The Pritchard family started square foot gardening about three years ago. We have a small urban yard, but we weren’t ready to convert the whole front to vegetable garden, so we started nibbling away at the edges. The “square-foot” gardening method was perfect for us, and the book has changed the way we think about growing vegetables. It is a highly-intensive system, built around modules measuring 1-foot by 1-foot, laid out on raised beds.
Since our soil is pretty rich in car parts and broken glass and God-knows-what-else (like lots of urban soil). Because you’re aren’t walking on the soil surface, you don’t compact the soil, and because you can reach every plant, weeding is easy and watering can be done with great precision (and therefore efficiency). It’s not the system you’d use for growing wheat, but there’s no reason to adopt industrial methods for home vegetable gardening.
The best thing for us–most of the methods are almost like following a recipe. Novice gardeners and those rediscovering the lost art will appreciate the hand-holding and rigor that helps avoid mistakes. But even with such detailed instructions, there’s still a lot to learn just by getting started (or restarted) in gardening, and that’s the virtue of growing your own food. You simply aren’t completely in control, and you don’t know everything–life lessons taught best by trying to develop your own green thumb.
The All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is available in bookstores or at Amazon.com.
Rusty Pritchard is the President and co-Founder of Flourish (Creation Care for Churches and Families).
Jason Chatraw says:
last night, I filled up the 4x4 square foot boxes I built and love this method of gardening. Here's to getting in touch with my inner green thumb! :)
Ken O. says:
Hey, good work on the gardening! I was reading last night about how Atlanta receives regular rain year-round, in contrast to the Pacific Northwest or Nevada. That's great for growing food!
My solution so far in Oakland -- since I don't own land outright -- has been to buy prefab wood boxes, terra cotta pots and large galvanized tubs. These fill almost half of our South-facing apartment balcony. The containers are filled with strawberries, raspberries herbs, small trees, and vegetables of all shades. Since the dirt I'm buying is all compost and high quality organic soil with peat moss, bat "guano," earthworm "castings" and so forth, the results have been amazing. I'd post a photo here in the comments if that were possible.
As for efficient watering: I'm using terra cotta "plant nannies" which take an empty wine bottle filled with fresh water, and only release as much water into the soil as is needed by the plants. Pretty awesome low-tech solution for arid California. Or anywhere. We use them here at work (SustainLane) too.
Australia has a worse water problem than we do and it's working down under as well:
http://hillsandplainsseedsavers.blogspot.com/2008/01/terracotta-meets-terra-firma.html
Even with as little gardening knowledge as I have, it's pretty darn easy. The plants do all the work. They want to live and survive!