Marigold
Giant 1 y 2 to 3 feet A B P, Hardiness half-hardy annual Spacing Dwarf, 4 per square Giant, 1 per square Growing Season Spring no Summer yes Fall yes Winter no Seed to Flower 10 weeks Seeds Storage 2 to 3 years Weeks to Maturity 3 to 4 weeks Indoor Seed Starting 6 to 8 weeks before last spring frost Earliest Outdoor Planting at last frost date Additional Plantings not needed Last Planting not needed Just about everyone will recognize the pompom flowers of the marigold. The most common flower...
Ail New Square Foot Gardening
is awesome. My 3-year-old and I have a blast with two 4X6 boxes. would enable them to have four or more boxes. One of the best things about using SFG in a community garden is that since there are no weeds, the garden doesn't become an overrun eyesore by the middle of the summer. This means it is much easier to operate and get public and official approval. If you want to start a community garden, I would emphasize the need again to start small, gain experience, become successful, and then expand...
No Digging
Using Mel's Mix completely eliminates all the hard work of digging and moving existing soil. A 4X4X 12-inch-deep area contains 16 cubic feet of soil that weighs well over 400 pounds. That's a lot of soil to dig up and move around. All gardening in the past has been based upon improving your existing soil. My original book had rather complicated instructions for your soil, but we've changed all that. Don t even be concerned about it. You don't have to know anything about soils. Just start with a...
How Deep
How deep should you plant a seed This depends a lot on the size of the seed and the soil you plant it in. Generally speaking, a seed s depth is two to four times the thickness of the seed. Its important to place your seeds below a moist surface to prevent it from drying out. loo close to the surface and it can dry out from the hot sun. Once a seed receives moisture and begins sprouting known as breaking dormancy , it will die if it dries out so don t forget to water regularly. How to Plant Your...
Petunia
Family Nightshade Height 6 to 24 inches A B P, Hardiness half-hardy Growing Season Spring late Summer yes Fall early Winter no Seed to Harvest Flower 14 weeks Seeds Storage Weeks to Maturity 8 to 10 weeks Indoor Seed Starting 8 to 10 weeks before first frost Earliest Outdoor Planting after last frost Additional Plantings not needed Last Planting not needed Petunias are one of the easiest annuals to grow, especially if they are purchased as plants. They are branching, creeping plants with...
Asparagus
Family Lily Height 5 to 6 feet A B P, Hardiness perennial Spacing 2 plants per 4 squares Spring yes Summer yes Fall no Winter no Seed to Harvest Flower 3 years Seeds Storage 3 years Weeks to Maturity 12 weeks Indoor Seed Starting 10 to 12 weeks before last spring frost Earliest Outdoor Planting 2 to 4 weeks before last spring frost Additional Plantings not needed Last Planting not needed Fresh, tender asparagus spears from the spring garden have no rival in the supermarket. When you invest in...
Planting Schedule For Continuous Harvest Crops
CROP Time to Maturity Weeks Before LAST SPRING FROST Weeks After Weeks Before FIRST FALL FROST Weeks After LEGEND Outdoor Growth, started with seeds Outdoor Growth, started with transplants Harvest Period
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Ufw
Family Daisy Height 8 to 24 inches A B P, Hardiness half-hardy Growing Season Spring late Summer yes Fall yes Winter no Seed to Harvest Flower 15 weeks Seeds Storage Weeks to Maturity 10 weeks Indoor Seed Starting 10 to 15 weeks before last frost Earliest Outdoor Planting 2 to 3 weeks before last frost Additional Plantings after last frost with other annuals, or not needed Last Planting not needed The charming dusty miller has been grown by generations of gardeners, and for good reason. The...
Pansy
Indoor Seed Starting 14 to 16 weeks The best word to describe pansy flowers is adorable 5 The little faces look up at you like they offer hope for a lovely spring after a cold winter and as a last hoorah of color in the fall. Even the flowers without the actual black blotches look like happy faces. Pansies come in so many colors and color combinations that its difficult to keep up with the changes and even more difficult to choose which ones to plant. They are easy to grow, as long as you...
Turn the Handles or Chop Chop Chop
If you are in a real hurry, there are expensive, but effective, rotating drum composters you can buy. You just turn a handle, flip a container, or push a barrel around, and the contents are mixed and moved. Great idea, and they work if you do it regularly. I've also heard of, but never tried, the closed, method. Be careful when you open the bag because, as you can guess, that method uses the black-hat, no air, anaerobic process that smells. Some gardeners have tried using plastic or molded...
If You Decide to Buy Compost
Don t buy all of one kind of compost if you decide to not make it yourself. Dont let the clerk sell you the best and most popular, especially if its loose and not bagged. Heres why. All commercial compost is a byproduct from one industry. It might be the wood, cattle, mushroom, cannery, cotton, or soybean industry that has a waste product and they have to get rid of it. They said, u What if we take our waste product sawdust, manure, vines, pulp, or husks and compost it, people will pay us and...
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Fxd
always things people are throwing out. I've done that in India, Haiti, Argentina, Nepal, Thailand, Ghana, and even in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and New York City, so don't be afraid to go, look, and ask it's out there. COFFEE GROUNDS AND FREE BUCKETS Anyplace people gather, there will be waste thrown out. Check out farmer's markets, local fairs or street carnivals, flea markets, even places like Starbucks guess what they would have for you there . In addition to compost material, many of these...
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Kfr
Attach the boards with two coarse-thread deck screws using your power drill. Arrange your boards as shown in this photo and drill two holes in one end of each board pliers and easily bent over a straight edge to almost any shape. You can make a four-sided wire box from two U-frames or just a two-sided one. There is quite a variety of fencing wire to choose from so check out what is available. It comes in rolls of different widths and lengths as well as different openings and wire thicknesses....
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Ayq
The frame is lightweight arid is easy to lift off your 4x4. Remove it to water, prune, or harvest. When placing your protective cage, 37 r the fames line up. This will keep all kinds of critters from taking your harvest. 12 inches tall, and a few at 18 inches tall they will be available at the right time they're needed for your garden. If you have a couple of these cages made ahead of time, say at 6, 12, or 18 inches tall, they will be available to pick at the right time they are needed for...
Meet Mel Bartholomew
i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i 11 i i I i i i I i i i I i i i Mel Bartholomews path to arguably the most influential backyard gardener was an untraditional one. A civil engineer by profession and frustrated gardener by weekend, Bartholomew was convinced unmanageable single-row gardening was a waste of energy and output. After his research yielded responses such as but that's the way we've always done it, Bartholomew condensed the unmanageable single-row space to...
Penny Pincher
My idea of the best kind of wood is free wood. Go to any construction site, tell the foreman you are building a Square Foot Garden, and ask if they have any scrap lumber. Chances are they will be throwing out just what you need. They may even cut it for you if you ask nicely. Then your box is free. When constructing your SFG box, cut all four pieces of your wood sides to the same length, and then rotate the corners to ensure you end up with a square box. If you want a different look than the...
More Shopping Lists for Different Sized Batches
If you had three 4x4 boxes 24 cubic feet total , you would need Two 4 cubic-foot bags of coarse vermiculite to equal 73 the total or 8 cubic feet. one 3.9-cubic-foot bale of peat moss expands to 8 cubic feet . and 8 cubic feet of at least five different composts bags added together for a total of 24 cubic feet. If you had one 4x4 box and one 2X4 or one 3X3 box 12 cubic feet , and you wanted to mix up half of a batch to start with, you would add together just one 4-cubic-foot bag of vermiculite,...
Introduction
i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i I i i i V hy write an updated version of the best selling gardening book of all time The old saying goes, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, Square Foot Garden isn't broken, but the all new model is so superior, so much simpler, and so improved that you can now forget all about the original book and the original Square Foot Gardening method Whats so new about the All New Square Foot Gardening book The...
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Iby
lt JFG is great for the family. Each person has his or her own plot. Everyone loves corn especially chipmunks, squirrels, and raccoons To keep them out and your harvest in, try this foolproof secret. Put one steel fence post in each corner of your 4x4 foot garden. Use tall metal 5- or 6-foot fence posts, and then, when corn reaches 4 feet, run chicken wire with 1-inch openings around the outside forming four walls. Next, add one more piece across the top at a height of about 4 feet. This will...
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Mdd
Use a thick plastic cover to protect your plants from frost. Place some heavy objects such as bricks on the edges to secure it. with shade cloth to provide a little shade for tender young plants. You can provide protection the same way for the fall crop. Another neat looking PVC frame is one in the shape of a covered wagon. This takes a little longer to make and requires just a bit more material, but it gives a lot more room and is much easier to use when you have a cover over the frame. It...
ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING Cwy
take the cage off. Grab the cage wire with your fingers and lift the whole thing off, tend to the plants, and then put it back down. A Rill cage needs a wooden-frame bottom for support, but it then fits nicely on your wooden garden box frame. See how everything in SFG fits together so nicely, just like Legos. To make a wooden bottom for a wire cage, attach four pieces of 1 X2 inch pine lumber 4 feet long in a box shape with two deck screws at each corner. Then cut and shape your chicken wire or...
New DepthOnly Inches Deep
Go deep ' they said. Don't bother ' I said. For years, experts said your garden soil had to be improved at least 12 inches deep some even said 18 inches. But my experiments were V7 t proving otherwise, especially when 1 used good homemade compost as one-third of the mix. I asked myself, If six inches of perfect soil is T our tOVC OJ good enough for windowboxes and commercial greenhouse benches, gardening to the why not in backyard gardens And why dilute it by adding the mix simplicity of SFG....
The Square Foot Gardening Story
ou have forever changed garden ing for me. Well, we tried all these new ideas in the community garden the next year, and, guess what They worked Everyone understood and grasped the Square oot Gardening concepts quickly and easily, and since most of the participants were beginning gardeners who were well acquainted with the disastrous experience from the previous year including the overgrown weeds and mounds of zucchini and rows of cabbage that ripened all at once they were very willing to try...
Stagger the Harvest
I also realized that if each square foot could be planted with a different crop containing either one, four, nine, or sixteen plants, all properly spaced, it wouldn't be necessary to plant a whole row of just one crop. So, why not stagger your vegetable plantings, so that your harvest is also staggered Makes sense, doesn't it Yet we've been taught all our lives to plant everything all at once in long rows another hand-me-down technique from large-field crop farming, i i youre farming for...
Grids and Materials
Grids are a must. Every box should have its own permanent and prominent grid. I'm so adamant about having a grid on every box I tell people that if your SFG doesn't have a grid, it is not a Square Foot Garden. But with a grid, it's an attractive, unusual, and unique garden. It tells the story of SFG in one glance. In addition it has many unseen benefits, so stick with mc on this one and build a grid for all of your boxes. I used to search home improvement centers for wood or plastic molding, or...
Chicken Wire
Another common material I like to use is chicken wire. It comes in smaller 1-inch openings or larger 2-inch openings. The 1-inch size is much stronger but will cost a little more. The 1-inch size also takes a little longer to bend into shape but will keep out more critters than the 2-inch size. Chicken wire can be cut with pliers or cutting shears. Its sharp, so be sure to wear gloves. You can buy a whole roll of it, 3-or 4-feet wide. In many hardware stores you can buy whatever length you want...
Plan Your Garden
Li I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I i i I I I This chapter is going to talk about three basic components of Square Foot Gardening. Your garden will be laid out in square or rectangular boxes separated by walking aisles. Build your boxes from materials like wood, bricks, or blocks. If you don't like the idea of common wood, which will eventually rot or be eaten by termites, use a more expensive wood like cedar or redwood. You can even use some of the...
Full Cage
A chicken wire cage over the entire 4x4 makes it fairly easy to protect your garden against unwanted rabbits, birds that dig up and eat newly planted seeds, cats that like to dig in the soil, too much sun on newly planted and delicate seedlings, or strong wind gusts during the windy season. Build your wire cage to fit the plants' mature sizes. Once plants start growing through the wire, it is very difficult to Roll out one long piece of chicken wire and place your frame close to the center...