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Square Foot Gardening Do’s and Don’ts©

By: Arlene Wright Correll

The original square foot unit is 4x4ft, 16 sq ft, which can supply one person with vegetables and salads. I personally found this square block unwieldy when I put mine in about 1999 or 2000. It was suggested that I use 3x3 ft blocks instead, and again I found the 36" too wide across to work so I personally would only make them to be 30" wide and lengthen them to make the required 16 square feet.

When I made mine I made raised beds and made them 36 "wide and since there were 6 of us I had to make two 3 ft. wide by 24 ft. long with a 20" path between them. Now if I had to do it over again I would make them 24" wide and do the math for the length. At this writing we are down to only two of us and one of them is not a gardener. However, he has made me some waist 3 high planters that are 2 ft x 5 ft and that gives us what we need in our old age.

When I put the first square foot gardens in we removed the lawn and tilled the ground which is mostly red clay where we live so we had to modify that with top soil that we had hauled in and organic matter.

Then I read that about putting down old carpet between the beds. We did and I wish we did not because it looks like heck then and still does not because it was not biodegradable in my life time.

I suggest plain mulch. Even today’s cardboards and especially newspapers have a lot of chemicals in them and on them. We could get wood chip mulch for free from out local lumber mill at that time. Now they charge $5.00 for a big trailer load on our own trailer and that is a good deal.

If you are starting from scratch you will need a good layer of top soil and organic compost and we put about 10-12 inches in our raised beds. Here again we used the "double digging" method for our beds.

At this point our beds became pretty high and with the sloping down of the sides we were reducing our growing area, so we made wooden sides for our beds and that allowed us to put up trellises or growing hoops where needed. It also allowed us to make "mini" green houses across the tops with plastic for early seed planting and hardening of our plants as they emerged from the seeds.

Do not use pressure treated lumber. We were able to get some good boards from our local Amish lumber mill. Plus because we were also building a house and stuff was being delivered on pallets we were able to salvage the wood from the pallets.

We had a good crop that summer. However, in the following spring we noticed our raised beds had settled and we had to add another 5-6 inches of dirt to them. We also used seaweed emulsion as an additive.

The years have flown by and it is now almost 9 years later. We no longer need all those beds as I said there are just 2 of us now. Also at 73 years old the bending and kneeling has become hard, so the waist high beds work well and we supplement what extra space we need with big containers.

The container method is good for the urban gardener who wants to do square foot gardening.

Author Resource:-> For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books. Arlene says, "All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site."


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