Square Foot Gardening.

Two of the cornerstones of my garden that so far have proven to work very well together are vermicomposting (worm composting) and square foot gardening. I'll cover the latter in this post.

Square Foot Gardening was pioneered by Mel Bartholomew, and his book on the subject can be picked up here.

It's not a bad read, though he is a little self indulgent and you could boil down most the information into a couple of blog posts (oh my...pot meet kettle!). For a beginner it's better than some books I've read - and he tells you all about his mistakes.

The basics of it are that you divide your garden into 1 foot squares, and maximize the growth in each square - you treat each square as a 'mini bed' growing what you like in each and using the spacing guide for that plant to regulate how many plants go in each square.

It's fairly obvious when you think about it, and in fact was something I did in garden #1 in containers without even realizing it.  It's part of the success of that first garden and something I had to re-learn.

The optimum sized bed is 4 x 4 - giving you access to plant, weed, water every square easily - but you can vary the length - the main idea is accessing your plants. We don't need rows and aisles - we're not farming - we don't need equipment to there to water/weed/pick/plant.
Another benefit is you can practice things like crop-rotation in each small square as things are harvested - companion planting can be included in your layout if you so desire (planting plants that give benefits to each other in close proximity).
You can amend the soil, dig over, replant in micro sections of your bed as you need or as you see fit.
Using the layout of 16,9,5,4,1 plants per square also makes it very easy to identify your sprouting plants - so you can keep weeding down.   Weeding itself is dead easy and it's hardly work to keep a garden bed clean.  New complete raised beds can be lined with burlap or weed cloth, leaving only one vector for weeds to enter your garden.

Where Mel and I have a parting of the ways (and indeed a bone of contention with some of his acolytes) is when it comes to soil.  Mel would have us make 'Mel's Mix' - his own special blend of potting soil, that although would be nice - comes down to 'cost prohibitive' for me.

His mix is 1/3 mixed composts 1/3 vermiculite 1/3 peat moss.  Although this will give a light and fluffy soil - a 4 x 4 x 6inch area ends up as 8 cubic feet of material - do your own math and go down to your nursery, lowes, home depot, walmart, whatever and start adding that up.

This being said you could substitute the peat moss with coconut coir and reduce that a bit, but in the end way too much money. For the cost of filling one bed this way I filled all mine using a mixture of existing soil, topsoil, cow compost, mushroom compost, a couple of bags of cheap potting mix and a bunch of worm compost, and a couple of handfulls of perlite per bed. What went in was dependent on what I could get for cheap.  Mel's philosophy of starting with a 100% great soil is a valid point of view - mine on the other hand is we are growing 2 things - plants, but also soil.  'Growing' good soil is something that must be learned and is just as important as the growing of the plants.

Neither of us are right or wrong in this - some people buy seedlings, I plant seeds. We get to the end eventually, one of us takes a little longer (and has a much lighter wallet).

One thing I will be doing in the future (and amending as I go) is adding coconut coir, as I recently made a 'potato mix' from equal parts cow compost, coconut coir, a couple of handfulls of worm castings and perlite - and the result was VERY nice (and the spuds love it).  The soil thus far has remained very fluffy and I imagine I'll do this to the next square I plant carrots and beets in.

There is very good info in his book about the importance of composting and some methods to go about it. Saving space by growing up and not out - One thing it suffers from is a little bit of the 'one answer for all things' when it comes to growing root crops or large leafed plants like squash.  Trying to cram them into his paradigm is a little strained - and probably easier to do by either digging or using containers.

 Speaking on containers; a lot of pots, square and round, measure out to a nice size to do this exact same thing without the raised beds at all. I've done it, I continue to do it.

All up - this system (for the most part) works - you'll have to adjust some of the plants per square foot, your watering methods to suit your climate, and make concessions for some larger plants - but as a base system it certainly works. I think every garden can benefit from something in this system.