I’ve got plans for a large orchard someday when finances allow. This gives me about 120 square feet in the main garden, and then I’ve got 3 other small areas in the yard with growing space. The best space was much longer than wide so I built 20-foot-long beds that were only 2 feet wide. The new house has a lot of large maples shading the yard. In 2020 we moved and I had to start over from scratch. By 2016 I had 225 square feet of raised bed space plus an additional 400 square feet or so of conventional garden space for fruit trees & berry bushes. That first year with raised beds I had about 32 square feet of raised garden bed space with a little bit of “in the ground” space. In 2009 I finally gave up on growing plants in the ground and built my first raised bed. The nice part about growing your garden slowly is that it allows your garden to grow with your gardening knowledge. What areas have the most sun? Ideally you will have an area that receives at least 6-8 hours of strong sunlight. Go out into your yard at several times during the day and note where the sun is and how it moves across your yard. With square foot gardening you need as little as 16 square feet per person for fresh eating and about 32 square feet per person to have enough for preserving! Finding the best location Most people seem to agree that for a conventional row garden (a row of corn, a row of lettuce, a row of tomatoes…) 100 square feet per person is needed for a fresh eating garden, and about 200 square feet per person if you want to can food for year round use. How many people are you feeding? Do you want enough just for seasonal fresh eating? Will you want extra for canning, preserving, etc? Do you want enough to share with friends, family, or to sell at farmer’s market? Will you be conventional row gardening or square foot gardening? But most of all, how much space do you have? Most people do square foot gardening in raised beds, but you certainly can use this method with conventional “in the ground” gardening. You can even add a cold frame on top for winter gardening. It’s easy to add cover in winter so the soil is warmer and ready to go sooner in spring. You don’t have to contend with rocks or stray tree roots. Raised beds cut down on the amount of weeds growing, but also makes it easier to pull the weeds that do grow. Most people actually put down a grid using either twine, wood dowels, or PVC piping – or you can just imagine the grid is there and plant accordingly. If you have a 4×8 garden bed, that is 32 square feet, and you’ll have 32 “boxes” to plant in. They are the experts on all things Square Foot Gardening! Mel invented the system in the 1970s and the foundation has been carrying on his good work since his passing in 2016. They have released a few different editions over the years, each with new info or ways to make your square foot garden better. I will cover the basics here but I HIGHLY recommend getting the book “All New Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew & the Square Foot Gardening Foundation. Let me start by saying right off the bat that this method is amazing, but way more involved than one blog post could cover. Square Foot Gardening features high yields in a small, easy-to-care-for plot. If you are a beginning gardener, click here to check out my 7 beginner gardening mistakes to avoid. I think this is a great way to garden for someone who is just getting started. Do you want to start a garden but are overwhelmed about how to start? Let me introduce you to a system that is perfect for small spaces called square foot gardening.
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