Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work
by Mel Bartholomew
published
April 2nd 2005
(first published 2006)
by Rodale Books
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binding
Paperback, 352 pages
isbn
1579548563
(isbn13: 9781579548568)
description
One of the bestselling garden books ever is fresher than ever! Ready to inspire a whole new generation of gardeners.When he created the "square f...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 533)
Read in April, 2008
I guess whatever works for people is great, and it seems like he has a lot of converts...but I sure wasn't crazy about Mel's method and even less so about his delivery. It is like listening to a used car salesman - and immediately after saying that while I was reading, I read the next paragraph, where he compared his book to a brand new shiny Cadillac. Sheesh.
He essentially advocates container gardening, cloaked in the guise of shallow 6" raised beds. The beds are self-contained, f...more
He essentially advocates container gardening, cloaked in the guise of shallow 6" raised beds. The beds are self-contained, f...more
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Read in January, 2007
I first heard about this gardening method either watching the church's annual general report or seeing a link to it on the LDS.org website. It was highlighted in a story about teaching poor people in third world countries or in big cities with tiny plots of growing space to start gardens. The church would go in to teach and most of the time they used this method. I was intrigued so I bought the book.
We always had a garden growing up and all I remember is LOTS AND LOTS OF WEEDING and never ...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
to anyone wanting garden (also renters) & for creative ideas
My garden is based on this book, so I'm giving it 5 stars - positive thinking to ensure an excellent garden! The writing could be better, but I HAVE to say - although it's not sophisticated, the advice is sound, logical, and easy to follow. The book is organized fairly well, so it's pretty easy to find an answer to a question when you need it. Do you HAVE to have the book to do sq.ft. gardening? No - you can find what you need with some sluething around online. Does the book come in handy? ...more
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As a farm boy who never really wanted to farm, I do spend a great deal of time being nostalgic about my bucolic days in the country. At any rate, even though I refuse to have anything to do with cows (with the exception of eating them), I do at times return to the soil and grow a mess of vegetables.
Unfortunately, living in a gentrified urban area means that our small garden plot suffers from the usual ills of a former-ghetto environment -- do shards of glass count as clay, sand, or loam? W...more
Unfortunately, living in a gentrified urban area means that our small garden plot suffers from the usual ills of a former-ghetto environment -- do shards of glass count as clay, sand, or loam? W...more
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I agree with the review just before mine in almost every respect. What I personally found most insensitive in the book was his plan to bring his method of farming to so-called "developing nations". The way he talked about it was so patronizing that if only I had read that first (it's at nearly the end of the book) I would have never read any further. He dismisses other cultures' diets in a single sentence and, as the previous reviewer notes, acts like the only reason people anywhere ...more
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Read in October, 2007
Wow! so much better than the first addition. Really, the graphics are super great and so explicit! My favorite photo is of all the required equipment to sustain a "square foot garden", a bucket, a pencil and a trowel.
The other night I had a dream that all my friends and family lived in a brightly colored stucco building and we picked fruit from our orchard and an italian man drove up in a truck with hay on the back to deliver stuff. We were all in love and it was so colorful. I'm sur...more
The other night I had a dream that all my friends and family lived in a brightly colored stucco building and we picked fruit from our orchard and an italian man drove up in a truck with hay on the back to deliver stuff. We were all in love and it was so colorful. I'm sur...more
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Read in October, 2006
recommends it for:
gardeners
I don't rate this book highly because of the prose, but because the method works. Mel is a very friendly author. The concept is brilliant but simple, which I believe is the hallmark of a truly great idea. If you want a garden but don't want all the wasted effort and inefficient use of resources, this is the method for you. Then again, if you'd rather sweat your stress out, this is probably not your book. Mr. Bartholomew keeps his language simple and direct, at times even provincial and repe...more
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Read in June, 2004
recommends it for:
gardeners!
this is my favorite gardening book. what can i say? there's a man with a neck beard on the cover. his name is mel. mel is more or less my favorite person on the planet. he retired from his job as an engineer at 42 and then turned to gardening. when you set an engineer loose in a backyard gardening, you get precision gardening. basically, he figured out how closely you can plant things so that you get the maximum yield per square foot. each individual plant produces less, but the overall y...more
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Read in January, 1981
recommends it for:
everyone
Mel Bartholomew lays out the strategy for more efficient use of garden space in a very entertaining manner. His basic plan is to lay out the garden in four foot by four foot blocks, with seed or seedlings laid out according to their need for space. By growing on a grid, plants have all the room they need to grow, but the area used can be kept to a manageable size. Trailing, vine-y plants are grown vertically on trellises to further reduce garden space. This was the first gardening book I eve...more
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I love the idea of square foot gardening. This is our first year trying it and thus far the garden is producing well.
This book explains the basic concepts, shows you how to build the boxes, make the Mix and how to plant. It's enough to get you started.
It doesn't really deal with the plants once you plant them though. It doesn't talk about bugs or diseases or when to harvest. I also found it lacking information on how many of certain types of plants to put in a square and had to f...more
This book explains the basic concepts, shows you how to build the boxes, make the Mix and how to plant. It's enough to get you started.
It doesn't really deal with the plants once you plant them though. It doesn't talk about bugs or diseases or when to harvest. I also found it lacking information on how many of certain types of plants to put in a square and had to f...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommended to Belinda by:
a blog commenterrecommends it for: amateur or beginner or wannabe gardeners
Loved it. Now I'm seriously psyched, and ready to get started this weekend! I almost feel like I should withhold my final judgment until I see if the techniques really work, but I don't have much doubt. I can't count the number of times I got into gardening only to give up after the first partial harvest, OR decided to "read up" on it first and then gave up before even getting started because everything seemed so darn complicated and labor-intensive. Send soil samples from several ...more
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Read in April, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone who wants to grow their own food
This is a very good book for anyone interested in growing food crops in a limited space. His techniques are very different from normal "row" planting but they certainly produce (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun).
On the downside, the I thought the author was kind of braggy and boastful. It was basically do it his way or don't do it at all. he's very particular on the three components used to make the "soil" in his system (one of which is had to find except for ordering fr...more
On the downside, the I thought the author was kind of braggy and boastful. It was basically do it his way or don't do it at all. he's very particular on the three components used to make the "soil" in his system (one of which is had to find except for ordering fr...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone who wants to successfully garden
AWESOME!!! This is a MUST read for those who feel that they have failed at gardening or are too overwhelmed to try. Mel shows you the easy and effective way to garden and enjoy it! Follow his suggestion and don't overwhelm yourself the first year you are gardening. Start small (one box) and you don't necessarily need to try to extend the growing season the first year either. But definitely follow his recipe for Mel's Mix: 1/3 compost (of at least 5 different ingredients), 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 v...more
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Read in July, 2008
I really like this method of gardening. It really works and looks very nice in the yard - I also like the plant dictionary at the end - very helpful. This makes gardening so much easier for those of us who have very little time to spend gardening. (No more rototilling, endless weeding, too many tomatoes!) I got this from the library, but now I think I'm going to buy it because it's good just to have on hand. (I gave it only 4 stars because the author is nauseatingly self-congratulatory and ...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommended to Annette by:
Tyrarecommends it for: anyone interested in gardening
Now that I've read this book, I'm really excited about starting a Square Foot Garden! Since we are novices we are going to start out small with two 4x4 foot gardens. We have already made the two boxes and we have planned where we are going to put them. We have purchased the ingredients for Mel's Mix and I plan on going out to buy the seeds sometime in the next two weeks. Then, around Memorial day we'll be planting! I have even been inspired to start my own compost! Now that the weather is w...more
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10 comments
Read in February, 2008
recommended to Kristen by:
Sara
The ideas in this book are great and we have planted our garden using the square foot gardening method. His ideas are great and I expect that we'll get a lot more food out of the same amount of space this year.
The only drawback to this book is that it is EXTREMELY repetitive. The whole thing could probably have fit on a single sheet of paper, plus the appendix with information about specific plants and seeds. A quick skim gives you the idea and then you can always return to look up answer...more
The only drawback to this book is that it is EXTREMELY repetitive. The whole thing could probably have fit on a single sheet of paper, plus the appendix with information about specific plants and seeds. A quick skim gives you the idea and then you can always return to look up answer...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
Family Gardiners
A local Texas A&M satellite offered a workshop on the square foot method of gardening this past spring and number 1 DD, a volunteer with our community’s “Live Green” gardening program, gained some hands-on experience with it. Unable to attend the workshop or volunteer in the community garden, I purchased the book in hopes that I’d at last be able to get our family’s “Victory Garden” underway. Alas, the best laid plans….I gathered wonderful gardening data and excellent inspir...more
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Read in January, 2007
I got this new edition of SFG thinking it had to be better than the original volume but I was wrong. As it turns out, all bibliographies on small-space/intensive gardening that I've read so far recommend the old version.
For the entire book the author goes on and on selling his method, like when the author writes that if the garden bed doesn't have a grid on the surface, then it's not SFG-ready.
That might work great with gardeners used to very conventional gardening manuals; but on a book th...more
For the entire book the author goes on and on selling his method, like when the author writes that if the garden bed doesn't have a grid on the surface, then it's not SFG-ready.
That might work great with gardeners used to very conventional gardening manuals; but on a book th...more
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Read in February, 2008
This is the book we're using to plant our garden this year. We live on post and can't dig up their yard and test it for acid content, etc. My father in law whipped up the garden in no time, the soil parts were easy to come by (except the compost, but I think that's because we are so anxious to start that we jumped the gone on the seasonal items), we'll see how it works! The book is fun, easy, lots of great pictures, straightforward - exactly what a novice gardener needs to know. And how fun ...more
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Read in March, 2008
I learned a lot from this book and am glad that I read it. I will be changing some things in my garden this year because of it. The only thing is that the guy is way more anal than I could ever be, so not everything thing applied. Also he gave a lot of attention to things that need to be done in places with real winters, it made me grateful that I live in California. Gardens in the rest of the country sound way to complex! I have to give it 3 stars rather than 4 just because it was informa...more
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