Kitchen Garden Forum

HI
I'm new to the forum,anybody out there using the square foot system?
Is it worth doing?
martin.f

Looks like a good idea to get you to buy a book!

Just seems a lot of bother to me...but then I've got 11 acres to play with

Hi Martin,
I had a go with square foot gardening last year in a small 4' x 4' raised bed, and grew mainly salads and herbs - beetroot, rocket, mizuna, spring onions, radish, parsley, coriander, and red salad bowl lettuce, with each crop filling two squares each in a sort of random chequered pattern. When a crop was finished I replaced it with a sowing of something else from the list, although some of the crops occupied their squares all through the season. I found it worked well, and planted more closely than in a conventional row. The system certainly yielded much more than I expected. I'm not sure about trying taller veg, though - they might cast too much shade on the others, being so close together.
Best of luck!
Lyn

I use 20ft by 4ft beds. You don't tread on them. Put compost and manure on and treat as deep beds.

Low maintenance - high yield as close crops.

PS - I've got 7 acres and find raised beds ideal for veg and adapted beds ideal for fruit.

7 acres 11 acres OK I'm really envious Tigger and Vivie.

My and the OH have got his and hers allotments and a few very small raised beds at home to play with. We do rows on the allotments but plant in blocks on the raised beds at home and you get far more yield, so long as you feed and manure those beds well. I don't think you have to stick rigidly to the square foot system Martin, just think squares of crops, not lines.

I put tall things in the middle and grow lower stuff each side. Most salad leaves will tolerate the shadier side, as will beetroots and the lusher herbs like coriander and parsley. I also grow climbing beans up my tomatoes and sweetcorn to eak a bit more crop out of the bed - borlotti work well as you can harvest once at the season's end for dried beans and save knocking things around too much.

Sue

I know! 7 acres, 11 acres, sob!
I've got a back garden (had to give up the allotment.) Not much chance of much else here in Northants. It's squires and spires country - all the land's owned by the aristocracy or the church.

Jenny, I've got a caravan and a couple of tents, you find out where one of them lives and we can do a pikey invasion. With that much land, they won't notice a quiet little encampment down one end. If we are luck Chantal can join us and bring her lulu tent.

I'm in, have Lulu, will travel.

You don't need to bring the Lulu tent 'cos we have a very acceptable outside loo, with hot water for washing. OH decided it was essential when he saw how much mud I could traipse into the house in a given day!

You won't need a primus either as there's an outside kitchen in the orchard, complete with large barbeque, pizza oven and chiminea. Very posh.

Before you get too excited though - I've been waiting for an inside kitchen and a utility for over 20 years. You can see where our priorities lie. There were no windows in the bedroom for the first three years, when it snowed in and the windows moved up the list of things to do. I'll probably have cataracts before we finish the inside of the house, so I'll never see it! Good job I like being outside.

By the way - OH is a joiner and furniture maker and can take me to see any number of lovely kitchens he's made, but they're all in other people's houses. Cobblers and shoes, methinks.

Back to square foot gardening - if you watched today's/tonight's Great Food Live you will have seen our very own KG man Toby Buckland extolling the virtues of square foot gardening.

If any of you want the detail, it's on the UK Food TV Website.

There's me in a small corner (4 acres) of my 20 acres of hillside and I can't live there, just day trips to the caravans. In this crazy world the 20 acres cost less than the extra we would have had to pay to get a house with 1 or 2 acres rather than a house and small garden
Allan

I'm like Allan, my 11 acres was all I could get hold of, after over a year of searching. The nearest alloments are 20 miles alway and there is a waiting list!

I am also renting my land and was looking to pay about £500 per year if I could get something big enough to have crops surplus to our own requirement. My initial aim was to be self sufficient in the veg and egg production with enough sales to cover the cost of the rent. However I ended up paying £800 per year, but have got £200 back by letting it for winter grazing. However the sheep have to be evicted this week so that I can get some plants in the ground.

Half of the land is very boggy and growing reed grass, so will be unusable for veg, but the reed grass needs cutting and will provide (dried) bedding for the ducks and organic matter for the compost bins.

I intend to use about 2 acres for veg growing this year and the remaining grass area will have a hay cut taken in early July.

This is my first full year with the field, so I'm full of optimism and excitement! Beats an office job for a living!

viv, keep in touch. I have been at it 17 years and still not really making worthwhile profits if you consider all the investment and cost of travelling.but must have learnt a lot on the way
The most important lesson by far on sales is create your own identity, label everything with home printed labels and use plastic bags to pack everything.Avery Labelpro will make the labels easy. If you do that, it matters far more to the customer to have a trust between them and the grower than any Organic certification.

PMSL peter and his pikey invasion. How long do we have to go unnoticed before we can claim the land?
To those who are already landed gentry, can I ask if you have any problems with designated land use rules? Can you just switch from paddock to market garden easily for example?

Well - you've opened a can of worms here. You may have to stop me..........

When we arrived in 1985, we had agricultural ratings of £85 per year because the previous family ( for generations going back over 100 years and more) had registered it as a smallholding. The fact that they hadn't used it as such wasn't an issue.

We brought the land back into use, initially doing the whole 'Good Life' thing with pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, turkeys, anything.

Then we worked out how many mouths we were feeding each day - ate them and got interested in growing things.

In the meantime we've had Poll Tax and now Council Tax. Agricultural rates disappeared unless the main earner could claim a living from the land, in which case it became a commercial property instead of a private one - more tax.

We now pay just short of £1,900.00 per year Council Tax, for which they won't even collect our bins unless we take them to the nearest main road.

I'll stop this now before you get the full moaning, tedious detail........Especially as I've been to our local Council Offices today as I've discovered that they've been logging my Council Tax payments against a property of the same name, 12 miles away, and they're trying to say I haven't paid my bills. Good job I have receipts!