Hello, everyone and welcome back to the Kellogg Garden
Channel. I'm Bridget and today we're going to talk about square
foot gardening. Now, this is my first time trying it. We
built these four-by-four-foot beds a while back and I knew I
wanted to do some square foot gardening in here. Square
foot gardening intrigues me because you can grow a lot more in
smaller space; But you have to be very organized when you do
it, which is not my strong suit. So, it'll be interesting to see
how this goes for me. But first, if you haven't already, go
ahead and hit that subscribe button and that notification
bell so you can grow along with us this season and if you like
this video, go ahead and tap that like button. Okay. So, why
square foot gardening? Square-foot gardening allows
you to grow more in a smaller space, right? It's a very
intensive style of gardening but your yields can be a lot
higher. So, what you're doing is you're setting up
one-foot-by-one-foot squares and you're using that as your
guide to plant and you may plant one plant per square.
Some squares may get, you know, two plants, four plants, nine
plants. I know that sounds incredible but with beans or
peas, you could put nine. Tomatoes, you might put one.
Pumpkins, they say you could do two and really you'd be
growing off the side. So, there are different ways that you
could grow quite a few plants in here. The positive side
of this is it's easy to set up, it's fast, and you can grow a
lot more, and maintenance. Because you have so many
plants, you're going to do a lot less weeding. They actually
basically cover the soil and act as a weed control. Of
course, you still are going to mulch a little bit but you're
gonna have so many plants in here that you're not going to
mulch a lot. The negative, or the con side would be startup cost,
because the best way to do this is in a raised bed.
And, you want a minimum of six inches, but I think that a six
inch depth really limits you because you couldn't grow tomatoes
in six inches. So, on my bed, I have an open bottom so I
can grow into the soil below, so I can grow plants that need
more space, more depth. But, it's a little more
expensive, because you're going to have to buy the material for
the beds. You are going to have to water more, right? You have
a lot more plants and they need a lot more watering. They take
it up pretty quick, and because you're doing raised
bed, you may also need to supplement nutrients a lot more,
and that's because you just have so many plants that are
pulling in that nutrient, all those nutrients and especially
if you have heavy feeders, right? Like tomatoes or
something. So, you might be doing a bit more of that. The
other negative can be, you so many plants together, airflow
can be a problem. So, you may have some issues with pests
and disease if you're not careful, right? So, I'm
going to actually show you a close up of the bed, how to set it
up, and I'll talk to you about what I'm doing, and we'll go
from there. Alright? Okay, so let's look at it. Okay, so this
is the bed I'm starting with and like I said, this is a
four-foot-by-four-foot bed. And, this is one of the no-nail beds
so it has, you know, the little bolt in the corner and they
stack. We cut them so they stack like this. Now, when I
say four foot by four foot, I'm talking about from end to end
and I'm really talking about from this outside corner. So,
when we go from the inside of the bed, it's actually
forty-five inches. So, I technically don't have
forty-eight. So, I'm actually going to be a little short of
twelve inches. But, what I did first is I measured it out and
I used some pencil to mark; and like I said, I'm just shy of
twelve inches because really I only have forty-five inches to
work with. So, once I marked out on all sides, all four
sides, and I believe it's eleven and a quarter inches.
Then, where I made the marks, we went in and put some screws
and I used those screws to set up my string and my grid lines.
Now, at this stage, the other thing that you're going to want
to do is you're going to want to bring in your irrigation. So,
there is a company. They're called garden in minutes. They
actually provide beds like this. We DIYed this but they have
some beds like this, and they also have a grid watering
system that you would just lay in, that I haven't used, but
I've spoken to other gardeners and they really like it. So,
you could put that system in now or just run your lines now,
and I'm actually going to run my my lines, my irrigation lines
here soon. I had some of these plants that I had started in
pots from seed, and I just needed to get them in
quickly because I'd let them let them spend way too much
time in those pots. And I was getting a little root bound. So
I've got a couple of pumpkin plants here and I've got some
melon plants and some beans in here. And, what I think I'm going
do is, I haven't decided, but I might be doing some corn
in here, some other herbs, and then I might use the corn as
shading for some lettuce but again, I haven't
totally decided yet. Okay, so when you're deciding what to
plant in here, and I'll provide a link in the description
below, but like I said, you can look at your squares and you
can say, okay, one, what do I want to companion plant
together? And really thinking about not just what
you want to consume, so what you want like tomatoes or peppers
or cucumbers or squash zucchini, but you're also going to
think about, remember you're doing some pretty intensive,
they're pretty close together, but also your pollinators. Do
you want to bring some flowers into this? So we get those
pollinators in here? And, using plants to help other
plants. So what plants will go well together? What plants will
protect each other? I said I might grow corn in here, and
with corn, I can definitely do peas or beans. It can grow up
the corn. Corn can actually block some other plants
providing shading for those plants, so that's kind of nice.
So, those are things to think about and like I said,
which squares are going to have one plant? Your
tomatoes or your peppers? Which squares may have two or
more, like your cucumbers, and which ones are going to have
even more than that, right? Up to nine. If you're doing say
every three inches, every four inches. So, first and foremost,
go ahead and draw out your grid. Second, look at what you
want to grow. Look at your seed packets or your planting
chart to see how much space you need to plant those. Plus, the
spread, how much they're going to spread later when they hit
maturity. So, those are some considerations when you're
doing this and when you're planting it out. For me, on the
corn, they recommend one corn stalk per and I'm
probably going to go more than that. I want my corn to be in
blocks and I want it to be closer together. This is a high
wind area. Last season, my corn got blown over. A couple of
them did. So, I want to make sure I put them closer together.
It'll help them pollinate better. Then, it may also
help them with that wind issue. I may have to build a little
screen for it. And then, the other thing when you're
doing this is think about the plants that you want to maybe
grow over the side. So I have my pumpkin plants that I know
are going to grow over the side. I have some of these melon plants
that I'm going to trellis, and trellising is another way to
extend this. So, I have this cattle panel off to the side
that I'm going to use that's here, but I could also some
trellising in the bed itself or staking when I stake it. So,
that's something to think about. I thought about doing
peanuts in here but peanuts need a lot of room and they
could grow over near the edges, but peanuts need a lot of
sun and they might be blocked by some of the other plants.
So, I'm not going to do that. So, some things to think about.
This area gets a lot of sun, so it would only be the
plants that would block each other from that. But, I am
excited to try it. I think it'll be a fun little
experiment for me. I have a lot of plants that are being
grown in containers this season. If you've watched some
of the other videos, you know that we're kind of in
transition. So, even though we're on three acres, or
three and a half acres, we're only using a small space to
grow in. So, this will be a fun, little experiment for me. One,
to see if I'm organized enough to do it and two, to see what
it's like to grow that much in one space. So, if you have any
questions, let us know down in the description below. I'll
also provide some resources down there like the garden in
minutes links. They have a bed like this. They also have a
watering system and the good thing about that watering
system is that it sprays in from all sides. When I run my
drip line, you know, I'm only getting at drips at certain
locations. This actually sprays all into the to the middle of
the squares, so that to me seems like a pretty good system. So,
if you have any questions let me know I'll let
you guys know how it goes throughout the season and
again, thank you for joining me and I will talk to you again
soon. Happy gardening!