Square Foot Gardening Techniques
Square Foot Gardening
In a traditional garden, crops are planted in rows with space between for access. This has several disadvantages including less crop yield for larger garden foot print, increased weeds in garden and working with what soil Mother Nature gave you.
In a raised bed garden, none of these disadvantages are dealt with. Your entire garden bed is used for growing, by having your garden elevated, “weed creep” is non-existent, and you can custom blend you growing soil
I am going to introduce you to a planting technique I use called “Square Foot Gardening”. In a traditional garden we have been taught to plant our seeds in a row, allow them to sprout, and per the seed packet instructions, rip out all the plants except for one plant every 2 inches, or whatever the directions say. Why go to all that hard work just to rip them out. Crazy if you think about it.
However in a raised garden bed, each 12”x12” section (24 total sections in our 4’x6’ kits), allows you to grow multiple plants. Here is how it works. For example, on the back of a carrot seed packet, it says to thin your carrots to one plant every three inches after they sprout. Well, why not just plant a seed every three inches to begin with. Planting a carrot every three inches results in a total of 16 carrots per 12”x12” section.
Maybe you want to grow spinach. Well these need four inches of spacing between plants. This gives you a maximum of 9 plants per section. As you can see instead of digging a row, spreading out all your seeds, you are just using a single hole for each seed and reducing waste and future work.
If you love spinach you can plant multiple sections of spinach or better yet, stagger your plantings with 2-3 weeks between them allowing for a continual harvest. The other big advantage of Square Foot Gardening is growing multiple crops in the same garden while reducing the garden foot print required versus the crop output.
In my own garden, I specifically use one garden box for all our salad fixings – spinach, lettuce, carrots, onions, peas and more. I no longer have to go from garden box to garden box harvesting everything I need for the nightly salad. It is one stop shopping for us. A little rinse in the sink, a spin in our salad spinner and in less than 5 minutes I have fresh salad on the table.
Now how do we handle larger crops, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. Well again, look on the back of your seed packet and follow their guidelines. With broccoli, it suggests a plant every 18 inches. I have had great success using one plant per section, or one plant every 12 inches. Tomatoes are another story; they require more space, much like your cucumbers and zucchinis. You should allocate at least 24 inches of space between plants due to their size. In a 4’x6’ kit, I plant no more than 6 tomato plants total.
In a traditional garden, crops are planted in rows with space between for access. This has several disadvantages including less crop yield for larger garden foot print, increased weeds in garden and working with what soil Mother Nature gave you.
In a raised bed garden, none of these disadvantages are dealt with. Your entire garden bed is used for growing, by having your garden elevated, “weed creep” is non-existent, and you can custom blend you growing soil
I am going to introduce you to a planting technique I use called “Square Foot Gardening”. In a traditional garden we have been taught to plant our seeds in a row, allow them to sprout, and per the seed packet instructions, rip out all the plants except for one plant every 2 inches, or whatever the directions say. Why go to all that hard work just to rip them out. Crazy if you think about it.
However in a raised garden bed, each 12”x12” section (24 total sections in our 4’x6’ kits), allows you to grow multiple plants. Here is how it works. For example, on the back of a carrot seed packet, it says to thin your carrots to one plant every three inches after they sprout. Well, why not just plant a seed every three inches to begin with. Planting a carrot every three inches results in a total of 16 carrots per 12”x12” section.
Maybe you want to grow spinach. Well these need four inches of spacing between plants. This gives you a maximum of 9 plants per section. As you can see instead of digging a row, spreading out all your seeds, you are just using a single hole for each seed and reducing waste and future work.
If you love spinach you can plant multiple sections of spinach or better yet, stagger your plantings with 2-3 weeks between them allowing for a continual harvest. The other big advantage of Square Foot Gardening is growing multiple crops in the same garden while reducing the garden foot print required versus the crop output.
In my own garden, I specifically use one garden box for all our salad fixings – spinach, lettuce, carrots, onions, peas and more. I no longer have to go from garden box to garden box harvesting everything I need for the nightly salad. It is one stop shopping for us. A little rinse in the sink, a spin in our salad spinner and in less than 5 minutes I have fresh salad on the table.
Now how do we handle larger crops, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. Well again, look on the back of your seed packet and follow their guidelines. With broccoli, it suggests a plant every 18 inches. I have had great success using one plant per section, or one plant every 12 inches. Tomatoes are another story; they require more space, much like your cucumbers and zucchinis. You should allocate at least 24 inches of space between plants due to their size. In a 4’x6’ kit, I plant no more than 6 tomato plants total.