Small Space Gardening

Lesson 2: Designing Your Square Foot Garden

Further Information on Soil Preparation

Soil Improvement Example

Five years ago I decided to turn my 10 foot by 10 foot backyard into a garden because I was craving more gardening space around my townehouse. At the end of August, I used a flat-edged shovel to slice the “grass” off my yard. Then my father brought over several large bags of nicely chopped leaves. We spread a good 6 inches or more over the entire new garden bed. These were left over the winter to allow earthworms time to eat the leaves and redistribute them through the soil (almost pure clay) during the winter. The next May I had someone come with a rototiler to dig up my yard. He commented on the nice rich soil I had for gardening. Although I wasn’t applying “square foot gardening” methods at the time, this experience taught me that SMALL gardens can develop good quality soil in very short time spans. Square foot gardeners are able to make necessary soil improvements their first year of gardening without the tremendous effort and expense it would take to accomplish in a traditional garden in the same time period.

Soil pH

The pH of soil is simply a measurement of how acidic or alkaline the soil is. The pH is measured on a scale of 1 to 14. A measurement of 6.50-7.5 is considered neutral. A measurement lower than 6.5 means your soil is acidic and a measurement higher than 7.5 means your soil is alkaline. You can learn your soil’s pH by either purchasing a home testing kit or by sending a sample to your nearest soil testing lab. Some garden centers offer this service too. If you do your own testing, be sure to follow the package instructions carefully so your results will be accurate. You can learn more about pH here.

Soil Fertility

There are home tests for determining the Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium available in your soil. You can also buy electronic instruments to give you these measurements. If this is your first time gardening, I’d suggest you contact your local Agriculture Extension agent and ask about having this test done in a professional laboratory. The lab will send you the test results and make definite recommendations on how to improve your soil using either organic fertilizers or inorganic fertilizers. Again, doing the test yourself can easily lead to inaccurate results.

Decision Time

It is essential that you decide if you will garden in your existing ground (improved or not) or, if you will build raised beds. I strongly encourage you to use raised beds for several reasons? First, raised beds with a neat border are nice looking. Second, it is easier to improve soil in a raised bed than in the ground. You may simply clear grass or weeds off the soil and cover it with a thick layer of newspaper or even use landscape fabric to prevent weeds from growing up through your new garden bed. Then you can either make your own soil mix or have a load of quality top soil dumped in your beds. Third, raised beds automatically have better drainage than in-ground garden beds.

If you decide to garden in your existing ground, you need to dig out at least six inches of existing soil, add appropriate amendments to it based on the results of your soil pH and fertility testing, and the need to add more organic matter, then mix it well and put it back in the garden bed. Some people with exceptionally poor soil decide to simply remove six inches of soil to another location in their landscape and proceed as if they had a raised bed. The choice is up to you.

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