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My Square Foot Garden

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I was always interested in growing my own vegetables and have spent two successful years growing beans and chilli’s hydroponically using the NFT system. As these systems use electricity to pump the nutrients over the root systems 24×7, it was getting a little expensive to run and I resorted to finding an alternative.

After a lot of Googling I became interested in the technique call Square Foot Gardening developed by Mel Bartholomew a retired engineer in America. I went on to buy his book which described the process in a lot of detail, so I decided to take the plunge and built my own SFG in my greenhouse.

Last weekend Sunday, I planted out lettuce, onions, turnips and dwarf beans and I was really surprised at the progress of my SFG, within a week the beans are doing really well and so are the onions, turnips and lettuce. You can actually see the growth difference everyday. So far I am really impressed by this system and best of all there are no weeds!!! which is a big plus for me.

I have also included my planting diagram. In the last row I planted 4 Dwarf Beans per Square Foot. Giving a total of 16 Dwarf Bean plants. In the next row I planted 16 Onions per Square Foot, giving a total of 64 onions, the row underneath that contains 8 Parsley plants and 32 Turnips and the last row contains 16 Lettuces.

I will update on the progress every few weeks or so.

More blog posts by Garethvr



Comments

 

That's great!
I am on my second year of SFG. last year I had only 9 sq feet and I was so impressed that I had an additional 28 sq ft build. I have all of mine raised on a patio and deck. No need for grnhs here. I have grown a wide var. of things but the best performers for me have been lettuce, spinach, peppers, basil, beans and a var of herbs.
Good luck with it I'm sure with your experience you will do fantastic.

3 Aug, 2008

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