Square foot gardening. What it is and our success with it.

We’re going to be using a method called square foot gardening on our allotment. It was created by gardener Mel Bartholomew in the USA in the 1980's. I've got a copy of Mel's original book and it's a really refreshing read. It's a whole different approach to the typical "empty a pack of seeds in a row and see what happens" approach.

The theory is simple. You divide your growing area into square foot squares and grow a different fruit/vegetable in each one. The amount of plants you can grow in each square depends entirely on the plant and its needs.

The idea is that you prepare a large section of ground and then divide it. As the plants grow and mature you harvest them and then use the same square to grow a different plant. No square stays empty for long and it ensures that the land is in constant use and you’re not inundated with hundreds of the same plant.

It’s an effective way to keep your garden manageable and your crop rotation straightforward. If you'd like to read more about the origins of the method, here's the Wikipedia link.

Square foot grown celery next to a 5yr old sapling

Square foot grown spring onions

L shaped planter

We've used this method in our small courtyard garden at home and it was the success we had from this that has spurred me on to use it on the allotment. It really is a fantastic way to get a garden going. Last year in our little garden we built a 2 metre by 2 metre "L" shaped planter and sectioned it off into squares of around 25cm (which is less than a foot) and ended up with 14 growing squares. In those squares we grew broad beans, runner beans, carrots, radish, pak choi, spring onions and most surprisingly celery. According to veteran gardeners, celery is apparently one of the most difficult to grow. We ended up with 6 very healthy celery plants (3 per square) and there are still two in the planter ready to be pulled!

Now, don't get me wrong, the quantity of produce we grew wouldn't have fed our family for long BUT we really thrived on seeing our little garden bloom and produce some really high quality produce. As an example - from just 8 runner bean plants we had two carrier bags full of beans and they flowered earlier and continued to produce beans much later into the summer than my grandfather's plants. And he planted 100 or so already grown on plants which he got from a garden centre. He was inundated with beans, so much so that we still have bags of them in our freezer!
The quantities we grew were so much more manageable and we didn't have to give anything away because we couldn't eat it fast enough...

We've already measured and drawn up plans for our allotment and an ever growing list of what plants we're planing on putting in. So far we have drawn up plans for four 4x4 foot squares with paths in the middle, four 4x2 rectangles for fruit bushes and two 8x2 rectangles for beans and peas.