There is no way to sugarcoat the challenges many of us in the Mid-Atlantic region have faced this summer. The inconsistency of rainfall and the extreme high temperatures have greatly impacted our efforts to garden successfully. Even with valiant efforts to apply supplemental irrigation, I have witnessed a wide range of plant material showing signs of drought stress that I have rarely witnessed in my 15-plus years of gardening in this region. To say it is cause for concern would be an understatement. As a result, in the last few months I have been repeatedly asked how we can prepare our beloved gardens to reduce heat and moisture stress for future growing seasons. One answer to this conundrum is to add organic matter to the soil in the form of compost.
Your Ultimate Guide to Square Foot Gardening | Gardener's Path
06.08.2024 - 13:30 / gardenerspath.com / Kristina HicksHamblin
Your Ultimate Guide to Square Foot Gardening
Growing your own food is something of an adventure – and who doesn’t need a detailed map when starting out on an adventure?
Enter square foot gardening – a way to grow food that comes with a built in map!
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You are probably somewhat familiar with this style of growing food already. Square foot gardening is one of the most popular methods used among backyard gardeners, after all.
But did you know that someone actually invented this approach?
As the name implies, this method involves growing crops in carefully measured gardening beds, but there’s so much more to it than that!
So what is square foot gardening, and where did it come from? What’s so great about it? Why do people still use this method today, and why is it so popular?
In this article, we’ll explore the roots of this food growing method, and you’ll learn about each of the steps you need to follow to grow a square foot garden of your own.
Here’s what we’ll cover up ahead:
What Is Square Foot Gardening?Square foot gardening is an approach to growing food in raised beds in one-foot increments. These one foot by one foot squares are defined with the help of a grid.
This method incorporates polyculture planting, vertical gardening, crop rotation, and intensive spacing, using only 20 percent of the space required in traditional row planting, according to the creator of this system, Mel Bartholomew.
Not only does it reduce the need for space, but it also reduces work – adepts of this no-till method use a weed-free growing medium to reduce time and energy spent on garden chores.
In this food growing method, after
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