Square Foot Gardening – Grow Your Own Vegetables
The purpose of square foot gardening is to harvest the most produce possible from the space available, by growing small quantities over a longer time.
This is also achieved by reducing the space between plants. To ensure you understand your garden and learn about plants you should keep a square foot garden diary to have a log of your failures and successes to improve your results.
The practice of square foot gardening is not just for those with small gardens; rather square foot gardens allows you to concentrate your work effort to create an ideal plant environment, to give better yields naturally.
The are many people who like the idea of digging for victory. They enjoy the sight of long, straight rows in their gardens and the hard labour that goes with digging and hoeing the land, whilst others like machine cultivation.
Owning a square foot garden still means weeding by hand but because the raised bed is filled with vermiculite, peat and compost there are fewer weeds and they can easily be seen and removed in a few minutes.
If you like the idea of all your vegetables being ready to harvest in one go then square foot gardens are not for you. The idea of square foot gardens is to have something growing all the time so you can have fresh vegetables growing in your garden for most of the year.
To benefit you need to have a good square foot garden plan which requires to be thought out early in the year, thorough planning to make the best use of your time and space. Before you start planting, you must consider the interrelationships of plants with each other and their needs and how to protect them from bugs and insects.
Square foot gardening is based on 1.2m by 1.2m raised beds. If you have more space then the length of the bed can be increased to 3.6m. The width should not be more that 1.2m so that you can easily reach the middle with out standing on the soil.
