Pros and Cons of Square Foot Gardening

Have you ever heard of square foot gardening and wondered if it really worked? After two years of raising a square foot garden, I am here to tell you the pros and cons of square foot gardening. So if you ever wondered if it’s worth a try, keep reading.

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Brown Thumb to Homegrown Goodies

Growing up I was notorious for my terrible cooking and my brown thumb. I had to keep a plant alive for a class in highschool, so I immediately ran it home to my mom. She kept it alive and I got an A. It wasn’t a lack of experience. My mom and Mama both have beautiful flowers and bountiful gardens. As a kid I would help them plant, water, and pick. As a teenager, I would tend to the garden when my mom wasn’t home.

Something about doing it all by myself was different though. I started some seeds and they died. The night custodian gave me an aloe plant, which died within three months. We bought a lavender plant to put on the porch. Dead. Despite my track record, my husband agreed to build me a raised bed in the backyard. I was determined to make it work this time around, so I did what any 25 year old would do and got to Pinterest.

I measured out my bed and divided it into squares. Then I drew it out on paper labeling each box with a plant. Because I am a type A person, I also colored each box according to how many plants would go in a square foot. It looked pretty on paper, but I still hadn’t successfully grown anything yet.

My husband and I went to several stores and nurseries to get the exact number and types of plants I needed to make my paper garden come to life. After that it was up to me. I wound up with a bounty. We had more tomatoes and herbs than I knew what to do with. Success!

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About Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening is a method of gardening created by Mel Barthalomew. Instead of lining the plants up in rows, they are arranged in squares. The idea of planting things in rows comes from farming, just scaled down. Mel found this to be inefficient for the backyard garden. He found that by planting by the square, gardens require less weeding and watering.

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Pros of Square Foot Gardening

Lots of produce in very little space. My garden was small, but the harvest was huge. There was enough to eat fresh, preserve, and give away. In an 8×7 bed I had four tomato plants, two basils, two cucumbers, four potatoes, eight peas, two parsleys, two oreganos, two lavenders, four thymes, nine dills, nine cilantros, nine onions, and several empty squares. It’s crazy how many plants fit in a small raised bed.

Very few weeds. I very rarely had to weed the garden. When I did weed it, only the empty squares needed attention. It was very easy to maintain with very little attention.

Works in containers. This year we planned to move across the state, so I didn’t want to plant a garden in the raised bed. Instead I used containers that I could take with me. I used the same plant spacing, but in pots instead of beds. The plant spacing was the same and the harvest was too!

Simple enough for beginners. I by no means had a green thumb. In fact, I would argue that I have a brown thumb. I killed everything until I tried a square foot garden. Despite having no clue where to begin, I was able to plan and plant the space with relative ease.

Cons of Square Foot Gardening

Hard to harvest. With so many plants so close together, it can be hard to get in the garden and harvest the produce. This may be less of an issue in a smaller bed, but I had issues. It felt like bushwhacking through the jungle while hunting cucumbers. I found it very helpful to have a one foot path down the middle, so that I could access plants from both sides. I’ve found it helpful to garden barefoot too. When I can feel the plants under my feet, I’m less likely to step on them and squish them.

Vining plants take over. The cucumbers started small, but quickly outgrew their square. They grew up, out, and over everything. My husband constantly asked me to move the cucumbers so that he could mow the yard. Peas did the same thing despite having a trellis. The one foot path eventually became covered in cucumbers.

Requires lots of preparation. I spent a lot of time outside measuring the beds and marking out one foot squares. I drew it out on paper before ever going to the store to buy plants. Then when it was time to plant everything, I had to make sure the plants were in the correct spots within the square. It took a lot of time to get everything spaced out correctly.

Requires some research. I spent some time on Pinterest learning about how to mark out the garden and space the plants. Although I didn’t know it at the time, some plants don’t do well together and must be separated. It was quite the research project. Save yourself some time and check out my post about plant spacing.