My Induction to Square Foot Gardening

As I began my investigation of this garden box on the Your Garden Solution web site, I got even more excited. Joe and Seppi from Your Garden Solution chronicled their discovery of this method of gardening and how it changed they way that they and their families gardened. 

It seemed fun and meaningful. Joe talked about how he had discovered this method when he was given a copy of Square foot Gardening written by Mel Bartholomew. My next step was to check out this book.

After a quick search on Amazon, I was reading the first few pages of the All New Square Foot Gardening online. The book had instructions on what to plant, when to plant it and how to lay out the garden. Easy to follow diagrams of the grids showed to accomplish this. The book had me totally convinced and I added it to my shopping cart. 

The book had the answers to all my beginner questions... What plants can I grow, when should I plant which kind of plant?

Did I need seeds or did I have to transplant seedlings? They even had the plans for building the boxes.

I mulled over this information in my head for a while and began to formulate a tentative plan. With my four growing teenagers and my ever growing grocery bill, I figured that this was the time to act. 

I came up with a list of produce that the kids ate and that I wanted. I wrote down the names of the fresh herbs that I used. Then I went off to Schlegel's. 

Schlegel's is the name of the little store down the road from my house. It is family owned and operated and has literally EVERYTHING. Being in a rural county, they have found their niche for the past 3 generations providing for our community. Having some friends over to paint? No problem... Just head down to Schlegel's and get some fried chicken from the deli and pick up a few gallons of paint in the hardware section. They were like a miniature Wal-Mart Super Center before the Walton's ever thought of it. 

So I go to Schlegel's to pick my seeds, because... yeah, they have that! And heirloom variety seeds to boot. That is one of the benefits of living in a small town that time often overlooks. They don't think that "old" is old fashioned. They think that "old" means "quality" and we can get things here that much of the world has abandoned in their quest for the new and modern trappings of life. 

I was delighted with the seed selections. My kids are big salad eaters and I was able to choose a variety of lettuce seeds. I also got a nice selection of herbs too. I filled in with tomatoes, squash, beans and a pretty diverse variety of peppers, even the hot ones. 

Now I sit, very impatiently waiting for the mail carrier to unite me with All New Square Foot Gardening so I can "plot" my next move. I didn't mean to make a garden pun, but when I did, I decided to keep it! 

That is sooooo cool!

I love fresh produce. I appreciate the difference between small grower organic produce and commercially grown crops. I live in a rural area where the gardens are plentiful and my Amish and Mennonite neighbors garden to feed their large families. What I don't love is spending July and August pulling weeds in the 90 degree heat. And I really don't love crawling around in the dirt on my almost 50 year old knees. I love the idea of gardening and the healthy produce benefits that come with it. I just don't like actually performing the work of actual gardening myself. At least not in the traditional sense.

A few days ago I was browsing my Facebook news feed when I saw something that I had never seen before. That probably happens a lot in a Facebook news feed... but this thing was REALLY cool.

What is that? It was on the Facebook page of a high school friend. Their family had just gotten one and they were happily growing spring lettuce.

It was a garden table.

I started to investigate. My friend had gotten this simple yet amazing piece of garden utopia from a place called Your Garden Solution. I checked out their web site and soon began learning the advantages to square foot gardening as it was called as opposed to traditional gardening.

It seem that this method solved all my issues with traditional gardening. This method was easy, organic, not labor intensive, provided low weed maintenance, an abundant harvest, worked for vegetables or herbs and was raised on legs to save my rapidly aging back and knees. It was low water, no til and easily accessible.

It provided me with everything that I wanted in a garden and eliminated all of the things that I didn't like. I wanted one... now. I had already missed out on a month of growing for early spring vegetables.