Herb articles How to make a square foot food garden
| How to make a square foot food garden |
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 By Alice Coetzee Here's a new approach to growing your own food garden that is easy (no digging), fun to plant up and lovely to look at. It is called Square Foot gardening and takes up less space than a conventional veggie garden that is planted in rows. The basic shape is a square, one metre by one metre and that in turn is divided up into a grid, with each block corresponding roughly to the size of a foot. This provides enough space for 16 different crops, a surprisingly large yield for one square metre of garden. For a small family just one square may be enough but if there is space available it can be fun to make more squares so that the overall effect is one of a chess board. One square for each member of the family! The space in between the squares can be filled with gravel, paving, grass or groundcovers, as long as there is access to the garden on all sides. A trellis can also be fitted onto one side of the square to accommodate climbing vegetables and flowers, like sweet peas, beans, cucumbers, or tomatoes. This way of gardening limits over ambitious planting because a different crop is planted or sown from seed in each block. Large growing vegetables like broccoli or cabbage would be planted singly whereas smaller vegetables like carrots, radishes or spring onions could be grown more densely, up to 16 plants per block. Watering and feeding is easy, so is weeding. The thinking behind planting a different crop per block is to encourage crop rotation and companion planting, by including strong smelling herbs to repel insects or bright flowers to attract bees or get rid of nematodes. However, what is most attractive about this type of gardening is that the square can be built on top of the existing soil and filled with a mix of compost and garden soil. The drainage is excellent (which vegetables love) and there is no need to dig or worry about poor soil. You will need
Step by step processStep one: Choose an area that is level and gets plenty of sun. Measure out a square, 1 m by 1.m. Nail together the four pieces of timber (1mX20cm) to make a square frame. Paint it or treat it with a wood sealer. Tip: Build higher boxes for wheelchair gardeners or if it is difficult to bend down. Step two: Remove the grass, leaving bare earth. Alternatively, you can just put down a square of weed guard that is slightly bigger than 1m² and that can act as the base. The grass underneath will be killed and nothing will be able to grow through the weed guard. Step three: Put the timber frame onto cleaned out section and fill it with a 50:50 mix of compost and garden soil. If you intend using the weed guard make sure that the weed guard sticks out by about 15cm all around the square. Cover the edges that stick out with gravel. Step four: Mix organic fertiliser such as bonemeal and 3:1:5 into the soil and level it, making sure the surface of the soil is just below the edge of the box. Step five: Place the six thin strips of timber onto the frame to create 16 blocks. Each strip should be 25cm apart to create equal sized blocks. Nail into position. Step six: Before planting, set out your plants, putting companion plants alongside one another and incorporating some edible flowers for colour. For instance, Thyme and nasturtiums are good companions for cabbage, sage for brinjals and golden rod for beans. It is not necessary to plant everything at once. By staggering the planting you will also be staggering the harvest. Step seven: Sow seed in some blocks. Make a hole with your finger and drop in the seed. Lightly firm down the soil and keep the soil moist while the seed is germinating. Once the seedlings come up, thin out by snipping off the extra plants at soil level, leaving the strongest. Snipping off doesn't disturb the roots of the remaining seedlings. After care
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