Lesson 4: Applying the Square Foot Gardening Principles in to Other Garden Styles
The square foot garden is adaptable to many types of specialized gardening. Many people live in homes with very small yards. If you are in a “townehouse” or “condominium”, you may only have a narrow space to garden in along a sidewalk or driveway. There is no rule that your 16 square feet of garden space has to be laid out in a perfect 4 foot square. Perhaps, 16 1-foot square blocks along a sidewalk would be most suitable for flowering plants. Alternatively, you may want to plant your 16 square foot blocks in a double row next to your porch to display ornamental plants. This section and the next section will talk about just a few ideas for adapting the square foot garden to special purposes. After reading these sections, you will no doubt have some ideas of your own.
Objective
•Students will begin thinking about how they can apply square foot gardeningl methods to specialty gardens.
Enabling Gardens
Square Foot Gardening is ideal for the physically impaired gardener. Handling just 16 square feet of garden space is easier for everyone, healthy or not. It may be the only way to garden for the disabled. A square foot garden produces more crops in 20% of the space an average home garden takes. This eliminates much of the work and time needed for taking care of the garden.
I know from personal experience, that a raised bed garden, kept small, is easier to take care of from a sitting position than any other garden style. I found that even raised beds can be difficult to reach (only 6” higher than the ground level). This past garden season I resorted to buying “retainer wall blocks” which are 8” high. That extra two inches really made a difference in my ability to take care of the plants from a sitting position.
If you happen to be physically limited, perhaps you could have a garden table built for you. The “table” portion would have sides 6” deep or more, as you desire. This table could be mounted on two sawhorses or legs. You could raise the table to the height best for your individual needs. Commercial garden tables are now being sold by some garden suppliers. They don’t necessary consist of 16 square feet, but the idea is the same. You can then divide your garden table into 1-foot square garden blocks. Then you simply follow the square foot gardening methods. The only limitation I see is that this type of garden would not be suitable for flowering plants that need more than one season of growth.
Building a garden table outside isn’t allowed where I live. I devised my own square foot garden by lining up cement retaining wall blocks that are approximately 1 foot square and 8” in height. These blocks set in a single row along my back sidewalk, and in a double row against one side of my townhouse. I can reach the plants in these blocks very easily while sitting in a lawn chair. I also combined 3 of these blocks into a porch “flower box”.
Although I resorted to these blocks to enable me to continue to garden without getting on my knees or having to dig in the ground, I discovered that the cement blocks seem to maintain a better soil temperature for growing plants. They don’t dry out as fast in dry weather and drain very quickly (no bottom to the blocks) in rainy weather. My plants thrived in them right through a partial drought last year! I had several winter wet sensitive plants survive this past winter while similar plants in normal garden beds succumbed to our crazy winter. This experience totally convinced me of the value of this style gardening (cement blocks and square foot gardening). I’ll install this garden when I move to a smaller townhouse in the near future.
