| The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author |
| Latest Improvements |
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| IMPROVEMENT # 3: MEL'S MIX, Full Text Version The first improvement to Square Foot Gardening over the last twenty years was to build up your garden into boxed beds rather than digging down to improve your existing soil. The second improvement was to give yourself plenty of working room between garden boxes (about three feet). This next improvement is what you’re going to fill those boxes with. SKIP THE SOIL PREPARATION! Now you can forget about trying to improve your existing soil. We don't even care what kind of soil you have! Use the time you save to start a compost pile instead. Things we used to have to do to start a garden are no longer necessary if you switch to the Square Foot Gardening system. If we can put in a perfect soil mix, we don’t have to be concerned about our existing soil. This can save you an awful lot of time and money. You don’t have to have it analyzed anymore, you don’t have to have a pH test made - you don’t even have to know what pH is! You don’t have to buy any heavy tools or go to the expense of having someone rototill your garden. You don’t have to buy special ingredients to loosen your clay soil or solidify your sandy soil. And most important, you no longer have to do any hard work. You'll have to find another way to get some exercise. For years, experts said your garden soil had to be improved at least 12 inches deep; some even said 18 inches. Who ever heard of growing a vegetable garden in just 6 inches of soil? But my experiments were proving otherwise, especially when I used good homemade compost. I asked myself, "If 6 inches of perfect soil is good enough for window boxes and greenhouse benches, why not in backyard gardens?" And why dilute it by adding it to poor existing soil? Why not use this perfect soil mix in your garden boxes and forget all about the soil underneath? Well, the experts still pooh pooh the idea…but guess what? IT WORKS! Of course they realize you couldn’t do that in a huge old fashioned single row garden. Since a Square Foot Garden takes only 1/5 of the space, (that’s only 20%), that’s why we can use just 6” of perfect soil mix. Of course, the experts realized you couldn't add 6" of perfect soil mix over the entire soil area in an old fashioned single row garden. But, since SFG takes only 20% of the space for 100% of the harvest it's not only practical, it changes all of the rules of gardening and eliminates all of the hard work and undesirable parts of single row-gardens. Gee, gardening could now be fun! WHAT'S IN IT? What are the characteristics of this perfect growing mix? First of all, the perfect soil mix is lightweight, so it’s easy to work with and easy for plants to grow in. Next, it should have all the nutrients and trace elements that plants need. Finally, it should hold moisture yet drain well. After many trials and experiments, I found that the same combination of three ingredients that I originally recommended in Square Foot Gardening was still the perfect mix:
WHAT DO THESE INGREDIENTS DO? All three of these ingredients are natural – not manufactured – and non-chemical. They all drain well, so there are no puddles to waterlog the plant roots; but they also hold large amounts of moisture so the plants will grow well. How do they do both of those? I like to explain it by using a sponge. Add water to a dry sponge and it just keeps soaking up that water until it reaches a saturation point -- then any excess water just runs out the bottom. That’s what we want our soil to do. This mix has a light fluffy texture, smells good, and is a pleasure to work with. The first two ingredients have no nutrients, but the last – compost - is loaded with all the nutrients and minerals that you could imagine. When you study soils, you find most local soils contain only 5 to 7% of organic matter, which contains the nutrients, so you have to add a lot of fertilizer to make the plants grow. But with Mel’s Mix, you’re going to have over 33% organic compost. That’s why you don’t need any chemical fertilizer; that’s also why you can grow your garden in only 6 ” of Mel’s Mix. Compost is the most important ingredient of the three, and making your own is good for both the environment and the garden. MIXING IT ALL UP Figuring out how much you need of each ingredient is a great math exercise for the kids to help with. When you go to the store, you'll find that the ingredients come in bags or bales; some are compressed and some are loose, so it may seem a little complicated to figure out how much of this and how much of that. But the formula and the amounts do not have to be exact. We’re not sending a garden rocket to the moon (at least not yet)! If anything, try to have extra of the compost in your mix. It’s the life of your soil. The other two, peat moss and vermiculite, keep the soil mix loose and provide drainage and moisture retention. Take care when mixing the 3 ingredients - they are dusty so don't mix outdoors if it's windy and wear one of those inexpensive painting dust mask if you're indoors like the garage. The expert way is to pour out all the ingredients onto a big sheet of 4 mill plastic. Then either use a rake and flat shovel to mix or better yet, use 2 people to pull the plastic over from 2 corners till the pile moves but doesn't spill out then do the same thing from 2 other corners, working your way around all 4 sides till mixed well. Next step, just carry the entire mixture out to the garden in the plastic. As you add it to the box - wet it down well. FILLING YOUR BOXES If you are putting your boxes over grass, you can remove the sod to your compost pile if you feel like doing a little work, or merely cover the grass within the box with a layer of cardboard or several layers of newspaper to smother the grass. The just fill the box to the top with Mel's mix. It's that simple and it's that easy. You are finished with hard work for the rest of your life! TRY THIS CRAZY IDEA! Forget what the experts have been telling us for years, use only 6 inches of Mel’s Mix to fill your boxes. You'll be amazed at the results. |
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