Square Foot Gardening

May 06, 2015

By Dale Odorizzi

Do you want to have fresh picked tasty vegetables but have a small lot with no room for a vegetable garden? If so, Square Foot Gardening may be for you. Square foot gardening is easy to do, easy to manage, very adaptable, and it produces high yields of top-quality food. One square foot garden unit measuring 16 sq ft (4 feet X 4 feet) holds an average of 130 plants and produces enough vegetables for one person. A family of four can have fresh greens in abundance throughout the growing season and beyond from only 64 square feet of growing space.

Vegetables love sunshine. Put your garden in a site that will get a minimum of 6 hours sunlight a day. Keep it away from tree roots and septic beds. The soil under a lawn is usually quite good. Use a sharp spade to cut through the turf, making vertical cuts, slicing it up into one-foot squares, and then peel the squares off like a carpet. Turn the squares over (green side down) and wet thoroughly. Cover with sheets of damp newspaper (minimum 10 sheets) or wet cardboard and then cover with soil and compost. The turned over lawn will break down, adding nutrients to your soil. If you want to take the lazy way, lay damp cardboard or many sheets of damp newspaper (10-20) directly on the ground. Wet the cardboard well and cover with at least 6 inches of compost or well composted manure. Because you will be planting very intensively, you will need lots of compost. While you can leave your garden “frameless”, you may find it easier to build a frame with 6 inch sides. This will provide lots of space to build up your garden bed.

Divide your garden into 1 foot sections, putting strings across to mark out 16 one foot square sections. Depending on the vegetables, you can plant between one and 16 vegetables in each 1 foot square. You can plant 16 onions, carrots, radishes, arugula, beets or leeks, 9 beans or spinach plants, lettuce or basil and 1 cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumber or peppers. Tomatoes, zucchini and squash will take up 4 squares. For sprawling plants, such as cucumber or squash, you should use a trellis for your plants to grow up so they don’t choke up their neighbours. Plant tall plants on the north side of the garden, to prevent taller plants from shading their neighbours. You can plant a few more seeds in each square and then thin out seedlings as the plants grow. Keep your garden well watered. Once you have harvested early crops, plant more.

If you want to make a larger garden, make it longer, not wider. You can reach across a 4-foot garden from either side to weed or harvest. This allows you to care for your garden without taking up valuable space with walking paths.

At the end of the season, pull out old plants and put them in your compost heap. If you had blight on any of your plants, discard them and do not compost. Add more compost, shredded leaves or any organic matter to your square foot garden. Mother Nature and Jack Frost will help this organic matter break down over the winter. In spring, add a layer of compost and start your planting again.

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