Anybody have experience with Square Foot Gardening? Tips?
admin on February 20th, 2009
Do Big Boy Tomatoes really grow in a 1×1 space? Seems hard to believe…
Yes, but it's a real pain to keep them in the space. The actual growing of the plant works fine, but dealing with such a big plant in such a small space takes a lot of effort. You have to constantly tie it up, and if it is right next to another one, you will find it very difficult to harvest due to the density of the foliage in that confined area.
I find square foot gardening much more useful for any of the salad crops (why plant radishes in a row when you can fill up a tiny little square with them?) and smaller plants up to the size of peppers and eggplants. I grow my tomatoes and my squash in much more spread-out beds.
Yes, but it's a real pain to keep them in the space. The actual growing of the plant works fine, but dealing with such a big plant in such a small space takes a lot of effort. You have to constantly tie it up, and if it is right next to another one, you will find it very difficult to harvest due to the density of the foliage in that confined area.
I find square foot gardening much more useful for any of the salad crops (why plant radishes in a row when you can fill up a tiny little square with them?) and smaller plants up to the size of peppers and eggplants. I grow my tomatoes and my squash in much more spread-out beds.
References :
I used Square Foot Gardening techniques 20 or more years ago (before my neighbor's trees shaded me out).
As I recall, there were some crops which were planted in multiple square feet; i.e., squash and perhaps tomatoes. Just combine two or four of the squares into a larger one for larger crops. Or plant only the outer squares and leave the inner ones empty to avoid the cramming effect mentioned by the prior poster.
References :
Experience.