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NOW IS THE TIME!
What better time then right now to help spread the word of Square Foot Gardening to everyone you know? Your neighbors, your friends, your church, at the office or shop, your relatives all over the country, in fact anyone you know anywhere in the world? You can be a huge help to the Square Foot Gardening Foundation and spread the word and encourage everyone to start a small SFG right now. Suggest they start with just one 4x 4 box and as they learn the system and gain experience, then they can then expand later. They can start with small easy to grow crops.
Get the Family involved, children, grandchildren, neighbors, local school kids. Let them help you build a 3 x 3 box for their size. Divide the box up with a permanent, very visible grid making 9 square spaces, and then let them choose 9 different things to grow; dont get fancy, forget about tomatoes and squash to start with. Put in radishes, beets, carrots, marigolds, and 2 kinds of leaf lettuce. Maybe a pepper plant and some other flowers like a pansy. Bush beans; pick a couple different colors, they come in red, green and purple. Make signs, put their name on it, and let them come everyday to water.
Next idea is for everyone to call up your local newspaper, or your shop, office, or church newsletter. Use your own blog or website and tell everyone the SFG story and how it can solve so many of the Worlds problems if it starts right outside their backdoor, no big deal. No shovels or picks or roto-tillers no tools needed, just build a box, if you want to raise it up off the ground put a bottom on it, drill drainage holes, and then set it on an outdoor table. We even have patio boxes now built with legs, if you want to go to our website www.squarefootgardening.com and look on the catalog page.
Back to how to get an article written about you and your garden:
Here are some hints and tips, these are our instructions for our certified Square Foot Gardening speakers/teachers. They especially should be out getting articles written about Square Foot Gardening but so should you. Your local newspaper is interested in home gardening with todays economy, the food scare situation, transportation issues, and the cost of everything. What better subject could a newspaper write about to share this great information with others? I hope you will do it and help us make sure that anyone and everyone can have a Square Foot Garden right out their back door. If you do, send us the article or reference to it and we will post it on the website to show what you have accomplished and to encourage others to do the same. Thank you so much for your support.
Mel Bartholomew
Originator and Founder of the Square Foot Gardening Foundation
Heres how to get that local publicity
In order to get attention for your garden, especially if you are a Certified SFG Teacher, get an article written in your local newspaper about:
#1 your becoming a certified Square Foot Gardening teacher
#2 your availability for speaking engagements
#3 your particular mission, talent, or story about SFG
#4 your garden, how you started, how easy it is, special features
EXAMPLES OF How to get someones attention
Headlines
BIG, Bold, and few words. It should beg to be looked at.
Give tips
Want to cut your grocery bill in half?
The advantages of organic or natural gardening
How vegetable gardening can help your budget and your weight
Family gardening
Special gardens for the kids
Teach the Grandparents a new way to garden
Ask the Grandparents how much work the Victory Gardens were and the
then tell them how easy SFG is.
What is Square Foot Gardening....
These are weekly colums written on the Meridian Magazine Website. You can find them at: www.meridianmagazine.com
It's a very simple, easy, and unique method of gardening that eliminates all of the hard work, heavy tools, and time-consuming chores of traditional, single-row gardening.
Because of all these advantages, gardening can now be easily done by not only the very young, the very old and everyone in between. It adapts to any location in the world. Since we don't dig up or try to improve the existing soil; we need no tools and no work. It's the greenest of the green methods of gardening, because it uses only 20% of the space, 10% of the water, 5% of the seeds, and only 2% of the work of a traditional, single-row garden, yet produces over 100 % of the harvest..
Basically, the method involves building a shallow box that sets on the ground, removing any weeds or grass inside the box, laying down a weed cloth or landscape fabric inside the box, and then filling the box with a perfect soil mix of three all organic, all natural materials. A one foot grid is then laid on the soil surface, dividing it up into individual square feet. The standard size for a Square Foot Garden is 4' x 4', producing 16 square feet. You walk around the garden box, and reach in to tend your garden, hence, never packing down the soil by walking on it, and you never have to dig it up and turn it over again every spring.
What are the main advantages of Square Foot Gardening?
No work, no weeding, no digging, no tilling, no thinning, no kidding! What more advantages could you want and still be able to produce 100% of the harvest in only 20% of the space? In addition, the planting method allows you to continuously harvest just enough rather than a whole lot from a 20 ft row all at once. The SFG method not only saves seeds, but it saves water. The other big advantage to S F G is because it takes up such a small space, it's very easy to protect. Protect from what? From the weather, from pests, and anything else that can harm your garden. The biggest benefit for the average gardener, especially beginners, is that you will be successful. Follow the 10 steps, and you can't go wrong.
Who can benefit the most from SFG ?
Because you don't do any heavy labor, and the only tool you need is a hand trowel, it's very easy for the elderly, and those with arthritis or limited mobility, to be able to garden this way. Since there are no weed seeds in the soil mix, there're no weeds to pull, hence no hard work. The box can be built with a plywood bottom, and lifted onto a table, so that someone can garden in a wheelchair, or sit down to garden, or can stand up to garden with a little higher table. You will never have to stoop, bend, or do any strenuous physical movements. Because Square Foot Gardening is no work, and takes very little time for maintenance, those busy households with both husband and wife working can still have a garden, and time to enjoy it. Since Square Foot Gardening takes only 20% of the space, it is so condensed that instead of locating it way out back, where the weeds will grow, and people finally decide not to go out there anymore by July and August because of the overgrown weed garden, SFG can be located right near the house, and since there's no weeds, it never becomes unsightly. This allows people with small back yards, in fact those with just a porch, or deck or rooftop, to easily garden the Square Foot way.
What is the cost compared to single row gardening ?
The cost implications are extremely favorable. Since you don't have to rototill your big garden every Spring, you don't need a rototiller, or don't need to pay someone to do that, You don't even dig up your existing soil every year so you don't have to buy any heavy expensive tools like shovels, rakes, and spades which are ultimately rust and break. Since there's no weeding, there's no hard work, hence no heavy weeding tools, like hoes. Because we plant seeds in a spaced pattern, we don't end up pouring out a whole packet of seeds every time we plant, there's no need to buy seeds every year. We tell you how to save the unused portion for the next year, and the next year. Just another major savings in cost.
Building a box can be very simple. You can get free wood at any construction site and build your own, or you can buy ready made-box kits from the Square Foot Gardening Foundation. The first year, you buy the special soil mix but only that very first year. You never replace that, you don't throw it out every year, you merely add a handful of compost to each Square Foot as you replant it after each crop is finished. You can make your own compost, that is not only green and kind to the environment, it's free, and it also eliminates a lot of waste material that presently is trucked to the land fill. We use NO fertilizer with SFG, a great saving in cost. Since you use only 10% of the water, there's a huge savings in water plus again, kind to the environment. Folks, we are running out of water in this world, long before we run out of oil. If you had to carry a bucket of water for 5 miles as many 3 rd world countries do, that's a huge savings in energy and time. The savings of 90% of the water to grow your own crops is a huge implication for our environment.
When did you invent Square Foot Gardening ?
I invented it for the Bicentennial Celebration in 1976 after I retired from my engineering carrier My first book, 1981, was titled, Square Foot Gardening, and became the largest selling garden book in America, ever and sold over 1 million copies. My 30 minute television show, was on PBS for 5 years, and was broadcast on every PBS station in the country. It later went on the Discovery Network and the Learning Channel, for another 3 years, Then I retired again in 1991. That lasted for almost 5 years.
In 1996 I came out of retirement again, (can't seem to stay still) to create a non profit 501 C-3 Foundation to take SFG into schools with a Square Yard in the School Yard program. Then moved to Salt Lake City and got involved in many humanitarian projects happening all over the world. Our program teaches the mother of the family how to improve her children's nutrition with a Square Meter Garden. And it works. No giving a man a fish here.
Over the past 15 years, we have made 10 major improvements to SFG, making it now even easier and simpler, and more economical. These improvements are, not only, outlined on our website, but are included in the brand new book, All New Square Foot Gardening. This is in all color, with lots of photographs and drawings for easy and quick reading. Hope this will encourage you to give Square Foot Gardening a try.
The website, http://www.squarefootgardening.com is the official site of the Square Foot Gardening Foundation, and Mel Bartholomew, the inventor, originator and author.
This article was provided courtesy of Meridian Magazine.
What other garden authors are saying about Square Foot Gardening.
Here is what Jeff Bredenberg has to say in his new book (we will announce the title and date as soon as it is available) about Mels 5 Mind-Blowing Truths About Gardening.
"Mel Bartholomew is the gardening author who pioneered the revolutionary concept of Square Foot Gardening, a technique recently updated in his new book The All New Square Foot Gardening. Appalled at the time-wasting, effort-wasting, money-wasting practices he witnessed among home gardeners, Bartholomew applied his engineering skills to devise a simpler, easier way. Which makes him a hero to easy gardening enthusiasts. You will find out more about Square Foot Gardening in my chapter 6, but for now ponder these five truths about gardening that Bartholomew shared with me:
1. Gardening is not complicated, it is not difficult, and it should not be hard work. You dont need any special expertise. If you manage your garden well, nature does all of the work. All you have to do is provide the proper conditions: the ideal soil (loose, crumbly, and all at the same time quick-draining and moisture-holding), proper spacing of your plants, and freedom from weeds.
2. Less is more. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Also: reduce, reduce, reduce. Enthusiastic gardeners are prone to making their gardens too big and too complicated, particularly in the spring. As the summer weeks wear on, row after row of garden plants plead for attention, weeds are having a field day, and watering becomes a dreadful chore. So the discouraged gardeners start neglecting their gardens. Your garden actually requires a small fraction of the space you think it does. If you learn to control the size of your garden, you will be able to maintain it in small spurts of activity and you will have fewer gardening chores all around.
3. You dont have to plant the entire seed packet at once. There can be hundreds of seeds in a seed packet. If you tap them all out as you stroll down a garden row, youre going to have to thin out a zillion teensy plants when they start popping up all jammed together. Kind soul that you are, you wont be able to bring yourself to destroy all of the plants that you should. Therefore, your plants will grow up overcrowded, less healthy, and less productive. And you will have worked harder than if you had kept your planting under control.
4. No, you dont have to turn or till your garden soil every spring. In square foot gardening, there is no digging. Push your roto-tiller out to the curb and leave it there. Park your shovel in the back corner of your shed, with the other rarely used items.
5. For a better vegetable garden, add some flowers. Why is it a good idea to intersperse flowers with your vegetables? Smarty-pants that you are, your mind has probably turned to the concept of companion gardening, the idea that when certain plants are paired in the garden, they naturally protect each other from pests and disease. Thats true, but heres the real reason to plant flowers among your vegetables, says Bartholomew: Theyre pretty. When you have stopped snickering, consider this: When your garden is pretty, you will go to it more often to tend to it and admire it. When youre more interested in your own garden, you will start getting better feedback from other people who see it. Thus inspired, you will take even better care of your garden, and it will grow better and provide better vegetables and flowers. As if that werent enough of a reason, consider this as well: When youre out there picking salad for lunch, you also get to pick a few flowers for the table.
Mel turned gardening on its cabbage head with his best-selling book Square Foot Gardening. It demonstrated that through careful planting in controlled small plots, you can grow the same amount of produce in just one-fifth of the space. And his system requires commensurately less time, toil, and expense."
Garden Sustainably
So, you've started your first garden. Perhaps some tomatoes, zucchini, other vegetables and herbs? Maybe even a few flower beds for color? You'll save a chunk of change on groceries, but your initial investment required to get your garden started was likely quite a bit of money. Soil, soil conditioner, mulch, plants, fertilizer and more -- it adds up quickly.
If you start all over every year, you'll quickly find your garden is taking over your bank account. Luckily, most gardening setups can be a one time expense, provided you use sustainable gardening methods. Not only are sustainable gardening methods better for your wallet, but they are gentler on the planet as well. A sustainable garden uses less water, generates less waste and generally makes better use of the resources, space and time you use up growing your plants.
What is a sustainable garden?
Sustainable gardening refers to a garden that can be used productively over and over without the need for excessive restarting costs or additional materials.
Some argue that a true sustainable garden should use only organic materials, but that's really up to you. Using the occasional commercial pesticide or other non-organic product doesn't mean your entire garden isn't sustainable.
For health and safety reasons, we suggest sticking to primarily organic gardening, but the main keys to sustainability are reuse of materials, reduction of waste and increased efficiency.
The life-cycle
The basic life-cycle of a sustainable garden looks like this:
Of course there's considerable leeway in this scenario, and you don't have to follow every step. Even something as simple as starting a compost bin can be huge time and money saver when it comes time to plant your garden next year.
Let's break this cycle down and take a look at each part and see what you can do to make your garden more productive and more sustainable from year to year.
Composting
When organic material like plant matter decays, tiny microorganisms feed on it. The organisms take in carbon and give off all sorts of nutrients that plants need to thrive.
For those with an allergy to all things hippie, keep in mind that composting isn't derived from some 1960's feel-good movement -- it's how the entire ecosystem of the Earth functions. Composting is happening all around you. Why not tap into it and stop spending your hard earned money on ridiculous things like enriched soil?
Contrary to popular belief, composting isn't difficult, nor is it smelly. Proper compost piles should have a deep earthy scent, a bit like the woodland soil after a rain.
For more details on how to set up a productive compost bin, check out our article on how to Compost.
Once you've generated some "black gold," as compost aficionados call it, work it into your topsoil before you plant. Most plants' roots stay in the first six inches of soil, so concentrate on working your compost into that area.
By doing so, you'll be returning nutrients to the soil -- minerals like phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, zinc, manganese and iron all help your plants grow.
Compost also improves the texture or "tilth" of the soil. This has a dual benefit; if your soil is naturally loose or sandy, compost will help it retain water better. Conversely, if you have very heavy clay soil, the compost will improve drainage.
In either case the end result is healthier, easy to maintain plants that need far less fertilizer and are more productive.
Mulching
Mulch refers to putting an additional layer of organic material on top of your soil.
There are several reasons mulching is smart -- it suppresses weeds, keeps soil moist, prevents soil runoff, keeps your soil from being compacted by rain, keeps soil temperatures down, increases the number of beneficial earthworms and microorganisms in the soil and keeps mud from splattering on your plants.
In fact, most gardeners regard mulch as then most important part of sustainable, low-maintenance gardens.
OK, so it's good stuff, this mulch. What sort should I use?
Is it a pile of mulch? Or modern art? Just about every gardener you ask is going to have a different opinion on this, and there are no right answers.
It depends on what you're growing (for example pine needles are cheap option that work well for plants that need highly acidic soil, but a terrible idea for plants that want a more neutral soil).
How much mulch you should you use? A good rule of thumb is to use two inches of mulch on top of your well composted soil. You can add more mulch if it starts to break down over the course of the season.
Also, make sure that you never put mulch on top of plants or have mulch touching their stems. A sadly very common, but very bad idea, is piling much against tree trunks. Not only do these "volcanos" of mulch look ridiculous, they're horrible for the health of your trees.
Simply scatter a two inch layer of mulch over your compost and top soil, making sure to keep it a few inches back from the stems and trunks of your plants.
As for what to use, that's up to you, but avoid commercial mulches with dyes. Not only do they look ugly, the wood chips used often come from sources that may have harmful chemicals. Stick to organic materials like shredded wood chips and bark, leaf mold, "pine fines" (very fine-textured pieces of pine bark) or husks. Some gardeners even use recycled rubber from old tires.
Our favorite is leaf mold, which is rarely sold at commercial shops, but can easily be made -- just run your mower over a pile leaves several times, catching the chopped up results in the grass bag. Don't have an excess of leaves to chop in your area? Try asking your local government if they have any. Many local governments provide it for free or very cheaply. Check your local government website to see if its available in your area.
Watering
Unless you happen to live in the tropics, chances are you're going to need to water your garden.
Rain Barrels
The sustainable way to do that is using a rain barrel to catch excess water whenever it rains. You can buy rain barrels complete with hose attachments and then just place them below your gutter's exit spout. That way you capture run off and can use it to water your garden between rains.
Go Local
But even with a rain barrel there are still plenty of ways you can cut down on watering. If you're planting an ornamental garden choose local, drought-resistant plants that are well adapted to your zone (check with your local gardening store to find out which drought-resistant and local plants do the best in your area).
Hit Your Target
Another way to cut down on watering is to only water where it's needed -- the plants' root zone. Anything beyond the root zone is simply going to feed weeds and be a waste of water. This why switching from a typical sprinkler system to a targeted drip system is probably the single most water saving move most gardeners can make.
Drip systems range from the very complex professionally installed sort (expensive, but potentially money saving in the long run) to the simpler variety you can build yourself. Ask your local garden shop to point you to the flexible hosing and check out an illustrated tutorial on Flickr. Even something as simple as a plastic bottle can create a basic drip system -- see the tutorial from You Grow Girl.
Another tip: plant intelligently. That is, plant plants that have similar water needs next to each other. One way to do this is to Build a Square Foot Garden.
Dealing with pests and disease
Once your garden is up and running with quality, well-enriched soil and a nice layer of mulch, it's time to deal with nature's pests and diseases. If your soil is good and you plant things native to your area you shouldn't have too many diseases to worry about, but pests are another matter.
It might be tempting to simply spray on one of the nearly infinite number of commercial pesticides, but not only is that expensive, possibly hazardous to your health and terrible for the environment, it generally isn't necessary.
The praying mantis is one type of predatory insect you can use to keep your garden pest-free. Human beings have been cultivating plants for over 10,000 years; commercial pesticides on the other hand didn't come about until roughly the 1940s. So yes, for every pesticide there is nearly always an organic, less-hazardous solution.
One popular sustainable solution is planting sympathetic plants. For example, many of the pests and diseases that affect tomatoes can be prevented by planting marigolds nearby your tomatoes. There's also some evidence that tomatoes grow better and bear more fruit with marigolds growing around them.
Similar sympathetic solutions exist for other plants, try searching the web to find out what works well with the plants you've chosen for your garden.
Another solution is predatory insects, for example lady bugs (often sold at gardening centers) eat aphids, a common source of problems for rose bushes.
Processing your seeds
So you've successfully grown your garden, harvested your fruit, vegetables and flowers. Now winter is coming, so what about next year?
There's no need to buy new seeds every year; you can use seeds from this year's fruit and vegetables to grow next year's plants.
In most cases, you'll need to process the seeds slightly, usually by fermenting and drying them, but the process generally isn't too difficult. Just select some fruit from the very healthiest looking plants and then remove the seeds from the fruit.
In the case of tomatoes, it's simply a matter of washing the seeds and then placing them in water and leaving them somewhere warm for a few days. Once the fermentation process is complete, there will be a fine film of "scum" on the top of the water. Just scoop that off and then spread the seeds out to dry. This can take a while, up to a week in the case of some big tomatoes. Once the seeds have dried just package them up in something airtight and you're ready to go for next year.
Most common vegetable plants can be harvested for seeds in a similar manner. Just consult your local garden center experts or do a bit of internet searching to find out the details for each plant.
Another thing to remember is that bulbs like irises or tulips can be dug up and over-wintered somewhere indoors, then replanted again next year.
If you're feeling really ambitious and have a greenhouse of some sort, you can take cuttings of your more successful plants and grow them indoors over the winter. Cuttings work primarily with woodier plants like tree and shrubs though there are exceptions.
Conclusion
Gardening can be a very expensive proposition, but fortunately it doesn't need to be that way. In fact, if you follow all the suggestion above and are willing to put a bit of effort into it, sustainable gardening is just about free.
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New Product!!! A SFG Arbor!
Create a spectacular focal point in your yard with this 4'x4'vertical arbor. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, or even pumpkins can grow right over your head. Can be installed and planted any time of the year-it's not too late now to have it up and ready for all summer as well as a fall crop of sugar snap peas.
Constructed out of galvanized steel, it is sturdy, strong, and long-lasting. Can be set up as a walk-through arbor (as shown), with the unbreakable nylon netting included going up and over the top, then down the opposite side OR a 3-sided walk-in arbor for a sit-down bench making a cozy retreat. Adding netting to the 4th side makes a completely enclosed arbor for maximum harvest or even make an opening for the kids to crawl inside to have a secret garden.
You can get it at HERE
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