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You are here: Home / Gardening / How to Start Square Foot Gardening

How to Start Square Foot Gardening

January 13, 2017 by Alea Milham 13 Comments

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How to Start Square Foot Gardening- Learn how to grow a lot of vegetables in a small amount of space with the Square Foot Gardening method.

Have you ever wanted to grow a large vegetable garden but don’t necessarily have acres of land to work with? Most gardeners don’t know that you can grow a ton of veggies in a small amount of space using the Square Foot Gardening method. This method is one of the easiest ways to grow an herb and vegetable garden in a raised bed. Below you will find helpful instructions on How to Start Square Foot Gardening.

How to Start Square Foot Gardening

First, you have to build out a large square frame. Using 6-inch wide untreated lumber works the best, but any material can be used. Make sure to put down a weed barrier so weeds and grass don’t grow up into the raised bed. The best size for a square foot garden is 4×4 feet. You can be creative though in your design, but 4 feet across is best for adults and 3 feet for kid’s gardens as their arms just can’t reach that far. Here are 10 raised bed garden ideas.

The soil that you put into your square foot garden needs to be full of nutrients and is best when it is a blend of different materials.

Here is a great garden soil recipe for your raised bed: Equal parts of potting soil or compost, vermiculite, and peat moss. For the potting soil, I often will mix a few different types together with compost to give a good variety of nutrients to the mix. Make sure to water down this mixture until you can squeeze a handful of it and no water drips out – that’s how you know that it has been completely absorbed.

 How to Start Square Foot Gardening

Once you have the soil in the planter box, add a 12” grid on top using tape or string, so you know where to plant.

This guide will help you know how many plants go into each square:

Small: 16 plants per square for 3” spacing
Medium: 9 plants per square for 4” spacing
Large: 4 per square for 6” spacing
Extra Large: 1 per square for 12” spacing

Here are tips for marking your square foot garden.

Use the seed packet as a good guideline to know how many seeds to put into a square. Many people love to grow tomatoes and since they are heavy nutrient eaters, one per square works best. The same goes for pepper and squash plants. Smaller plants like radishes and carrots can have 16 per square, sometimes more depending on the varieties chosen.

There is very little weeding that needs to be done using the square foot gardening method. If you want a natural way to keep pests out of your garden, plant a few marigolds in the squares with the other plants as they are a natural pest deterrent – this is also called companion planting. Another great companion planting is to plant corn and green beans together and let the beans grow up the corn stalks instead of having to stake them. I will also plant garlic throughout my raised beds as they keep away a lot of bugs too!

Experiment with your square foot garden and try different plants together. This concept of gardening is a lot of fun to do and easy to get the whole family involved in!

More Square Foot Gardening Resources:

You can read more about square foot gardening in All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.

More Gardening Tips

How to Prep Soil for Vegetable Gardens

Top 10 Organic Fertilizers

How to Make a Frugal Cloche

Companion Plant Gardening

Vegetable Container Gardening

Tips for Attracting Bees to your Garden

How to Make Fast and Easy Compost Pile Using Hay Bales

Thanks to Kristi Trimmer of DragonflyRunning.com for sharing her square foot gardening tips.

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About Alea Milham

Alea Milham is the owner of Premeditated Leftovers and the author of Prep-Ahead Meals from Scatch. She shares her tips for saving money and time while reducing waste in her home. Her favorite hobby, gardening, is a frugal source of organic produce for her recipes. She believes it is possible to live fully and eat well while spending less.

Comments

  1. Rachel Teodoro says

    February 28, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    I wanted you to know that I featured this project on the Create Link INspire party that you linked up to. It’s such a great DIY. Thanks for including it.

    Reply
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Welcome. I'm Alea!

On Premeditated Leftovers I share simple recipes made with whole foods, practical shopping tips, time saving techniques, and meal planning strategies. I also share tips for minimizing food waste, so more of the food that is purchased ends up on the table.

While volunteering as a budget counselor, I realized that food is the element of most people’s budgets where they have the greatest control. I set out to develop low-cost recipes from scratch to prove it’s possible to create delicious meals on a limited budget. Eating well while spending less is about more than just creating recipes using inexpensive ingredients; it’s about creatively combining ingredients so you don’t feel deprived and are inspired to stick to your budget.

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