Planning a Square Foot Garden-Step 1

The Daily Gardener

March 28, 2011

To plan a Square Foot Garden there are two questions you have to ask yourself first:

How many PEOPLE are you planning to feed?

What do you want to HARVEST?  Not grow but harvest.

The first question is pretty easy.  But the second has three parts to it, so a few more decisions need to be made. Do you want to harvest salad greens?  Do you want to grow and harvest fresh vegetables and the third question; do you want to grow for storage? Pause a minute before you answer this quickly and say “Oh, I’ll do it all, greens, veggies and stuff to store” thinking that your SUPPOSED to grow lots of things in a garden.  The only thing you are supposed to do with a garden is grow what you want to use and enjoy doing it. 

Remember you can only harvest over a period of time. Lettuces will bolt, Tomatoes take a while before you can harvest and will last about eight to ten weeks.  Potatoes are cheap to buy, even organic one, so maybe you don’t want to grow veggies for storage.  The seed catalogs are like a siren song with beautiful pictures of plump ripe veggies, luring you to buy and grow things you never use.  Do you buy a bunch of Swiss Chard every week?  No?  Then why grow it?  So start with your grocery list and look at what things you buy every week.  We like big salads so I get at least three heads of Romaine, one head of Iceberg and some mesclun mix if it is on sale every week.  I use carrots in every salad.  I buy a bag of radishes every week, top this all off with cukes, tomatoes and fresh green peas and this is a yummy salad to me.  That was easy, that is my garden list.  My wife does not like fresh green peppers or onions in a salad, but she does like the mild flavor of scallions or chives.  For both of us you can not have enough spinach.  Have this conversation with everyone in the house and only grow what you use.  That’s the way to start to plan your Square Foot Garden.  Make the list and check back for the next step.