If you haven’t heard of square foot gardening, you’re about to learn one of the most useful and versatile gardening techniques ever created. Conceived by Mel Bartholomew, author of Square Foot Gardening, the techniques have been enthusiastically adopted by gardeners all over the world. Square foot gardening is eminently suited for container gardening, patio and roof gardening, backyard gardening, organic gardening, herb gardens, vegetable gardens, flower gardens and more.

The basic concept is to start small – the unit of measure is the square foot. Although Bartholomew’s original square foot garden was four feet square, many schools, community gardens and home gardeners start even smaller – a couple of one square foot containers is plenty to get you started. According to Bartholomew though, a four square foot garden provides just enough harvest for one person.

How to Create A Square Foot Garden

Creating your own square foot garden is as easy as building (or buying) a box in which to garden. My own first square foot garden was a two square foot garden on the cement apron outside my back door in a city apartment. I used four square wicker plastic lined wicker wastebaskets bought for a dollar apiece at the All-for-a-Buck store. Any container that can hold 6-8” of dirt, and has drainage holes in the bottom will work. The biggest requirement for location is sun – choose a nice, sunny spot to place your garden.

Did I say dirt? Amend that. Bartholomew recommends what he calls ‘Mel’s mix’ instead of soil. Mix 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 compost to fill the squares of your box or container. A 10 pound bag of each was plenty to fill my little 2 square foot garden.

Choosing and Laying Out the Plants for Your Square Foot Garden

The most important factor in laying out your garden is the one-square-foot grid. You’ll be planting one type of plant in each square – how many of them depends on the recommended spacing between plants – which you’ll find on the back of the seed packets. Depending on the needs of the specific seedlings, you can plant 1, 4,  9 or 16 plants in each square. To break it down - if the recommendation on the seed packet is 1 foot apart, you can plant 1 in a square. If they need six inches between plants, you can plant 4. Two inches gives you room for 9 plants, and one inch spacing means you can fit 16 plants into one square foot.

My own first square foot garden was a spaghetti garden with this layout:

   1 Basil Plant  4 Tomato plants

   1 Oregano Plant 16 Onion plants

After You Harvest Your Square Foot Garden

Harvest the crop in each square foot when it’s ready, and continue harvesting until it’s no longer producing fruit/vegetables. At that point, uproot the plants in that square (use them for compost!), and plant another, different crop. By refilling and rotating the crops, you avoid depleting the natural nutrients of the soil, and keep every bit of space productive throughout an entire growing season.

In much of the United States, the only way to take advantage of a full growing season is to start your plants from seeds indoors. In areas where the last frost can be as late as the end of May, and the first as early as the beginning of October, the abbreviated growing season can mean a short garden season and a severe limitation on plants and flowers that would otherwise flourish. One solution is to choose only native plants for your garden. A more workable solution is to cover your kitchen table with newspaper one day in March (and since we are in the alst day of March, NOW is the time!), pull out the potting soil, seeds and pots, and give your garden an early jump on the season.

What You Need to Start Plants Indoors

Location - Your best option is a room with south-facing windows that get direct sun at least 6-8 hours a day – but not having one is no excuse. Grow lights are fairly inexpensive and very easy to set up. Just be sure there’s enough space for you to move around and water the plants.

Equipment and Supplies – You can buy commercial ‘flats’ at any department or home supply store for under $5. They’re flat ‘trays’ with individual compartments each meant to hold one seedling. An alternative that works quite well are cardboard egg cartons. They’re biodegradable, provide drainage and can easily be cut apart when it’s time to transplant your seedlings outside.

Purchased potting soil is a good growing medium, but if you want to really give your plants a great start, you can mix up a batch of potting soil with compost and peat moss, or leave the soil out entirely and grow in peat moss, vermiculite and compost. Or you can do as my grandmother did if you’ve thought ahead. At the end of each growing season, she dug up several buckets full of rich soil from the garden and baked it in a 300 degree oven for a couple of hours to sterilize it. In spring, she brought it out to use as potting soil for her new seedlings.

Seeds of course!  – Basil, tomatoes, carrots, asters, marigolds, nasturtiums, petunias and pansies are all good candidates for starting indoors, but you can choose any garden plant that can be started from seed.

When to Plant - Most garden plants can be started indoors about six weeks before the anticipated last frost. In most northern states, that’s mid-March. You can transplant the seedlings outside when they’ve reached 4-6” in height, after the last frost.

Seed Starting Method Using Egg Shells - Loosely fill each egg cup with enough garden soil to just below the top. Do not pack down! Use your index finger to poke a hole about an inch into the soil. Drop seeds into the hole. For large seeds like beans, use ONE seed per cup. For tinier seeds, sprinkle a pinch into the hole. Lightly cover the seed by raking soil over it with your fingertips. Move trays to a sunny window (or beneath grow lights). Water well – but don’t over-soak. Loosely cover each egg tray with a sheet of clear plastic wrap. Now LEAVE THEM ALONE. Check daily for signs of moisture, and when you don’t see any, lift the plastic wrap and mist well with a mister, then recover. You can remove the wrap when seedlings have two leaves, or are touching the plastic. When the seedlings are 1-2 inches tall, it’s time to thin them. In any container that holds more than two seedlings, pluck out all but the hardiest so that they’ll have the best chance at setting root and growing. Water and mist frequently until the danger of frost is past, then transplant to your garden outside.

For more seed starting methods and ideas see Tifaffany’s blog at http://www.naturemoms.com/blog/2008/02/06/recycling-stuff-for-your-garden/