Square Foot Gardening

I recently purchased a book on Square Foot Gardening.  Square foot gardening is an alternative to planting in rows.  It consists of splitting the garden space into square-foot sections, where the plants are based on the area that they take up.

The gardens are designed so you can reach any part of the soil without stepping on the soil.  Stepping on the soil compacts it, with disturbs the soil structure.

Here are a few spacing diagrams that demonstrate the amount of garden area that each plant requires:

These boards are good for quick seed spacing in a square foot garden. 

There are many places on the internet that will provide spacing for square foot gardening.  If you can’t find a diagram for the plant you want to grow, look on the seed packet for the plant spacing:

3” = 16 plants per square foot

4” = 9 plants per square foot

6” = 4 plants per square foot

12” = 1 plant per square foot

Here is a good forum of square foot gardeners.

Here is the wiki for square foot gardening. 

On 2/18/2013, I added Detroit Dark Red Beets, Utah Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions, and Champion Radishes seeds in a square-foot pattern under my low tunnels.