PLANTING CALENDAR. It is packed full of info about seed starting, garden planning, and links to lots of great videos to watch. With proper planning you’ll be able to use each square 2-3 times in a growing season: 4 leaf lettuces early in spring followed by a pepper plant in the summer and 9 small beets for your fall garden. Doug Larson. Curl up in a comfy chair and read the latest Square Foot Gardening newsletter. Mel Bartholomew is a man who has been attributed to creating a different method of growing vegetables and flowers, and that is not in rows, but in squares. Square foot gardening is a method which divides a raised bed into equal squares, roughly one foot in length each. Onion, carrot and radish seeds need only 3 inches around them to mature, allowing you to plant 16 plants in such an area. The Sunday before that will be “-2.” Keep going back to -12 if you plan to start seeds indoors. As promised, this is the follow up with plant spacing info for square foot gardening. By planting just a pinch of seeds instead of a whole packet, you can save a lot of money by saving the excess seeds for next year’s crop, and the next year’s, and so on. Related: 8 Reasons to Start Square Foot Gardening. A few of my web site visitors have asked that I publish a basic seed starting and planting calendar. Keep seed bed shaded, if possible, and well watered. However the area required in this method is 80% lesser than the space that is … The typical SFG bed is just 4’x4′, and one or two beds is plenty for most folks. Square foot gardening allows you to plant much closer. - Plant carrot seeds directly out into the garden. Want to grow your own food? The Square Foot Gardening Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Planning a Square Foot Vegetable Garden 30 July 2010 , written by Jeremy Dore Square Foot Gardening (commonly referred to as SFG) is a planting method that was developed by American author and TV presenter Mel Bartholomew in the 1970s. Each bed should be a foot deep. As I started to experiment more with planting in squares rather than rows, I immediately saw a need for something that could save me time and help plant seeds evenly. In Square Foot Gardening, the common quantities used in planting are 16, 9, 4, and 1 per square foot. Square foot gardening seems to work everywhere, even on your backyard or patio. So much less work!! You then plant the appropriate number of plants in each square. Square Foot Gardening yields 100% of the harvest of a traditional garden in 80% less space, and with a mere 2% of the work. Keep your gardening costs down by collecting seeds from your plants at the end of the season. Square foot gardening needs planning in layout and design, but a square foot garden using raised bed gardening methods will have more vegetables, in less space, with half the effort. If you’re looking for some yummy recipes, you’ll find those inside, as well. Take a break!! Because of the planting mix developed with this method, it’s also said to use less water. An “official” Square Foot Gardening bed isn’t in contact with your native soil at all. The nice thing about starting a raised bed from scratch is that you don’t have to till the ground underneath. You just need is an area that measures 4 feet x 4 feet area or even larger than this. Square Foot Gardening: How Many Seeds Per Square? The only fertilizer Bartholomew recommends is compost. Click the Pre-Planned Gardens to get a quick start. The Square Foot Gardening System. Square Foot Gardening "A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows." ! Use square-foot gardening techniques to create a raised bed garden. The whole idea is … Tomato and pepper plants should be producing a nice harvest about now! How many seeds will be determined by how big your plants will grow, and how much space they need to mature. With our free online planner, you can get the blueprints to a super-productive vegetable garden, based on square-foot gardening techniques instead of traditional rows. Schools across the nation and international humanitarian groups around the world are using the Square Foot Gardening method making inroads against poverty and hunger.