BLOG: Because That's The Way We've Always Done It!

Last week I hope I piqued your interest in Square Foot Gardening (SFG). Today we’ll explore how Mel Bartholomew (SFG’s creator) invented the method.

In 1975 Mel retired from his engineering business and decided to take up gardening as a hobby and signed up for a lecture on composting. A group gathered around at the appointed time, but the instructor never showed up. Each person in the group shared a little of what they knew about composting and they had such a good time they decided to keep meeting. That group organized a community garden that everyone started enthusiastically. By mid-summer people were tired of the hard work and the place soon became overgrown with weeds and looked a mess.

Mel decided to research by visiting several home gardens. He noticed they were almost always located in the farthest corner of the yard, close to the neighbor’s property line. He questioned why large amounts of compost and fertilizer are spread over the entire garden area, but the plants were in long, skinny rows with 3-foot wide aisle in between.

Why did you till the whole thing to make the soil loose and friable, but then walk on it packing it down again? Why do you water the whole area? Why do you plant a whole row of one vegetable that all comes to harvest at the same time? And why do you plant an entire packet of seeds then “thin out” 95% of the seeds you plant?

Let’s go back to the 3-foot aisles. He asked why this was necessary and was told it was so you had room to hoe weeds. Mel said he didn’t want to hoe weeds because it was too much hard work and he was told, “Well, let’s face it. Gardening is a lot of hard work.” Mel thought that there HAD to be a better way. Every time he asked home gardener and expert alike, “Why?” he was given the same answer, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it!”

Mel noticed that the instructions on a packet of lettuce seeds said that the lettuces should be “thinned to” 6 inches in rows 3 feet apart. Well, that didn’t make any sense so he took his 20’ row and cut it in half, then half again and put four 5-foot rows of lettuce that were 6 inches apart. It worked! BUT he still had way too many heads of lettuce that needed to be harvested all at once. We’ll talk more about planning and spacing in another article.

He kept shortening the rows until they were only 12” long and eventually he settled on a 12” square ... a Square Foot! For veggies whose “thin to” instructions say 6” of space is needed (leaf lettuce), Mel determined that there could be FOUR lettuces in one square foot. He determined that if he was going to turn his garden into a raised bed, it would be best to only make that raised bed as wide as he was able to reach in from all sides. In general everyone can comfortably reach in and work 2’ so that meant he could make the beds 4’ wide IF they could be accessed from both the front and back. If they are up against a building or fence, then make the bed no wider than 2’.

Now you have a little taste of Mel’s thinking. Next week we’ll explore a little more about how the All New Square Foot Gardening method was developed.