Square foot gardening - two BIG lessons learned + short tour
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Two lessons learned the hard way in my first year of square foot gardening.
#squarefootgardening #squarefootgardeningforbeginners #squarefootgardentour
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We live on 8 acres in rural Iowa and have what feels like the perfect place to become less dependent on buying things in stores and the electric company. Dan and I are in our mid-50s and we are gearing up to retire early and make a self-sufficient living right here. Our goal is not just to survive, but thrive and we want to take you along with us on our homesteading journey. On our channel you will find videos on building things, recipes, canning, deep winter greenhouses, chickens and much more - anything we are doing to build our homestead! Subscribing to our channel, liking this video, and commenting below will help us to grow our channel and keep producing content.
Karyn has been a farm girl, teacher, software instructor, hospital office worker and a general nerd. She shares the recipes, kitchen and home tips, and works the garden.
Dan grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee. He has been a soldier, assembly line worker, farmer, and a sign maker. He works on improving the property, building things, and fixing things.
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Cucumbers to the left of me, green beans to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you 🎶
Hahaha! Thanks for the laugh, Daniel!
Im glad i wasnt the only one with that same thought
You have to trellis or string tomatoes and pick all the suckers to grow one in a single square foot. For the beans and cukes - trellis, trellis, trellis. Consider a cattle panel trellis across from one bed to another. Each bed gets to use half the trellis.
Yes! Thanks for the suggestions, dalepres1. We're doing exactly that this year with cucumbers and green beans - going to do the cattle panel trellis between beds. Dan has already found the panels elsewhere on the property. I wish I could spend all day every day in the garden right now!
With indeterminate tomatoes prune and tie/string/trellis up; with determinate it is not recommended to prune unless you are willing to have a smaller crop
When growing tomatoes in a small space you need to prune it and trellis it. That way you can keep it neat and tidy and avoid sickness due to lack of airflow
Thanks for mentioning working full tome! It makes a difference! Lol!
Read Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. He created the system in the late 70's to address over crowded garden beds and to maximize production. He has grid capacity charts in the book. Most people that make UA-cam videos about it have never read the book by the man who created the system.
Thank you, thats very true. So many people refer to their gardens as Square Foot Gardens because they grid it out. Its so much more. Please read the book and follow Mel's Advice!
Purslane is a bonus vegetable or Salad Green. Don't get rid of it if that is all the weed issues you have. Lovely garden. Wish mine was so productive.
Celeste - I agree about the purslane. Sometimes I fight with old thinking from what I knew about my parent's garden and weed removal. I was telling Dan a few weeks ago if it shows up this year I am not going remove it! 😎
Gotta trellis those tomatoes.
Thank you for the tips. Remove the weeds but definitely keep that purslane...good video. 😊
Thank you! And I struggle with keeping it or pulling it. That's why it's still there. Haha!
I'm learning gardening too from the Square Foot Gardening method. Beautiful video and advice.
Thanks for sharing
Oh boy, young lady When you put indeterminant tomatoes into a raised bed, the first thing to do is decide how many vines from the plant you want; remove all others heh (well, unless you have supermondo tomato beds with huge cages). If they are bush tomatoes, no need to pluck suckers off those. They will branch out oh yes, but will produce fruit all at once and after they ripen, just remove the plants---they've done their job heh. The recommendation for square foot gardening used to be to trim indeterminants down to 1 vine only, plucking out all other suckers (for leaf coverage, wait till suckers get 2 true leaves then pluck out the middle growth.). Nowadays, I believe they are saying 1 tomato plant for 4 of your squares. Not sure on that tho as I've gone down to a small container deck garden. I chose 3 vines for my plants and everything else gets plucked away heh. Good Luck this year!
Thank you, SouthernBoy Cookin! I'm going to be pruning the heck out of them this year, because my favorites are all indeterminate. 👀 Better spacing this year, plus adding some taller, better cages, too. 😀
@@OurSufficientLife just don't trim that main stock main trunk or top if you do, you will stop the growth upwards and it will go into the end of summer mode.
Over here in Cape Town, South Africa, I can't use my grass clippings as mulch, too much seeds and if the Kikuya grass (enemy no 1) gets into the veggie patch big trouble, this grass is an invader in America, but a native here. I started my trees 3 years ago so they are still small and I am the only Veggie gardener in this suburban area. This is a mediterranean climate so hot summers so I have to plan shade somehow still, your garden is great.
I just started watching your video. According to my notes you are supposed to allow 4 squares for one tomato plant, with the tomato plant being planted in the middle of the 4 squares.
Indeterminate - 1 square
Determinant - 4 squares as you stated
That's the part people don't tell you in most videos. In order to do square foot gardening, you have to prune and train the plants a lot. It takes a lot of attention. Container gardening is the same. The plants need a lot of fussing.
Tomatoes come in 2 type 'determinate' and 'indeterminate' Determinate only grows to a certain height, but indeterminate will make vies that go one forever, With a long season, we get 8 ft tomato trees that crush those little tomato cages you see in the box stores.
Buy you your mulch BEFORE you need it! It should already be near the garden and ready to go when you need it. If you wait a week to go to the store and buy it, the weeds will already have a head start.
This year was my first year with raised beds and SFG. Learned a lot. Need to prune more and water more. Mulch was great! Hardly had weeds. Mels mix was perfect. Awaiting my asparagus next year. Peppers are still producing. Had more bug issues than usual too. Squash and zucchini took over their beds. Just purchased 3 more beds. Good luck and thanks for sharing.
Love the mulch in the bed too! So nice to not have to weed all the time. Thanks for the comment 😊
Also look at your location, I can get away with planting everything pretty cramped and not worry about disease because it gets so hot here, everyday it's over 90 degrees during summer and we don't get rain again until like November/December. Keeps ground moist that way and yes mulch is important, and keeping things pruned.
Yes I found that pruning is the key. And mulch mulch mulch! Wow that is a lot of time without rain. What watering system do you use?
I hand watered at the base last year and this year we are putting in irrigation. Worth it for me long term.
I'm going to give it a try this summer.
This has happened to me in tue past with tomatoes. They take over and i can't even access them to harvest.
I'm going to try the string trellis and cut the suckers off to keep them smaller.
Cutting off the suckers and taller trellis really helped this past summer!
Very interesting information. Thank you!
Overall great growth! Good mulching tip. Re: monster plants - typically, I just prune vigorous foliage growing plants like tomatoes, beans etc - I keep enough leaves for energy but prune some 45 degree stems to allow light, air and pollinators access to flowers for fruiting. and shadowing other smaller plants. Also, choose best placement ; taller plants in non shadow casting positions (usually corners or one side as opposed to center)
Managing the plant is necessary. I had rhe same problem with my tom plant. My fault not the system's
Same with my cucumbers and zucs
I was in my garden daily and pulling little weeds before those even got to palm sizedlots of mistakes made, lots of learning done
Yes lots of learning with this method. But it works great! Thank you for sharing your experience! 😊
I wish I had that problem 😮
Eat the purslane!
Eat the purslane, that's just a free gift from nature!!
Most potatoes send out their tubers horizontally so you might get a few levels if you plant your seed potatoes a few inches apart vertically.
You can eat that cabbage with the bug holes. Just wash it and blanch it if you feel it's unsafe.
Trim your tomatoes back...trim the suckers/shoots
Thanks, Tammy! :) I started out doing that, but lack of time during a big growth spurt made a real mess of it. I am hoping to keep it under control this year.
That’s a forest now. Omg. You have great soil. Thanks for the fyi
Nice
Did you use all Mel’s mix? The only time I’ve gotten weeds was when I used horse manure in the mix.
I didn't use Mel's mix exactly, but I did add peat to the compost. I feel like we had some weed seeds blow in and too little mulching compounded the issue. Crossing my fingers I'll get that part right this year :)
What should you have done differently in planning this bed?
I should have had better trellising and also pruned these back earlier on. 👍
I’m not planting tomatoes this year… I might find a compact bush variety but I do not want you give them that much square footage I don’t really eat them so…
Purslane is edible and very very nutritious.
Oh leaelizabeth23 - I have been reading about purslane over this last year. This year I am letting purslane take over the compost pile. Haha - this weekend giving a 2022 garden tour and will be showing it!
What do you use to mulch with?
Use trellises
Purslane is an EDIBLE, extremely nutritious "weed."
Tomatoes need 4 sq ft. That's standard to square foot gardening.
Sq ft gardening does not mean you don't need to prune and weed.
The very obvious mistake you made us that you LET them take over. You need stakes, trellises, whatever to control them.
Don’t consider your purslane a weed. It actually has more nutrition than the beautiful vegetables. Eat the purslane!