Learn how to plan a vegetable patch
If you're starting gardening, and you have very clayey, compacted, and nutrient-poor soil, you decide to opt for raised beds. The quality of the soil where your plants were growing has improved significantly. You personally love the look of raised beds and planting small flowers around them. When you started using raised beds, you also started using another method called square foot gardening. Since the soil quality is very good, it allows for more intensive planting. The square foot gardening method takes this into account.
What does a vegetable bed mean?
Square Foot Gardening (SFG): It is a gardening method typically associated with raised beds for growing vegetables and herbs.
It's a way to grow a neat, highly productive small garden that focuses on square footage. Instead of using rows and leaving walking paths between them, square foot gardening is more of a square foot grid. Square foot gardens pair well with raised beds. This intensive grid method of gardening is ideal for small spaces such as backyards where you don't have much room. Square foot gardens can easily be found in suburban neighborhoods and urban farms.
How the bed works:
Square foot gardening goes hand in hand with raised beds. Raised bed gardening is a gardening method that elevates your soil to a higher level. The height can vary slightly, but anything between 6 and 12 inches will have the necessary depth for a raised garden. Some may be straight on the ground, while others may have a bottom that anchors into the dirt, and then be placed on legs so no bending is required. Sometimes called planters, raised beds can have a frame made of wood, bricks, concrete blocks, or any other material. You can build them from scratch or use a raised garden kit. Square foot gardening works well with raised beds.
Gardening grid:
The vegetable plot can be considered a grid. For example, a 4 ft by 4 ft raised bed would be 16 square feet. With square foot gardening, you can plant 16 different types of vegetables if you wish, one for each square. Or you could have 16 squares of the same vegetable. Each square foot can hold a number of vegetables, depending on the type of vegetable. You can plant 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 per square foot depending on the type of vegetable. Here are some examples: carrots can be planted in quantities of 16 per square foot. Peppers can be planted in quantities of 1 per square foot. Beets can be planted in quantities of 9 per square foot. Heads of lettuce can be planted in quantities of 4 per square foot.
Of course, the beauty of square foot gardening is that you can mix and match. A 4x4 foot raised bed (16 square feet) can have 4 square feet of each vegetable listed above. In this case, it might contain all of the following:
- 64 carrots (4 square feet)
- 4 pepper plants (4 square feet)
- 36 beets (4 square feet)
- 16 heads of lettuce (4 square feet)
This is quite good for a 4x4 foot raised bed! Raised bed gardening allows you to plant your crops much closer together than regular in-ground planting because it uses better quality soil and a small-scale gardening method that does not require walking paths between rows.
Small-scale gardening:
If you have acres of land, you probably wouldn't want to fill it all with square foot gardens. But, if you have a small space where you'd like to have a vegetable garden, a vegetable bed can help you maximize your space. Vegetable beds are for small backyards and urban farms. It's great if you want to have a vegetable garden to feed your family or give your children the opportunity to learn where food comes from. Square foot gardens are not meant to be walked on so the soil remains loose for roots to grow. This is why square foot gardens are small enough to reach the middle of the garden bed while standing or sitting outside the bed.
Benefits of a vegetable bed:
There are many advantages to having a square foot garden. In my opinion, the best is that you grow your own food. Anything local or organic will be fresh and rich in nutrients. Of course, you can also achieve this with other gardening methods. But square foot gardening may be the best way to achieve this if you have a small space. Square foot gardening helps maximize your yield for small gardens, can be minimalist, and is easy to maintain and protect.
High yields:
Square foot gardening is best when paired with raised beds for high yields. Since soil quality is generally better when you start with raised beds, including proper drainage, aeration, and nutrients, you can get more abundant crops. The soil quality you can achieve in raised beds, combined with the quantity planted with square foot gardening, will ultimately result in a high yield at harvest time. You can grow a large amount of food in a small space, such as a 4x4 foot bed or a 4x8 foot bed.
Minimalist:
Minimalism has recently spread into all walks of life. Less is more; do not be a slave to your possessions. Personally, I have gravitated towards it more to clear my mind and time, and for aesthetic purposes. When it comes to gardening, raised beds and square foot gardens can be more minimalist. You can certainly get a little creative with them, don't get me wrong. But if you have a small space, square foot gardening can maximize your yield in a small backyard while minimizing everything unnecessary for growth. You can simplify your bed and not put as much energy into setup and maintenance as you would, for example, in an English garden.
Easy to maintain and protect:
Square foot gardening has other advantages besides high yields and minimal requirements. Since square foot gardening means all your plants are close together and in a small area, they are easy to care for and protect. If there's a frost, it's easy to quickly cover your gardens with a frost cover. If it's too hot, you can easily cover it with a shade cloth. Barriers and protection from insects and rodents can also be easier than if everything were scattered throughout your garden. Weeding may also be easier because you don't have a large area to maintain.
Square foot garden guide:
Once you decide if square foot gardening is right for you, the next thing you want to do is start planning your vegetable bed. You can do this by using a reference guide to see how many vegetables you can plant per square foot, and then draw out your garden layout. To get the most out of your garden, you'll need to consider a few things like soil quality to help your garden grow.
Square foot garden layout:
When I plan my vegetable bed, I draw my layout on paper or in a notebook. Lately, I've been using a dedicated garden planner to know when and where I will plant everything in my flower beds and when, and to track what's happening in my garden. For square foot gardening, each plant will have a recommended quantity that you should plant per square foot. Typically, the quantities per square foot are 1, 2, 4, 9, or 16. There are some exceptions where you might want two square feet per plant (squash and watermelon).
Square foot garden guide:
In order to plan correctly, you'll want to make sure you plant the correct quantities per square foot. You can usually use the size of the plant/vegetable as a guide. For example, cabbage is very large, so you should plant one per square foot. Carrots, on the other hand, are quite thin and can be planted 16 per square foot. The guide below lists common vegetables, herbs, and fruits that you can use in square foot gardens.
There are some exceptions of produce that do not work well with square foot gardening. These include artichokes, asparagus, and mint. Artichokes and asparagus need space to grow, and mint is very invasive and should really be planted on its own. Fruit bushes, vines, and trees are also difficult to grow in the square foot gardening method, although I grow raspberries and blueberries in one of my raised beds. If you don't see what you want to plant in the list above or in a quick online search, I recommend comparing the size of the crop to those mentioned above and testing it out.
Square foot gardening tips:
To get the most out of your vegetable bed, you'll need to consider your soil quality. Square foot gardening works well with raised beds because the soil quality is excellent. To ensure your soil quality is up to par, you'll want to use the right soil mix and ensure you maintain that quality.
- 1/3 vermiculite
- 1/3 peat moss
- 1/3 compost
It's actually very close to the mix I used, which was 1/3 compost and 2/3 potting soil (which included peat and vermiculite). I've also heard of people leaning towards approximately 1/2 compost and 1/2 potting soil for their raised beds and square foot gardens. In addition to starting with good quality soil, you'll also need to maintain it by adding extra compost each year, practicing crop rotation, and even companion planting.