Square Foot Gardening (Merged Thread)

nickbrat

Do i need to use a raised bed?

The reason i ask is that i'm a novice gardener with a large terrace garden. The garden is divided up into 8 fairly large beds just waiting to be planted with something.

I fail to see the point of building a frame when i could simply plant a 4 X 4 area.

Hopefully someone will tell me i'm wrong and that i'e got the wrong end of the stick but it would make life easier if i didn't have to build a frame.

I know, i'm very lazy, :rotfl:

nickbrat

Pea Tom Tom Sweet Corn

Marigold Pepper Cucumber Chilli

Marrow Carrots Radish Herbs

Lettuce Chard Rocket Lettuce

This is my plan, what do you all think, is it possible and what problems do you experts foresee? Hopefully none.

sb44

I have some 12" deep square tubs which roughly have 12" x 12" of inner planting space.

I also have a lot of small pebbles (although not pea size) that I need to get rid of.

Would it be ok to put 5" of these into the bottom of the tubs (after drilling holes in) and then putting 6" of compost on top of this?

I don't want to waste compost by putting 12" in if 6" will be sufficient and if I only put in 6" of compost I am sure the sun reach the plants as much when young as the angle of it changes.

Lucycat

nickbrat wrote: »

Pea Tom Tom Sweet Corn

Marigold Pepper Cucumber Chilli

Marrow Carrots Radish Herbs

Lettuce Chard Rocket Lettuce

This is my plan, what do you all think, is it possible and what problems do you experts foresee? Hopefully none.

Pretty much a beginner here (last year was my first year of SFG) but the one thing that springs out is how much space you are going to give to the crops that get very big/sprawly - pea, tom, sweetcorn, cucumber, marrow are all crops that get tall, sprawl or climb and could shade out sunlight, encroach into adjacent crop space or reduce air-circulation. They'll need lots of support too.

My peas eventually succumbed to mould last year due to planting too densely (so have been sited in a side-bed this year) but while they were in the bed they shaded out a lot of sun from low-level crops. My courgette ran rough-shod over my peppers (so will be back in a pot this year!), and the tomatoes even though they were well-supported were quite sprawling, too densely planted and again shaded a lot of light from smaller crops.

Trying to learn from last year's hits & misses I've gone for lots of small 'neat' crops in the SF bed - the final planting is:

Square 1: garlic, garlic Square 2: garlic, spinach
Square 3: spinach, nasturtiums Square 4: nasturtiums, spring onions
Square 5: spring onions, corn salad Square 6: corn salad, empty for later planting
Square 7: empty, swiss chard Square 8: swiss chard, beetroot
Square 9: beetroot, shallots Square 10: shallots, shallots

Squares run L-R across, same planting repeated 3 squares deep, squares will be replanted with more salad leaves and edible flowers/herbs as early crops are picked. Garlic/shallots on ends to hopefully deter some pests and as they will be pretty much left to it all summer.

More beetroot & onions in the flower bed (such great foliage on the beetroot and why waste space!), chives, garlic chives & basil in pots, potatoes in dustbins & toms, tomatillos & experimental peppers, aubies & squash on the windowsill.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your veggies - hope this year is a fruitful (should that be vegetable??) one for all of us!

Lucycat

flissh wrote: »

Lucycat, how big is your plot? How many squares do you have? For things like garlic, how many do you think you will be growing?

Sorry, don't know how I missed this one before! My plot is 10ft by 3ft, so 30 squares - I pulled up a load of patio slabs last summer, put some edging strips in & filled it with compost. Apart from the heavy lifting of slabs & compost sacks, it was a doddle & I'm already planning putting more in next year - in fact I've almost got the OH convinced on the wisdom of turning the much-maligned strip of front lawn into series of raised beds instead. Might have to look into doing a brick-laying course this summer!

Garlic has been given 1 and a half squares x 3, so 4.5 squares in total, and I've planted 12 cloves of Solent Wight across them and passed the rest on to friends - my original order of 2 bulbs could have filled the whole bed! Ah well, live & learn, eh? :rolleyes:

coolpran

kyssyn wrote: »

Yes and no. I'll try to explain

It's very American - there are lots of pictures, lots of information is repeated, the virtues extolled time and again, everything is simplified, feel-good stories are thrown in etc. (I'm not insinuating Americans are stupid, it just comes across like one of their tv infomercials!)

There isn't really anything in the book that you can't find on their website. It's also a bit strange - he's absolutely adamant that it isn't a real SFG if you haven't clearly marked out each square on the bed I personally think that eyeballing each square is good enough - I'm sure most people know what a square foot looks like!

The one thing I bought the book for was clarification on 'Mel's Mix' to fill the beds. It's 1/3rd compost, 1/3rd vermiculite (the bigger the particles the better) and 1/3rd peat moss. It's done by volume, not weight (which I suppose is handy to know if you're using the mix).

The only other thing I find useful in the book is the chart for planting densities for each crop. It's not very detailed though and I think an educated guess would be just as good.

There's a section about building your own bed but I thought it was a bit laughable. It's just four planks nailed together with a plywood base and a couple of drainage holes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a bed like that but I was hoping for plans for something a bit more substantial. The book consistently appeals to the lowest common denominator. He even tells you how to poke holes in the soil with your fingers to plant the seeds!

It has profiles on 25 fruit/veg, 5 herbs and 5 flowers. Basic description, starting, growing, harvesting, preparing and using, problems. It's only one page per crop though so even though it says you might have problems with carrot fly it doesn't describe the symptoms or remedies. As it's an American book it also mentions pests we don't get here such as the Mexican bean beetle. Also, the book doesn't mention common crops like garlic or leeks but it includes okra and melons.

So...I think if you're a complete beginner to gardening (like I was) then it's possibly worth getting as a starting point. Otherwise I wouldn't bother unless you can get it for dirt-cheap. It's not the kind of book you keep going back to.

I really bought it to find out more about the mix but I've since read online that it isn't very good (apparently vermiculite compacts over time and make the soil clay-like) and it really would be expensive to fill a bed with it.

Hope that helps!

Thanks. Nicely put.