Square Foot Gardening: Intensive Type Of Gardening

A person by the name of Mel Bartholemew popularized an intensive type of gardening that he called the square foot gardening and based it on the idea that a wide row of traditional home gardening was not appropriate and wasted time, work, water as well as space and it was possible to grow more vegetables in lesser areas by using minimum of effort. The essential square foot gardening involves dividing garden space in to beds and separating them by paths.

Sub-Dividing Beds Into Squares Of Roughly One Foot Each

The beds are further sub-divided into squares or roughly one foot each and one can plant one's vegetables in these square feet of garden. It is common to plant one plant per square for broccoli, basil etc, and to use four plants per square for lettuce, and nine plants per square for spinach and sixteen plants per square for onions and carrots. To prevent the garden soil from being compacted, the beds may be weeded as well as watered from the pathways.

There are certain benefits to square foot gardening that include having to work much less, save on water usage, have fewer weeds and keep the garden free of herbicide and pesticides as also allowing easier access, especially for the elderly or disabled persons. Square foot gardening means much less work since the soil is never compacted and will stay loose as well as loamy and so one does not need heavy tools as is the case with conventional gardening.

Because of the soil and its water holding capacity, square foot gardening does not require much watering and whatever water is placed, is very near the roots of the plant and thus there is very little wastage of water and also allows for rich soil mixture that will increase the harvest. Close planting that is a feature of square foot gardening allows vegetables to form a living mulch and also shades out a number of weed seeds, prior their being able to germinate.

Square foot gardening allows for natural insect repellent methods being used including companion planting which means planting marigolds and other pest-repellant plants that allows for more efficiency in closed spaces and so there is no need for using pesticides. Also, the different types of crops in a small space are not conducive to the spreading of plant diseases. And, one can easily use a plywood bottom and attach it to the bottom of a box and this may be put on a raised platform so that elderly persons or disabled persons can also use the garden.