“In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.”
~ Abram L. Urban Winter is a great time for planning a new garden. Square Foot Gardening, a system that has been around for years and was popularized by Mel Bartholomew on a nationally televised PBS series, is a straightforward and simple way to have fresh produce through the spring, summer and fall.
Square foot gardening is based on 4’ by 4’ planting blocks. These blocks can be in raised beds or in the ground. Raised beds will warm up a little earlier in the spring. For a two-person garden made up of mostly smaller plants, you will need two blocks. Add three feet for a path in between and a 4 x 11 foot garden plot will provide two people with enough produce to have vegetables and salads every day in the growing season plus some flowers and herbs. The garden must have at least six hours of sunshine. You should choose a location near the house so that it is easy to maintain and keep an eye on. And harvest! Mark off each block and amend the soil, placing at least 6” of peat moss, vermiculite and manure on top. Mix it in well and if you never walk on the soil you will not have to do any more heavy digging. The blocks are designed to be reached from the path outside the plot, without having to step on the soil. Raised beds can be built at any time and the boxes filled with soil and amendments so that you can start planting early this spring. If your blocks are right on the ground you will need to wait until the soil has dried out before you start amending the soil. Digging too early in the clay soils of the Palouse causes clumps to form and they are tough to get rid of. When the blocks have been amended and mixed and are ready to plant you will first need to mark them off by square feet. With my raised blocks I have placed staples a foot apart around the entire block and then thread twine through them, first horizontally and then vertically. The result, in my 4’ x 4’ raised bed, is a block with 16 individual squares. Each of those squares is now ready for a succession of plantings throughout the growing season. Along the four squares at the north side of my boxes I have erected a trellis and that is where I plant vertical crops like pole beans, peas and tomatoes, or perhaps a sweet pea vine. You can also put vine crops there, like cucumbers and squash, with plenty of support. Depending on the mature size of the plants you will plant from one to 16 seeds or seedlings in each square. For example, peppers, cabbages and head lettuce should all be planted 12” apart, and so you will only plant one per square. Leaf lettuce, kale and parsley can be planted 6” apart, so you will have four of those in a square. Carrots, onions and radishes can be planted 3” apart, so a square will have 16 of those. A book by Mel Bartholomew has extensive advice for succession planting to get the most use from your blocks. The Latah County Library District has his new Square Foot Gardening book as well as some of his videos. I strongly recommend you read up on the system if you intend to use it. The Latah County Extension office at 522 S. Adams (the County Courthouse), Room 208, has a video you can watch onsite called How to Design and Build a Vegetable Garden, by Gary Ball. Ball is a garden writer in Michigan with years of gardening experience. His video, while not about the square foot gardening system, gives great advice on getting started with a vegetable garden. It’s never too early to get started with designing and dreaming the next garden project. Indeed, my head is always full of such projects and Square Foot Gardening is a fun one to try. Happy Gardening!
Holly Barnes is spending her third winter in Moscow and finally figuring out how to garden in this climate. Her garden of flowers is also a garden of thoughts and dreams. |
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