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All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! |  | Author: Mel Bartholomew
Publisher: Cool Springs Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $8.49
as of 7/30/2010 07:55 CDT details
You Save: $11.50 (58%)
New (46) Used (18) Collectible (1) from $8.49
Seller: thebookguyz
Rating:  299 reviews
Sales Rank: 531
Media: Paperback
Pages: 271
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 10.2 x 7.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1591862027
Dewey Decimal Number: 635
EAN: 9781591862024
ASIN: 1591862027
Publication Date: February 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781591862024 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
Do you know what the best feature is in All New Square Foot Gardening? Sure, there are ten new features in this all-new, updated book. Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground. But, the best feature is that "anyone," "anywhere" can enjoy a Square Foot garden. Children, adults with limited mobility, even complete novices can achieve spectacular results. But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them. 1) New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square Foot Garden needs just "twenty percent" of the space of a traditional garden. 2) New Direction - Locate your garden "on top" of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or the never-ending soil improvements. 3) New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. Why, we even give you the recipe. Best of all, you can even "buy" the different types of compost needed. 4) New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true--the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth. 5) No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer-ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer. 6) New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed aboveground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos). 7) New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest. 8)New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize the planting squares and know how to space for maximum harvest. 9)New Seed Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch- literally two or three seeds--per planting hole. 10) Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable. Of course, that's not all. We've also included simple, easy-to-follow instructions using lots of photos and illustrations. You're going to love it!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 299
 A Dozen Problems per Square Foot July 20, 2010
book devourer (Maryland)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This summer, I want to buy a reference book on vegetable gardening for my home library. (I already own Andre & Mark Viette's excellent "Month by Month Gardening in the Mid-Atlantic.") I have checked out almost 40 books on gardening from my public library to find "the one." I am sorry to report that SFG is not in the running for that spot on my bookshelf.
I am an experienced gardener of many years and many kinds of plants, and I already use some raised beds with specially prepared soil mixtures, along with "regular" beds. I have have had both stunning successes and abysmal failures in my gardens over the years. Based on my own anecdotal evidence, here are my critiques about the SFG book and method:
1. The SFG system is very expensive to start up.
2. Spacing plants properly is a gardening "art." In my experience, many of the SFG plants are placed way too close together. You want the plants close enough to shade the ground from weeds, but far enough apart so that the plants receive sunlight and air circulation. You also want to leave room to work among the plants. Herb plants and leaf lettuce can be placed very close together, because you are constantly pruning these plants by cutting the leaves for your table, and thus the plants remain small. However, with plants that must reach maturity for a good harvest, squashing them together in a small space makes harvesting, pruning, and checking for pests and diseases very difficult, if not downright impossible. For example, if I had planted my bush beans nine to the square foot (!), as recommended in SFG, I would not have headed off a Mexican bean beetle attack, because checking every leaf would have been difficult. As it happened, my five plants were in four square feet, so I found and destroyed all of the beetles and went on to harvest over 300 (and counting) tasty beans.
3. Some plants, especially the cucurbits, need MUCH more room than allotted in the SFG system. Even my young zucchini plant which has not yet started to "vine" already covers four square feet. One year, I happened to allot one square foot each (with trellises) for two cucumber plants. The plants performed so-so, with perhaps a dozen cukes from each, and died off early in the season from insect infestation. This year, I grew two cukes on A-frame trellises in 8 square feet (or 1/2 of a 4' square bed, the same bed as the beans above) and paid attention to insect pests (particularly leaf hoppers, for which I used an organic homemade remedy). I got the first fruit in June, and today I will pick cucumber #100 (!)--and there is no sign of stopping yet (only one plant needed for next year!). Obviously, these plants struggled when crowded in among lots of other plants and absolutely thrived when given more space!
4. For other cucurbits, I have found that trellis growing, while great for keeping the fruit elevated and away from insects and rot, presents other problems. Squash plants, for example, put down roots as they vine along the ground, becoming, in effect, more than one plant. When part of my yellow zucchini plant was attacked by vine borers, I was able to pull up the infested part and save the rest of the plant, which went on to produce delicious squash, instead of having to start from scratch.
5. The true enemies of the gardener are not weeds, but pests and diseases, and these are summarily dismissed in SFG: "To summarize pests and problems, try not to worry about them (p. 135)." I have learned my lesson that there is absolutely no point in gardening if you are not going to seriously address insect and disease problems. All you are doing is presenting an appetizing all-you-can-eat-buffet for the bugs. When a problem does strike and you have identified the organic solution, there is no way you can spray thoroughly, or even pick off the insects, when plants are crowded together in SFG close quarters.
6. The floating row covers which "Mel" does recommend for protection from insects are commonly referenced by other gardening books as well, especially to protect plants from frost and from certain stages in the development of harmful insects. However, these covers and their frameworks are additional expenses (see #1 above), are time-consuming to set up, remove, and replace, and will prevent pollination of the plants. If I had to "unwrap" my nine herb and vegetable beds each morning to water, harvest, and prune, I would give up gardening in a flash as WAY too time-consuming. Thus, use of these covers seems to contradict the thesis of the book--that you only need a few minutes a day to maintain your garden.
7. As far as garden equipment goes, I heartily disagree with "Mel's" "scissors, pencil, and bucket" list (p. 132). For example, I definitely could not maintain my garden without one or more sprayers. I actually have four spray attachments for my hose: a regular spray attachment, which I use to direct a sharp stream of water to knock off aphids and leaf hoppers, a long-handled wand to water near the roots, a dribbler attachment to water slowly and deeply on a timer, and a spray bottle attachment to mix and spray organic remedies, such as BT, garlic spray, insecticidal soap, etc. I also use hand-held spray bottles to shoot at the bad guys while sparing the garden heroes and to mist seedlings and houseplants. (Is that a spray bottle that I see on p.166 of SFG?) I also keep glass jars handy all over the garden to capture destructive insects such as Japanese beetles.
8. "Mel's" philosophy on "saving" plants differs from mine: "If one square gets devastated, pull it up and replant it with something else (p. 135)." Yes, gardening has its heartbreaks, such as the tomato blight which hit us hard in the Northeast last summer. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but dig up the plant, throw it away, cry, and try better next time. But when you have started a plant from seed in March and nurtured it through the months, you want to everything you can to try and save your "baby."
9. Watering my gardens with a cup would take FOREVER. I have had to water so much this summer, since the temps have been in the high 90's and we have received very little rain. There is no way I would have the time to water my five raised beds, four additional small veggie and herb beds, perennial garden, shade garden, container plants, and landscape plants with a cup of water and a bucket, as recommended in SFG. No time saver there! Having tried both row gardening and raised bed gardening, row gardens are MUCH easier to water because you can use soaker hoses. (I wound soaker hoses through my raised beds and took them out again because they were not watering evenly.)
10. The plant index at the back of the book contains an odd assortment.
11. It seems to me that "Mel's" system would work very well in special circumstances: yards with limited space, rooftop and terrace gardens, areas where water and land are scarce, etc. However, as an "exurban" gardener with two acres of land, there seems to be no sensible reason for me to crowd plants together in a few expensive boxes, rather than letting them have the space they need to truly thrive. When I grew two tomatoes, one zucchini, two cucumbers, a basil plant, and four marigolds in a 4' x 4' box, I got a tangled mess of plants, NONE of which did well.
12. Like other reviewers, I too was put off by the tone of the book--that SFG is the ONE and ONLY way to grow plants. While there are a few good ideas I will take from the book (I might move my herb garden to a SFG), I hardly regard this book as the be-all and end-all of gardening systems or advice. `
I have additional concerns about SFG, such as that plants have different PH and nutritional requirements and that SFG could make crop rotation more difficult, but I'll not elaborate on these two points. If SFG works for you, then I congratulate you on your successful gardening venture! As for me, I will take what I am able to use from SFG and continue my quest for the "best" book on vegetable gardening. Actually, the three books I have used the most this summer, and have been the most reluctant to return to the library, are "Good Bug, Bad Bug", "The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control", and "Garden Insects of North America". After all, I am growing the vegetables for family, friends, and neighbors, not the bugs!
 Bad Idea July 17, 2010
Jennifer
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was so excited to do square foot gardening. We built the boxes just as the book says. We purchased Mel's mix already made and even made some of our own just the way the book says to do it. We spent over $200 on the soil. I justified the cost because I knew we would have the best garden ever and all that it produced would be worth it. Nothing could grow. I talked with our local nursery and he said the soil is way too hot. As I have visited with experienced gardners I have learned you cannot put that much compost in your soil. It burns the plants. This is my second year using my garden boxes. I purchased some regular top soil for about $14 and mixed it half and half with Mel's soil. My garden is doing much better, although the soil is still too hot. I just wanted to take the time to let anyone know not to waste your money.
 All New Square Foot Gardening July 14, 2010
Valerie S. Kime (Montana USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book, even for beginning gardeners who wish to try growing food and/or flowers. I followed the directions and put up my garden in one afternoon!
 Nicely organized July 8, 2010
Katherine Frush
I highly reccommend this book, as he has spent 12 years developing his highly innovative method that literally rethinks everything about gardening. Imagine being able to spend under $150 and have fresh veggies most of the seasons of the year! Our new home has much less room for a garden, and we have missed the fresh veggies we used to grow. We didn't miss the work, though! Mel's book clearly shows we can have our veggies and our leisure, too. Mel's directions are clear, and he shows you how to save money, time, and work, and how to enjoy organic food from your home economically! This is something most people can do, and it can add immeasurably to your health and well being!
Mel's NEWEST square foot gardening book July 8, 2010
Kay
Square foot gardening is so fun and simple! You can garden in a small space and even put your boxes on stands so that you do not have to bend over when you work in your garden. Mel has lots of great ideas and tips. He even has a soil mix that can't be beat. My plants grow two and three times faster as well as healthier using only three ingredients. Thanks to Mel, I have a successful and fun garden right on my patio!All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 299
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