(Not to mention the damage that can be sustained by a plant that gets stepped on!) Prevents Compactionīy growing in a raised bed, gardeners avoid the risk of walking on – and thus, compressing – the growing medium.Įven gardeners mindful to avoid walking on garden rows may occasionally forget or accidentally step into a row, which will compress soil and have a detrimental effect on crops. Growing on the grid will create visual order and keep things neat. The use of the grid on the raised bed tells you that each crop has a dedicated space. Keeps Your Plants Tidyīecause of its well-ordered grid system, this gardening method will appeal to those of us who prefer to keep our landscapes looking tidy. You won’t have to worry about whether you have the right nutrients or minerals in your soil, because everything you’ll need is in the growing medium you’ll add to your boxes. If you’ve felt nervous about the thought of performing a soil test, that’s one less worry you’ll have with this food growing system, since a specific growing medium is used instead of soil from the ground. Since this is a no-till method, you won’t need any large machinery like rototillers either. Since there’s less work involved, there are fewer gardening tools required with this growing method.Įssentially, all you’ll need for a square foot garden in the way of tools is a pair of gardening gloves, your handy trowel or hori hori, and a pair of pruners. That means more time to lounge on your porch swing, admiring your crops as they grow, and watching the pollinators put on a show! Less Need for Tools
The recommended growing medium is light and friable, and won’t require any hard labor to get it to stay that way. Sure, wind and birds will still deposit the occasional random seed in the growing medium, but since growers are planting in specific patterns, those uninvited weedy guests are easy to identify and remove.Īnd since this is a no-till method, there is no backbreaking labor involved in working the soil.
Want to know how space gets saved with this method?īasically, the logic goes like this: if you can grow carrots two inches apart in a single-file line in a row, why can’t you grow them two inches apart side by side as well? The answer? You can! He found that by doing so, he could produce the same amount of food in just 20 percent of the space needed in traditional row planting. Mel Bartholomew eventually hit on the square foot idea by experimenting with shrinking the space between rows in a traditional row-planted garden. One of the most astounding advantages of this method is space savings. There are even more illustrative photos, creating an all in one resource for gardeners.Īnd because of all the other advantages – which we’re about to discover – converts to this method are likely to keep their new hobby going.Īnother advantage for beginners – if you want to try edible gardening without changing your landscaping too much, this is the perfect way to give it a try.Īll you need is four square feet in the sun, and you won’t even have to sink a shovel into the ground. While less of Mel Bartholomew’s voice is present in the third edition, the text has been tweaked to make it even easier for gardeners to use the info held within as a step by step guide. The third edition, authored by Mel Bartholomew with the Square Foot Gardening Foundation, takes a slight departure from the original text.Ĭompared with the second edition, much of Bartholomew’s personal story and tales of his experimentation have been removed, though blurbs taken from Bartholomew’s original text appear throughout the book. With updated methodology based on his decades of experience, in 2006 Bartholomew published a new version of his book entitled “The All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space,” followed by a second edition in 2013.Īfter Mel Bartholomew died in 2016, the Square Foot Gardening Foundation, started by Bartholomew in 1996, continued his work and released a third version of his book in 2018.
#Raised garden bed layout tv
The huge success of this book, which sold copies in the millions, led to a TV series, first aired on PBS and then the Discovery Channel, bringing Bartholomew’s ideas to an even wider audience. The book quickly took hold of gardeners as an exciting new way to grow more food in small spaces, not only to produce homegrown harvests, but also as a means of improving health, ergonomics, and even food security among populations in need around the world. Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work, 2005
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