Square Foot Garden
8×6″ Journal Page
Watercolor and graphite
©2013 Lucinda Howe

I’ve been a fan of Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening method for 30 years.  It makes sense to plant just what you need and eliminate thinning, plowing, and weeding.  Now he has a new edition of his book called the All New Square Foot Gardening. Since I’m going back to basics in the garden, I decided to review his method and start a new vegetable garden.

I cleaned out two 4×4’ sections of my neglected herb garden in the back (south side) of the house and used some old bricks to outline the square.  My husband mixed up two batches of Mel’s mix and filled each square to 6” deep.  We added a grid  because Mel says if it doesn’t have the grid, it’s not a square foot garden.  The grid separates it into 16 1×1’ squares.  By dealing with only one square at a time, it’s easy to learn correct spacing of plants and to add compost and water as needed.

4×4′ square edged with bricks
trellis and netting on north side
landscape cloth over existing soil

Rich mixing vermiculite, peat moss, and 5 kinds of compost for the planting mix

6 inches of planting mix with grid ready for planting

Once we had the bed prepared, we planted red and green lettuce, spinach, napa cabbage and some burgundy pansies.  Because of the time change, I had time to make a quick watercolor drawing of the new baby plants when I got home from work this afternoon.

Rich is planting lettuce and cool season vegetable plants four to each 1×1′ square

Plants are watered in and ready to grow. Carrots, swiss chard, and kale seeds are in the back row.