow and leave a like. I will be adding more about square foot gardening shortly, so keep checking back as more information is added.

Bio: I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina where a common past-time was picking apples, wild blueberries, or blackberries, then taking them home to make pies, cobblers, or jars of preserves. It’s a tradition I want to pass down to my family. In addition to that, I have always had a fascination with growing plants. It didn’t matter what kind, flowers, trees, fruits, or vegetables, if it came from the ground I wanted to try my hand at growing it. Some of my favorite things to grow are flower bulbs (nearly any kind, though daylilies and irises are top of the list here), tomatoes, beans, okra, and squash.

My dream is to one day live as much off the grid and be as self-sufficient as possible. I love growing and preserving my own food as it just seems to taste so much better. When I’m not in the vegetable or flower garden, I’m writing blogs, freelancing, or working on novels.

You can check out more of my random ramblings or fiction stories here on Vocal Media or at

https://amtwriting77.com/

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