Square Foot Garden Ideas

Use square foot gardening techniques to produce more food in less space.

First developed in the 1970s, square foot gardening is a method of intensive planting that results in large harvests in extremely small spaces. Lay out your garden in a grid of 1-by-1-foot squares and plant each square with carefully placed seeds. Each plant requires the optimum amount of soil, water and sunlight while none of the space between plants is wasted.

Use Your Extra Space

While square foot gardens are intensely planted, there are times in the year that not a lot is going on in certain squares in your garden. Take advantage of these weeks to grow quick-maturing crops before the other seedlings in the square mature. Plant radish seeds along with carrots, surround each tomato seedling with four lettuces or put peas in the same square where peppers will later grow.

Extend Your Season

Pull out early-maturing plants like gone-to-seed lettuce and flowering broccoli and begin another garden in the height of summer. Plant cool-weather seeds and plants in August. They'll grow all through the autumn weather until winter frost arrives. Try fresh crops of lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and peas as well as quick-maturing bush beans and carrots. Mix in fresh compost before growing this second crop of plants.

No Yard at All

If you have no yard at all, like apartment dwellers and renters who aren't allowed to dig on the property, you can still use all of the square foot gardening principles in container gardening. Purchase planters that are about 1 foot across and use each one like a square foot in a traditional backyard garden. You could conceivably feed yourself for the season from the harvest of a dozen plant pots on your balcony or patio.

Get the Kids Involved

Give each of your children a square or a block of squares to care for themselves. Let them choose the variety of vegetable to grow, help them to place the seedlings, advise them about watering and weeding and allow them to harvest on their own. Often the most vegetable-phobic child will eat a plate full of produce when she's grown it herself.

References

• Tim's Square Foot Garden
• Journey to Forever: No Ground? Use Containers

Resources

• Square Foot Gardening Foundation