| The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author |
| Latest Improvements |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|||
| IMPROVEMENT # 2: AISLE WIDTH, Full Text Version The width of your aisles is the second improvement I have made to the Square Foot Gardening System. It’s important for comfort, safety and looks only – not for efficiency. If you notice the garden on the cover of Square Foot Gardening, the aisles were 1" x 12" boards separating the 4’ x 4’ blocks. I designed it that way to be the most space-efficient but, as someone once said, "Mel was too efficient!" STRAIGHT AND NARROW The 12" board was difficult to maneuver on, and you had to keep a pretty good balance to stay upright. I found the average gardener needs to have more room to move about than those 12 inches. In addition, you couldn’t get close to each 4’ x 4’ planting area if you wanted to use a wheelbarrow or garden cart. THE IDEAL WIDTH So what is the ideal aisle width? Two feet is still a little tight, so I recommend a minimum of three feet between your boxes. It turned out that for accessibility, ease of walking around, kneeling, working and harvesting, the ideal distance was three or four feet between boxes. In fact, if your garden is made of several boxes, you can vary the aisles. Play around with some ideas on paper -- then, once your boxes are built (and before you fill them with soil, I'd better add), you can move them about until you get them just right. It's sort of like arranging furniture out in your yard. DRESS IT UP, DRESS IT DOWN That space between your boxes can be left in grass or covered with any type of ground cover. In our TV show, we tried all sorts of things to create some very interesting garden areas. At other times, we just laid down ground covers that were comfortable for walking, such as crushed stone, compost or ground bark. "SQUARE FOOT" LANDSCAPE DESIGN Try locating your boxes at different places around the yard to see if they can enhance your landscaping or emphasize a patio. Your garden doesn’t have to be way out back any more. You can put your 4’ x 4’ boxes close to the house and even arrange them in interesting patterns – either all in one area or scattered about the yard at strategic locations. And those aisles in between your gardens can be part of your overall landscaping design. Don’t block traffic lanes, but do make your garden readily accessible. |
|||