Square foot Gardening Burrows Style...
Who would have thought about mixing carpentry and gardening?? Well that is what it feels like when I first heard about planting a garden this way. Too much work to really think about - okay for people with limited spaces...what is wrong with planting the old way??? These and many other thoughts went through my mind when it was all the buzz - but then again I never have had many raised bed gardens before to really notice the beauty of planting this way. Can you imagine getting almost as much from a 4 foot by 8 foot garden that you can from the traditional 20 foot x 20 foot? So little wasted space, companion gardening, using horizontal and vertical growing areas! It really is a masterpiece waiting to grow! So we are and here is how we did it...
The building of the raised beds...
You remember back in April, Jonathan and I made 3 new raised beds out of 9 - 1"x10"x8' pine boards. We cut 3 of the 8 foot boards in half for the end pieces and used the other 6 boards to make the sides. Screwed them all together and filled them with compost, top soil and mulch - then covered them with black plastic and let them bake for a few weeks. We then planted strawberries in the first bed figuring we would have to research what to plant in the rest.
Well what I discovered from one of my homesteading books, The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan, was that you could grow enough food on 1/4 acre of land in one summer to feed a family of 4. Amazing. And part of this concept is using 4'x8' raised bed gardens to grow most of it. So I researched some more and discovered she planted not in rows but in solid blocks - so a row garden that normally would have a path, then the row, then another path would be approximately 3 foot wide by however long you needed to plant - say 20 feet. Well that is 60 square feet of garden space! I can grow the same 20 plants in a 3'x6' bed which is only 18 square feet - see the difference? In that 20 foot row I could essentially have almost 3 beds and grow almost 60 plants! 3 times the amount of a row garden.
Well what I discovered from one of my homesteading books, The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan, was that you could grow enough food on 1/4 acre of land in one summer to feed a family of 4. Amazing. And part of this concept is using 4'x8' raised bed gardens to grow most of it. So I researched some more and discovered she planted not in rows but in solid blocks - so a row garden that normally would have a path, then the row, then another path would be approximately 3 foot wide by however long you needed to plant - say 20 feet. Well that is 60 square feet of garden space! I can grow the same 20 plants in a 3'x6' bed which is only 18 square feet - see the difference? In that 20 foot row I could essentially have almost 3 beds and grow almost 60 plants! 3 times the amount of a row garden.
Blocking the bed
So how to start... well the first thing you will need is a tape measure, a drill, some screws, (or you could use a hammer and nails), some string or twine and a marking pen. Next using the tape measure and pen, mark on the board every one foot measure being sure to use the inside of board not outside so boxes stay uniform. Once you have completed the whole boarder with marks every foot, screw the screws into the marks but make sure to leave them sticking up a bit. This will give you a point at every foot marker to connect the string to. Now make your grid by running the twine back and forth along the length then the width of the beds. I wrapped my string a couple of times around each of the screw heads before proceeding to the next one to keep the string taught. Now you have figured out how many blocks you will need to fill in with plants! Since my beds are 4'x8' I have 32 squares to plant in. But what do I plant and where.... back to the books!
Finding some great resources!
Or in this case not books, Google! So I googled square foot gardening ideas and found many sites that talked about square foot gardening but I wanted to see some ideas about what to plant where! Bring on the Gardener's Supply Company! They are the only source I found online that actually shows you for free plans on 16 different beds that they have designed plus has the added bonus for you to use their garden design tool to make your own! You have the flexibility to change the bed size too which is great if you have an odd sized bed! The photo above is their All American Bed that has tomatoes, beans, peppers, lettuce, beets and more! To see their site just click on the picture to open the link! It was so much fun to look at all the different ways to plant that I didn't know where to start myself! I ended up doing a variation of the High Yield garden and the Salad Bar Garden. I say variation, as things we don't eat a lot of like beets, I only did one square of instead of the 2 or 3 squares that the plans showed.
Here are my plans...
Not the clearest of pictures, but I used graph paper to draw up my gardens and put in what I wanted to plant and where. I also noted the date I planted and even the variety of plant used. These are my working copies as you can tell by the many creases, stains and fold marks. Now that the planning stage is done, it was time to plant!
Jonathan built a variation of the back trellis system for the climbing beans and peas as well as to use for support of the tomato plants. We will need to make supports yet for the tomatoes on the far end but we can get to that in a few weeks. All the blank squares are seeds we planted carrots, swiss chard, lettuce, spinach, radishes, beets and collard greens. Oh and parsley :) I like parsley. Then we have our bigger garden against the house where I made up my own plans using up the plants I didn't plant in these beds.
On the far end of this garden (that you can see in below picture) we will be making the Cucumber Farm where we will make a tent like trellis system and plant seeds to climb up the supports. The cucumbers will then grow hanging down - or that is the theory of it.
So there we are.. the beginnings of our square foot gardens.... growing in a compact area with the biggest yields. I will take updated photos throughout the summer and show you how they are doing and my opinion on if I like planting this way. Happy Gardening!