Daylight savings time has arrived and with it spring has arrived in West Texas. Actually, spring arrives March 20, but it is time to think about getting plants in the ground. In last week’s column were suggestions on what to consider when starting a garden. This week takes a look at growing a square-foot garden – a garden that can be as large or as small as your space dictates.
Square-foot gardening is a clever strategy of growing a number of plants in a small space. Plants are grown in dense sections in a small space, in blocks, rather than in traditional rows. While the name ‘square foot’ gardening, suggests the sections are squares, it is not necessary to have plants grown in squares. The sections are simply well-defined geometric sections of equal dimensions.
Square foot gardening is especially well-suited for spring gardens since spring crops like greens, root crops, and herbs are smaller plants. Smaller plants means that more of them can be planted close together.
The first use of the term square-foot gardening was in the 1970’s and was intended for raised beds but it is not limited to raised beds.
Getting started:
• Follow guidelines in last week’s column, considering location – ample light for 8 hours or more a day, available water, loam soil amended with organic matter, an area free of weed seeds.
• A usual overall dimension is 4 feet by 4 feet, but any size will work. Keep in mind that crops will need to be reached from all four sides, thus the reason for four squares of 1 foot squared. There can be more than four sections, which would increase the overall size of the garden.
• Define area by placing string over the top of the bed to the dimension of each square.
• Allow walking space between sections. Crops that can be planted now and fit will in this scheme are the greens Asian cabbages, Swiss chard, kale, chicory, endive, radicchio; root crops like beets, carrots, and radishes; herbs cilantro, parsley, dill, chamomile, basil. These fit well in this design because they are not too large when mature. For example, plant 16 beets in a foot square: 4 beets in a row, 4 beets in a column, forming a grid of 16 plants with space to form a nice root.
Ellen Peffley Harp, a retired professor of horticulture at Texas Tech University, writes about gardening for several Texas newspapers.
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