After years of only ho-hum harvests in her Lafayette garden, Jennifer Grant staked last summer’s fortunes on a book she’d lugged around since college, and scored a backyard bonanza.
Tomatoes and beans, peas, tiny pumpkins and fat jack o’lanterns, zucchini and peppers (banana and bell), radishes, beets, chard, arugula and lettuce, cucumbers and basil, cilantro and carrots burst forth from simple boxes set in a sunny but fallow corner of the backyard.
Getting a garden growing strong enough to feed her family of six – and most of their neighbors too – was as simple as building five garden boxes and following the planting scheme set out in Mel Bartholomew’s “Square Foot Gardening,” a circa 1981 gardeners’ manual reissued this year as “All New Square Foot Gardening,” (Cool Springs Press, $19.95).
Bartholomew’s garden theorems are simple: Take the heavy lifting out of the garden by raising the beds and dividing them into a square-foot grid; plant in a weed- free soil you mix yourself; and sow only as much as you (and your friends) can eat in a season. When your cool-season crops finish, add a trowel full of compost to the square they occupied and plant something to harvest a month or six weeks later; stir and repeat up to three times a growing season.
“Everything is done a little at a time, so gardening becomes no big deal,” Bartholomew said in an interview from his home in Eden, Utah, where he runs the Square Foot Gardening Foundation (squarefootgardening.com). “We appeal mostly to beginners. When the Ph.D.s come, they’re scratching their heads saying ‘It sounds too easy.’ The beginners say ‘It sounds too easy; I could do that!”‘
A square-foot garden takes up only about 20 percent of the space of a traditional long-row garden, which makes it especially appealing in today’s shrinking suburban backyards. A raised box also allows gardeners to better manage soil fertility and their expectations, said Steve Newman, an extension specialist at Colorado State University.
“Square-foot gardening puts vegetable gardening on a more manageable scale. Rather than plant a whole big section of yard in vegetables that all come up at once, you can harvest a bit at a time. Whomever is doing the work can pace themselves and not get overwhelmed and get a bad taste and quit.”
Grant was no beginner, but she had become dismayed because of the relatively low yields she got from vegetables tucked between flowers in beds – never mind the issue of her plants getting stepped on by her four active kids, who now range from age 2 to 9.
“It’s just so logical and so straightforward. It gave me the confidence to garden with four small children and helped me to see exactly what I was trying to achieve,” Grant said. “It took the guesswork out.”
She enlisted her husband, Todd, to build and fill the boxes with soil, and called on the kids to help plant seeds according to Bartholomew’s plan. Onions, carrots and beets were sown 16 seeds to a square foot; tomatoes, cucumbers and Jack-Be-Little pumpkins got their own square foot but were directed to climb up a nylon net hanging from a steel pipe frame.
“I couldn’t believe how many things, like beets and onions, that I could fit in such a small place. And to grow cucumbers upright,” Grant said. “I didn’t believe it would happen, but it did. And it was just fun to have a different visual look in the garden.”
In spite of a three-week period of neighborly neglect when the family was away, the garden produced plenty of food for the table, and enough extra to allow pickles to be put up and pesto to be frozen.
Last summer’s yield was measured not only by the number of meals produced, but also in the number of sibling squabbles that broke out over who got to pick the salad of the day.
“It’s getting my kids interested in gardening, and I’m so proud and excited that my kids know that their food comes from someplace other than King Soopers,” Grant said. “They eat really well in the garden. I don’t think I’ve ever served peas I’ve cooked because they’ll munch them right from the vine.”
Staff writer Dana Coffield can be reached at 303-820-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com
In Mel Bartholomew’s square-foot garden, freedom grows out of structure. Follow the plans for the box, grid and soil mix, and then make the garden all your own.
To get going with a 4- by 4-foot garden, which can grow enough produce to provide one adult a dinner salad every day of the gardening season, you’ll need:
- Four 4-foot lengths of 2- by 6-inch lumber
- 12 large coarse-thread deck screws
- Six pieces of 4-foot lath
- 13 small screws
- Enough weed cloth to cover a 4- by 4-foot area
- Eight cubic feet of Mel’s Mix (which you make by combining a half bale of peat moss, a 4-cubic foot bag of coarse vermiculite and 4 cubic feet of blended compost)
- One 5-gallon bucket, which will hold the water you use to water by hand each day.
- One trowel, for stirring in compost after each crop is finished
- One pencil, for poking holes in which to plant your seeds
- Seeds. Choose what you think you’d like to eat and don’t be afraid to fill some of your squares with flowers.
Pick a sunny spot in your yard and cover it with weed cloth. Begin to assemble your box by drilling three pilot holes for the screws in one end of each of the boards. Position the boards so the end of one is flush with the side of the next and fasten them with the deck screws. Once the frame is assembled, move it to the weed-cloth covered location. Fill the box one-third full with Mel’s Mix and water, add another layer of soil mix and water again, and then top off the box and water a third time.
Assemble your grid by screwing the pieces of lath together to form 16 “boxes.” Place the grid over the garden box and use four screws to anchor it on the box.
Start planting. Vegetable and herb seeds, with the exception of tomatoes, can be started in the garden.
Plan your crops with the understanding that a square foot of space can support: 16 small plants, like ball carrots, radishes and onions; nine medium plants, like bush beans, spinach and beets; four large plants, like leaf lettuce, Swiss chard and marigolds; or one extra-large plant, like tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, summer squash and bell peppers.
Think about the harvest. If you want radishes, spinach or basil throughout the summer, plant seeds in waves of four per week, so you don’t have your entire crop come on at once.
Water carefully. Fill a 5-gallon bucket with water and allow it to warm in the sun. Use a cup or small watering can to irrigate your crops. Because Mel’s Mix drains readily, it also tends to dry out more quickly than ordinary garden soil. This means you have to pay a bit more attention to your little patch of Eden, but that’s part of the fun, Bartholomew writes.
Watering by hand “allows you the time to nurture your plants. You’re able to stop and notice how your plants are growing. You can appreciate their beauty and color, notice their blossoms and fruit. It’s a satisfying feeling to work in your garden with each plant.”
Ten Basics of Square-Foot Gardening
Layout: Arrange your garden in squares, not rows. Lay it out in 4-foot by 4-foot areas.
Boxes: Build boxes to hold a new soil mix above ground.
Aisles: Space boxes 3 feet apart to form walking aisles.
Soil: Fill boxes with Mel’s special soil mix: 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 coarse vermiculite.
Grid: Make a square- foot grid for the top of each box.
Care: Never walk on your growing soil. Tend your garden from the aisles.
Select: Plant a different flower, vegetable, or herb crop in each square foot, using one, four, nine or 16 plants per square foot.
Plant: Conserve seeds. Plant only a pinch (2 or 3 seeds) per hole. Place transplants in a slight saucer-shaped depression.
Water: Water by hand from a bucket of sun-warmed water.
Harvest: When you finish harvesting a square foot, add compost and replant it with a new and different crop.
Source: Mel Bartholomew
