The area is about 600m²

3 x 10 Plan

After being inspired by Mel Bartholomew’s ‘Square foot Garden’s’, we’ve started planning for our own. This method is extremely accessible for anyone to try and is perfect for urban spaces, rural projects and it doesn't matter if you’ve been gardening all your life or if your complete new. This is a space conserving, intensive and low maintenance way to grow your vegetables.

We will be sharing our process, progress, findings and sources here as we go so can have a go too.

Why use a square foot garden? In the time where space is becoming limited, and our human footprint is becoming ever larger, the importance of conserving both space and material is vital. We wanted to use a method that:

1) required only a small space 2) would have a good yield 3) be low cost/low maintenance/Low impact on the environment.

Survey

Deciding where to put our Square foot garden was a matter of finding a flat patch of earth with good sun and where the wind wouldn't be so strong. Luckily the north west and eastern quarter beyond the garden are tree heavy, providing a little cover from high winds

This unfortunately means that the early morning sun rises behind the tree line, throwing partial shade until mid morning. To optimize the sunlight, and to make sure all the plants are getting their fair share, we planned to put the taller plants such as Turkish rocket, campions, onions and orpine on the North/West side of our square to avoid shading the smaller ones, which are on the South/East side, facing the sun for the majority of the day.

Square Foot Gardens can real be any dimension you want so find a space and design one that fits in with the garden. We chose a 3×10 Design, long and thin, with room for a trellis system on the North end for climbers. These can be grown outside the box, to make more room for other veg, or inside the box if your space is very tight.

Analysis

We’ve decided to grow almost exclusively perennial vegetables and herbs but depending on what you like you may what to plant annuals or a mix. First we listed all the ones we’d ideally like to grow and afterwards we made a chart the variables each one needs to survive and flourish, this included:

- The type of soil each plant prefers (well drained, reasonably drained, fertile, dry etc.) - The amount of sun/shade (Full sun, partial shade, shade lover etc.) - Any interesting notes on harvesting/caring for the plant (include height) (What part of plants can be harvested, time of harvest, how the plant germinates) - If the plant is attractive to bee’s - The plants Hardiness zone (HZ1, HZ2, HZ3, etc.)

We did this with a list of herbs as well, listing which ones that would assist in the overall productivity of the Garden but also ones we would use regularly and that naturally repel insects, or attract Bee’s for example.

- Lavender: Moths, scorpions, fleas and flies, including mosquitoes - Rosemary: Repels Cabbage loop, flea beetles, squash bugs, white flies and the small white - Basil: Repels flies, mosquitoes, carrot flies, asparagus beetles and whiteflies - Mint: Repels biting insects - Lemon Grass: Repels mosquitoes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pest-repelling_plants

Design

After several sketches and reworking, we decided on our planting layout. One of the first things we considered was the idea and risk of planting in groups. The plan below is of a garden containing vegetables exclusively from the nightshade family. The problem with planting vegetables from the same family in such close proximity is that those families will be more likely to catch and spread the same diseases and parasites. Because they’re so close together, these diseases or parasites can easily damage the entire harvest.

put your table here

Wanting to avoid this, we have chosen to distance vegetables from the same family from one another.

put your table here

Although this may seem overly cautious and some might say it’s unnecessary, when trying to conserve materials, seeds and of course the harvest this method of grouping will considerably lower the chances of loosing your crop. It will also, hopefully, reduce maintenance if one of the plants does become infected as you will only have to deal with one square rather than several.