square foot gardening?

[artist]

Does anyone here have any experience with square foot gardening? Did it work well for you? If so, any tips you'd like to share?

[puglogic]

My father used to grow amazing amounts of stuff in his square foot gardens.

I garden intensively (not square-foot, more like french-intensive gardening (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intensive_gardening)) and my yields are massive, and we live in a pretty unforgiving place sometimes - short seasons, heat, drought, late snow, early snow, hail....

For both of these methods, I've observed that the better and deeper your soil, the more success you'll have. Some plant roots can push down 5 feet or more! So just tending the top 10-12 inches of soil, as many folks do, might hamper your efforts. The book I live by is this one: http://www.bountifulgardens.org/products.asp?dept=113 . Talks about companion planting, developing good soil, how to build great beds, the beauty of mulch, and a thousand other things that are useful both to SFG and other intensive methods.

Good luck!

[creaker]

Definitely if you can, go deep. The beds I built were raised beds using 2x6's, they really should be a bit deeper.

[chord_ata]

Square foot gardening works and gets rid of the need to massive planning before you start.

[razz]

It works extremely well for simple basic foods like lettuce, radishes etc but I found that cabbages and other cole crops took up too much space and are better in a row. I prefer growing onions, corn, tomatoes, parsnips and carrots in rows. If SFG is what is available, do it but make sure that you really want that produce and can water daily as the loose soil dries very quickly. I also found that the wooden frames did break down despite pain, linseed oil and will need replacing.
I have gone back to simple rows using some of the ideas of SFG.

[Greg44]

I finally finished by 1st raised bed and looking forward to planting some "fall" crops. I have it all filled with special soil primed ready to go. WHAT -- REALLY -- ? -- The neighbor's cat thinks it is his big LITTER BOX! GROSS and I sorta liked this cat.
Anyone else have cats use their raised beds as litter boxes? >:(

I too am interested in square foot gardening. I seen some amazing pictures.

[Sissy]

cats, DOGS (family dogs, grrrr, lol) armadillos, deer, rabbits, need I go on????????? oh, yes I do, we now have chickens!

[Gardenarian]

Dried citrus peels (orange, lemon, lime) scattered around and on top of the bed will help to keep the cats away. I have a lime tree and after we have squeezed the limes I put the peels in our gas oven - the pilot light gives enough heat to dry them nicely. (Dogs work too :))

[Gardenarian]

I wanted to add - I haven't tried square foot gardening, but I am going to try planting in straw bales this year. We are going to use the bales as the frame of our new raised bed, and plant both in the soil and directly in the bales.

I'm going to try and post a link about this, but I haven't been having good luck with this:http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/straw-bale-gardening.html

[Sissy]

Thanks for the link, gardenarian. Bending over is realllly hard on my back!

[CropCircleDancer]

100% everyone I personally know has found it to be a disaster. Just make sure you are in the right climate.

[Rogar]

I asked the same question here this spring and had enough encouragement to try it. Now that I have a season under my belt, I could report back. I used 2X8s as 6" seemed a little too shallow and only did one 4'X4' frame. Put a waterproofing treatment on the wood before assembling. And pretty much followed the recipe for "mel's mix" soil mixture. I also put up a frame and netting for vine tomatos.

One nice thing about them is that you can put them wherever you want. I put mine sort of close to the back door for easy access and also a slightly better sun spot than my traditional garden. I planted my tomatos by placing the roots horizontally and they did better than the same variety that I had in my traditional garden. Lettuce, chard, spinach, basil, and beets all did well and produced quite a bit for the space. For some reason the cucumbers and peppers didn't do well, but over all I was pleased. I've planted some fall cool weather plants to replace the summer harvest. There is a pretty easy design in the book using PVC pipe and plastic to make the area into a mini greenhouse, so hopefully I'll be able to extend the growing season. I didn't try it, but might agree that the larger plants like cabbage, squash, and broccoli might take up too much space and would be more efficient in a traditional garden.

I think the whole thing cost about $50-$60. You might be able to scrounge some of the materials, but the soil mix is slightly pricey. I think the soil mix is one of the secrets to success and worth following the instructions in the book. Also, the book was extremely helpful.

Anyway, not a total success and slightly expensive, but I had fun with it and got quite a bit of food considering the space.

[Selah]

I had great hopes for square foot gardening, but alas, at the time of building the boexs and "dirtifying" and sowing my crops, I didn't realize that I really lived in an environment that was far too tough for growing much of anything, really. (That was in the high desert of Southern Nevada.) Although I put shade cloth over my boxes, the hot winds still scorched the plants, and if I misted them, the water got so hot so quickly that it also burned hotspots into the leave. I did manage to have one year with a yield of about one zucchini and two dozen tomatoes, but at best it turned out that each tomato had cost me about $7 each! In the end, I just donated the boxes to a friend who ended up leaving them in the front yard of the house she was renting, after she moved out. Lucky landlord...NOT!

[Marianne]

I did it years ago and got tons of chow from small spaces! You don't have to do raised beds, my stuff did great just in the ground. I did use landscape timbers to create a pretty geometric shape.

I have some raised beds, but they require more watering and keep settling. I'm taking them out. It's hot and windy here, too (not as bad as where you are Selah), so next year I'm going to plant in trenches instead. I mulch heavily with straw. After it's watered a couple times, it seems to hold on to the ground instead of flying over to the next county.

[Marianne]

I finally finished by 1st raised bed and looking forward to planting some "fall" crops. I have it all filled with special soil primed ready to go. WHAT -- REALLY -- ? -- The neighbor's cat thinks it is his big LITTER BOX! GROSS and I sorta liked this cat.
Anyone else have cats use their raised beds as litter boxes? >:(

I too am interested in square foot gardening. I seen some amazing pictures.

We bought one of these gadgets. It's called the Scarecrow. It's a motion activate sprinkler system that shoots a 3 second burst of water from the impulse sprinkler on the top.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31NC1X108QL._SL500_AA300_.jpg (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000071NUS/ref=dp_image_z_0?ie=UTF8&n=286168&s=garden)

The cheapest place I found to buy this thing was at Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Contech-Electronics-CRO101-Scarecrow-Motion-Activated/dp/B000071NUS (http://www.amazon.com/Contech-Electronics-CRO101-Scarecrow-Motion-Activated/dp/B000071NUS) $42 plus free shipping.

It will work good to keep neighbor kitty out of your garden. My cats..well... Different story as they are letting me know it's chow time. Full story on my blog.

[nickiefriend]

This was my first year gardening and went square foot method. I must say that I was very happy with the results and the scrooge that I live with was happy that it didnt take up too much of his precious yard or make it look trashy ((: Anyway, I liked the fact that the only work I had to do after the planting was watering and staking my plants (other that harvest). The weeds were minimal and I wouldnt have had those if the mown grass hadnt been blown into the boxes. I didnt have anything that didnt grow other than my onions, and I think that was just a problem with me not the garden!