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The Plot Thickens (part
2)
| by: Andrew Vowles, photos: Vern
McGrath, illustration: Susan Todd |
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| SOUPED-UP
SOIL |
The key to square-foot
gardening is productive, healthy soil. Mel Bartholomew
recommends a mix of compost, coarse vermiculite
and peat moss—at least enough to equal 25 per
cent of the volume of the garden soil. Going whole
hog, he suggests building a four-foot-square raised
garden six inches (15 centimetres) deep and filling
it with an equal mixture of peat moss, vermiculite
and compost. Every time you replant a square, remove
a trowelful of soil and replace it with the same
amount of compost.
That kind of soil management may help guard against
a potential problem with square-foot gardening:
insect or disease proliferation. “Because you’re
growing in a confined space, you’re cutting
down on air circulation between plants. If you ran
into a disease or insect problem, it could work
against you,” says Toronto horticulturist Judith
Adam. But a square-foot garden is intended to make
it easier to keep such problems in check. As well,
the method requires crop rotation among different
squares from one growing season to the next. “Chances
are,” she adds, “you have to do so much
soil amendment work every year to make it sustainable
that you’re not likely to get a buildup of
fungus spores or insect eggs in soil simply because
you’re changing or renovating it so often.”
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Located steps from the back door, Elisabeth’s
garden is easy to check for pests and disease during the morning
rounds. Crouching on the flagstone walkway separating two beds,
she demonstrates how all 24 squares lie within arm’s reach.
The technique makes watering and weeding easier, and the closely
growing foliage helps to conserve soil moisture and discourage
weeds. She collects water in a rain barrel, then uses a small
saucepan to water the vegetables. Even during the height of
the growing season, Elisabeth estimates that she spends less
than an hour a week weeding and watering. To deter larger pests
such as squirrels from nibbling away at her crops, she makes
cages by bending two one-by-three-foot (30-by-90-centimetre)
pieces of wire mesh into C-shapes, then nesting them to cover
one square. (The cages may be draped with cloth in summer or
plastic in spring.) To protect plants against spring frost,
she uses clear, pyramid-shaped cones made of plastic that fit
perfectly over a single square.
Bill Missen of Sherwood Park, Alberta, first considered planting
a square-foot garden about 10 years ago. “A former neighbour
had these weird-looking square beds. He always seemed to get
a lot of food out of them,” says Bill, a locomotive engineer
who is often riding the rails. “You can maintain a really
decent garden, and it doesn’t overrun your life.”
Three years ago, he built three beds raised 12 inches high (30
centimetres), each in the classic four-by-four-foot grid, as
well as a 20-foot-long (six-metre-long) bed for mixed vegetables
and ornamentals. Following Bartholomew’s recommended planting
densities per plant type, Bill grows peas, beets, carrots, beans,
tomatoes and peppers, using trellises alongside two beds for
climbers. He practises both companion and rotation planting.
“With three beds, we have a potential for two years’
rest before a plant returns to its original bed. This will help
keep the pests and viruses from getting a chance to propagate
every year in the same soil.” He likes the low-maintenance
aspect of the system, including no thinning, and small beds
that make it easy to keep an eye out for intruders. “There’s
not a weed in the bed bigger than a quarter-inch. If I see a
weed, it’s history.”
A physicist, two engineers: Does its logical, stepwise format
make square-foot gardening the preserve of strictly right-brain
types?
“I’m not really a scientific brain at all,” says
marketing consultant Sarah Moore. Conserving space is hardly
an issue on her 70,000-square-foot (6,300-square-metre) spread
of virgin forest and scrub in Entrelacs, Quebec, 90 kilometres
north of Montreal. However, she wanted to carve out only as
much room as she needed for a kitchen garden. She began last
year by building eight beds, each raised between nine and 12
inches (23 to 30 centimetres), measuring about four-by-2.5 feet
(1.2 metres by 76 centimetres) and separated by 18-inch-wide
(46-centimetre-wide) paths. “It looks neat and tidy without
a lot of effort, which I like.” The square-foot promise
of easy maintenance appealed to this self-confessed “lazy”
gardener. “The thing about not having to weed because everything
is planted so closely is true,” says Sarah, adding that
the area adjacent to her garden “is green all over with
all sorts of foul things.” For a couple of her beds, Sarah
followed Bartholomew’s directions on soil mix (see “Souped-up
Soil,”) but found that to be too expensive. Her modified
recipe includes peat, lots of compost and topsoil. She grows
radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, runner and bush beans, broccoli,
carrots and corn. Sarah’s goal: to cut by half the amount
of produce the family buys from the local grocery store.
These gardeners are following the square-foot method more or
less by the book, but Toronto horticulturist Judith Adam says
many others are likely using the same principles implicitly
in small spaces, from a small roof garden to a narrow strip
of soil, even a discarded canoe or bathtub. “An old cold
frame is very convenient for turning into a square-foot garden,”
she says. In what might be termed “round-foot” gardening,
she fills containers with a special soil mix and tight plantings
of tomatoes, beans and herbs. “That’s very careful
management, and square foot for sure.”
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PART1 |
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