Square Foot Gardening
My apologies for this week’s post being late. I’ve had a migraine for the last week and have mostly been in bed. Now that I’m feeling better I wanted to share a book that I’ve been reading that my Dad gave me recently: Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
Mel sums up his book as “A new way to garden in less space with less work”. I’m only about half-way through the book but I’m convinced this method is the way to go if you want to grow a successful garden.
This book focuses on square foot gardening which differs from traditional gardening because you plant your crops in squares instead of rows. Like the name suggests, square foot gardening is made up of 12x12inch squares. Each square can fit a varying number of vegetables, flowers and herbs based off of how much growing room each crop requires. For example, in one square foot block you could plant 1 head of broccoli, 4 lettuce plants , 8 pole beans or 16 carrots. Mel is also a big believer in planting all vining crops vertically to save room on the ground for other plants. The book is filled with photos and diagrams to make the process easy to follow.
Because the style of the square foot garden is very simple, this means you don’t need many tools to build and maintain it. Mel only uses a bucket, a shovel and a trowel in his garden and advises against buying fancy tools. I would add a set of clippers to that list, but its nice to know that you can still have a great garden without a garage full of tools.
Aside from explaining the square foot method itself, Mel does a great job of covering the basics of gardening in general making it a great resource for anyone new to gardening. He covers everything including soil, starting plants from seed, weed and pest control, how to properly harvest your crops and more. I highly recommend this book if you’re looking for a more sufficient way to grow your garden.
In other news, I got my orange marmalade bell pepper plant in the ground at my parent’s house and its growing well! We planted it on the west side of the house so it gets plenty of sun throughout the day. Once we had the hole dug, we mixed compost and fertilizer in with soil. My Dad is growing some of his own bell pepper plants and used a citrus fertilizer on them and he said the peppers turned out great, so that’s what we used for my peppers. He also stuck a bamboo stick into the ground behind the plant so it will have some support as it grows.
The first pepper is almost ready to be harvested :) I plan on saving the seeds to plant next year.
I’ve also got some growth on the seeds I planted. I’m starting all of these inside so I have them sitting under a grow light. I give them a spritz of water once about every day or so and I’ll be able to transplant them soon. My broccoli and lettuce are doing really well, and hopefully I’ll have another update for you guys soon. Last but not least, my cilantro is coming in. I’ll be able to use some soon and there’s nothing like being able to walk out to the patio and cut some fresh cilantro to use.
Have any of you ever tried the square foot method? If so, let me know how it worked for you!
Happy Homesteading,
Rachel
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