Want to have a fun project with the kids? Start a family garden in your own backyard, a Square Foot Garden (SFG). It’s a whole new way to garden, and it’s not only quick and easy to learn, but it’s fun for everyone. To start an SFG, you merely build a 6-inch deep wood box, fill it with a super soil mix, lay down a grid to divide the surface into individual square feet, and start planting. It’s all that easy.

No Work Means More Fun
The nice thing about SFG is that it eliminates all of the bickering, whining, and disappointment of a conventional big garden where the kids have to do all the weeding and the parents do all the decision-making. SFG takes up so little space; now each person, young or old, can have his own garden box with his own squares to plant. That way, each person can decide what she wants to plant all by herself since each will take care of her own garden. That pride of ownership will prompt each one to take extra good care of it, and he or she will strive to make it the very best one.

SFG encourages you to plant a different crop in each square foot so you can have flowers, vegetables, and herbs all together in the same garden, yet each plant has all the space it needs in its own square foot.

Location, Location, Location
Before we get into all the advantages and pleasures of a family garden, let’s review the basics of SFG. First is finding the best location. One of the biggest advantages of SFG is that it takes only 20 percent of the space of a conventional, old-fashioned single row garden, yet it produces 100 percent of the harvest. That means it can be located much closer to the house, which is just one of the many advantages. That big, inefficient, single-row garden with all those wasted three-foot-wide rows was always located way out back, out of sight, then out of mind, especially when the weeds got taller than the plants. Besides being close to the house, the site should receive 6 to 8 hours of sunlight, shouldn’t puddle after rain, and should be away from any trees or shrubbery.

Ten Basics
Next, there are ten basics of SFG, which are laid out on our website www.squarefootgardening.com. The first step is to think in squares, not in rows. Your garden becomes a series of 4' × 4' bottomless boxes (3' × 3' for children) laid down on the ground with a 3' aisle between all boxes. There can be variations, but that is the basic size. The idea is that you walk around your boxes and reach in to tend your garden, so you never walk on your growing soil and pack it down. The boxes can be built from new or scrap wood, and they should be at least 6 to 8 inches deep. Once you have your boxes down, you dig out any grass or weeds inside the box and cover that area with a piece of cardboard or landscape cloth to keep any new weeds from coming up. Next, you fill the boxes with a special all-natural growing soil we call Mel’s Mix. It is composed of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 blended compost, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite, all available at your local garden center. After filling the box and wetting down the soil, you place a 1' × 1' grid on top of the soil mix to indicate every square foot. Plastic, wood, or bamboo strips can form the grid.

1, 4, 9, or 16 Plants Per Square Foot
Now you are ready to plant. Depending on the ultimate size of the plants, you can space one, four, nine, or sixteen plants into each square foot. Draw a line in the soil with your fingers to divide each square foot into the proper spacing. You can start with seeds planted directly in the soil or you can buy or raise transplants. Vine crops, such as tomatoes and squash, can be grown on a trellis constructed on the north side of each box— see the SFG book for all the details.

Continuous Harvest
Since each square foot will be planted with a different crop, some squares will mature and be harvested before others. This is not a problem. Actually it is an asset to the garden, because as soon as one square is harvested, you mix a trowel full of compost into the soil and plant a new crop in that square foot without disturbing everything around it. If you use a good homemade blended compost made from many different ingredients (see our website for details on composting), you won’t need a fertilizer in your garden. Square Foot Gardening is an all-natural method. We do not use insecticides or pesticides or even fertilizers. This simplifies gardening so much, especially concerning children, and it eliminates many of the worries of using chemicals around the house.

A New Experience for Your Family
You will see your children blossom as their garden grows. Kids love gardening, and just imagine the new avenues of communication that will open between all the generations including grandparents. Let the kids teach them something new.