Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: Lombard on December 09, 2010, 01:26:04 pm
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Just received a book as a birthday gift, titled Square Foot Gardening. Started reading it, and found myself intrigued by the techniques outlined. It touts a method that uses no fertilizer, 100% yield in 1/5 the space. No doubt we will try one of the raised bed 4'X4' grids and give it a go this spring. My question to you gardeners out there is, have any of you heard of this gardening method, and are any of you using the prescribed methods in the book?
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i have heard of it and i think it works well. there was a writeup in mother earth news about a guy that had a 100 Sq ft garden and it worked very well he made enough to save almost 800$-1000$ a year out of the 100Sq ft garden i plan to make my first one this spring :)
sterling
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Mel Barthalamew(sp) has been preaching his Square Foot Gardening for years and it works well. Lots of good ideas in his book for sure.
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i need to get the book. 100sq ft is about all i have in my backyard to use without making it small! lol
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Here are mine. Planted the weekend before Thanksgiving
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this is a little off the subject, but you should see how many tomatoes my dad got from two plants in an old rotten hay bail!!! we've grown peppers maters and zucinni I think ten hat bails yielded as much as a bigger regular garden but my dad has a GREEN thumb!!! jeffw
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Looks good Eddie. Are you getting any of this killing frost that we have been getting all week here in Alabama?
I've been engrossed in the book most of the day. It is a paradigm shift from the single row traditional garden that we have used since I was a kid.
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Used to be a TV show on square foot gardening. ;)
Wayne
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I've seen the book and came close to getting it, but never have....perhaps I'll ask Santa about.
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Frost has been hit or miss so far,,miss here. ;D We have another cold front coming in Monday, just in the low 30's for one day. I'm hoping we don't get freezes like last year.
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I built a small garden several years ago on that principle. It's amazing how much you can grow in a few raised beds when you don't use all your space for rows. My raised beds are about four-five feet wide (so that you can reach the center to weed and pick from each side) and maybe fifteen feet long, and raised about a foot. I grow as much or more stuff in that little garden than I used to in a much bigger conventional row garden. I double-dug the beds as deep as I could, mixed a bunch of compost and organic matter in with them, and I never use any fertilizer or pesticides on them-and stuff grows like crazy with almost no insect or disease problems. Best way to grow veggies IMO.
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Thanks for the input guys. I've read and understand the simple principles involved. More and more convinced, that this gardening method will produce the results that the author, Mel Bartholomew, claims it will. Got my compost pile working for me already.
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Yeah...Raised beds are the way to go. I like 18" height and 4' wide, long as you can go. Knocks out alot of the problems,(Weeds, bugs ) I watched square foot gardening on tv for years. Good stuff. ' Frank
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I have done raised beds for several years now with great success. I ferilize with organic material and mulch to keep down weeds.I have grown most everything and use the square foot principle as a guide line. The techniqe has been around for hundreds of years and is called intensive gardening. Google it. It goes well with companion planting also.
Jeff
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I'm hoping mine will make it through a low twenty degree night, tonite.
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I think you folks might be in for it, with the cold Eddie. First time in the five years we have lived here that the ground has actually frozen solid. Price of citrus will be through the roof.
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Yea, and this year they were forecaste to out produce Brazil in citrus this year. And we are two months away from strawberry harvesting where I live. And the price of edible corn and tomatoes will go up also. I didn't know till today that Florida is the largest producer of edible corn in the US.
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Eddie, i had some of that so called edible corn from Fla. an I swear it was field corn an hardly edible pig feed ;D Sweet corn up here sure tastes differnt, Maybe all that free nitrogen we get with our 120 to 140" of freesnow per year. :( Bob
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Bob, by the time it gets to you guy's it probably is pig feed. You ought to go to the Zellwood Corn Festival down here. The fresh corn here you don't really have to cook, or just enough to melt the butter.
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Updating the post, as I've been on the road a great deal of the time over the last two months. Split some ERC that wasn't suitable for bows (I'm beginning to believe I can't find any), and connected them, making a four foot box. Mixed blended compost, sphagnum moss, and course vermiculite in equal volume, then added it to the box. Strung off a one foot grid with twine, and planted what we have started. If we can we will do one box a week until we have a total of three. Looking forward to that fresh from the garden produce this year. We have tomato plants in the Topsy turvy planter, and in the pot below it also.
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We have eight raised beds that are 4 feet wide and 10 feet long.I built some coldframe covers that I can move from bed to bed. I've got peas, spinach,mustard,onions, swiss chard, bok choy, escarole, endive, etc planted by the signs this week. We have basils and tomatoes started indoors. Raised beds are the way to go, a lot less work.
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Got three beds 4' x 24' made, with two filled and ready to plant. Also made 4 other beds 4x9 that I have planted. Lettuce,beets are up. Set some broccoli plants, and tomatoes out this weekend. Might have to make me some covers for later this week. :-\
Try to get some updated pics this week.
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Cool Tim, looking forward to the photos. In addition to the two boxes we will be adding, we plant the area inside the blocks that circle the Pecan. The diameter is twelve feet. That is where we do the carrots, beets, and onions.
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I really like the looks of the cedar. I might have to split up some of the logs I have and make mine pretty. Here's a few pic's of my three little ones. Picked the third crop of beans today, tomatos coming along fine. All ready picked the mustard greens and they are seeding out along with the cilantro. Picked a few cabbage, time to pick some collards . Two bell peppers ready, onions almost and the habenero and jalopenos are blooming. And one Japanese egg plant.
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That looks awesome Eddie, and your making me hungry just talking about it. ;D
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Thanks, I'm going to plant some more Kentucky Blue Pole beans and okra real soon. If you can see the 4" PVC sticking up, that's something FLcubanredneck showed me. There are four of them 2' deep with 3/4 inch holes drilled in them under ground. They are full of fresh cow manure. I then dumped a cup of fishing worms in each ones. They now travel back and forth through the garden feeding and pooping, thus fertilizing everything underground. I put all the table scraps in the pipes that is not meat products to keep them fed. It has really helped and I have bait when I want to fish.
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That is a twist on composting that I've never heard of. I'm intrigued.
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Man you guys are spoiled. My garden dosen't look like that until august here in michigan.
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Another idea you might try for limited space gardening is container gardening. My wife and I haven't found too much that doesn't do well. Just be sure to get the right size containers for your crops.
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Polar Bear, that is like the old "Victory" Gardens during WW2. Window flower boxes, and whatever other containers that they could plant something in. With the prices of produce going up like it is I think more people are going to rediscover them, real soon. ;)
Wayne
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My granddad put out a major garden every year. And aways had a few raised beds he's baby along. These were is favorite. he always planted totally oganic.
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I have onions, lettuce, and spinach up and growing now. It'll be about three more weeks before I can plant peppers, maters, squash and such here, still frosting. I have some heirloom mater plants started, and always grow a buttload of hot peppers-jalapenos, serranos, habaneros, cayenne, poblano, along with red and yellow bells. I have some seed for the little wild chiltepin/pequin peppers that I got from Skyarrow, gonna try some of those this year, too.
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always grow a buttload of hot peppers-jalapenos, serranos, habaneros, cayenne, poblano, along with red and yellow bells.
Ill bet that is uncomfortable..... :-X
My tomatoes, peppers, onions and squash are doing pretty good. I have tomatoes that are 2 inch diameter already. I need to do a little work in the garden tomorrow, maybe I can get a few pictures.
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Cool beans Justin, looking forward to seeing your photos. This raised bed gardening is new to us this year, and we are learning all the time. Photos of what other folks are doing help us along, and give us ideas for improvements. I split some more cedar, and built another box this morning. My wife and I mixed up our soil, equal parts by volume, peat moss, course vermiculite, and blended compost, then got some more plants in.
Hillbilly, sounds like some spicy mix there. Do you can your own salsa and such?
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Latest photo update. Those potatoes have really sprung up. I've been gone for two weeks, and really need to hill them.
The potatoes, and green beans that are planted out front are really taking off also.
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Wow! that is coming on nicely. I've never tried to grow potato's, it might be too hot here. I'm haveing to pull up a lot of stuff that is seeding out and plant things that will grow in the 90 to 100's we will be going into soon.
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Looks good! ;)
Don't forget raised beds need more water than conventional gardening.
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I just harvested my collards today. I've got a 7 gallon pot 3/4 full cooking right now. I'll bag and freeze them after they are done. I just noticed that my Mustard Greens are coming back up again from when they seeded out a couple of months ago along with some Cilantro. I love plants that just keep on giving. :)
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My raised beds are all coming along just great.Mustard,turnips,spinich,lettuce,onions,garlic,strawberries,raspberries,rhubarb,peas. I have a six foot x six foot greenhouse and stuff is just going nuts in there,daytime temps. in there are in the 80's and everything is zooming.All the peppers and tomatoes,cucumbers, summer squash,etc. will be ready for setting out in a couple of weeks. My eight years in Alaska and not having my own place until this year I am finally planting again and realized how much I have missed it. I am tilling up about a third of an acre of pasture to plant potatoes,corn,greenbeans,onions,squash,cabbages. Kinda going crazy and will have much more than my wife and I can consume. Will have to put a sign out on the road and hope folks wanna buy the extra. Might also try some farmers markets. Regardless,will not need to buy produce until who knows when. Chickens will eat good, pheasants and quail will be eating too. Back in the 70's,my dad and I embraced alot of the Mother Earth News/Emerging organic methods, 80's and 90's I was a square foot gardener it taught me alot.All my stuff is organic. Controlling weeds is really easy for a square footer and raised beds.I think my third acre truck garden will be a challenge,but I will try and just expand the square foot techniques of compost and mulching. It sure is cutting into my fishing. ' Frank