Book Review: Square Foot Gardening

I found Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew only recently and so far would have to say that if you are a new vegetable gardener and want to buy just one book, this might be a good choice.  After Jen Colbert recommended it to me, I have been passing the word along to friends and family.  At this point, I’ve skimmed through most of it and then focused in on various sections that are of particular interest to me and my garden projects for this spring.  I have repeated turned to its great tables and organizers in the 8 weeks or so since I got it.

Bartholomew’s approach is for intensive gardening — instead of planting in long, thin rows (the image many of us bring to vegetable gardening), he plants in blocks.  He fits a lot in these 1-foot square blocks — you’ll be amazed, I think, at how much food you can get out of even a small garden if you use this approach, or if you take the information here and apply it to wide rows (which is what I’m doing).

I am most excited about his charts — when to plant, how to plant it (seedlings indoors or direct sow, for example) and spacing.  He has recommendations for which plants to start early, which to start indoors, which to just send straight to the garden soil… He’s done a lot of experimentation with growing things vertically — not just peas and tomatoes, but also cucumbers and even squash and melons.  I am eager to try his trellis for tomatoes and vines — which should free up lots of ground space in our not-so-big garden beds.  At the end of the book he has a crop-by-crop guide with information about planting, growing, fertilizing, watering, and some FAQs.

Maybe of interest to you, too, is the Kitchen Garden Planner at the Garden Supply Company’s website (I put a link to it on the side bar).  While technically this tool is to build a 3X6′ raised bed that you can purchase from the company, the planner is free and, for all intents and purposes, seems to be straight out of Bartholomew’s book — so there’s an easy way to figure out how much you need for the space in your garden or to envision how this approach might look.  My sister-in-law and parents both used it and simply put together a few of the plans they developed to fit their actual garden beds.

This book isn’t a gardening encyclopedia by any means — but it has lots of good, detailed information for any vegetable gardener and provides a great framework for beginning gardeners, in particular.