Square foot gardening - why for, how come?

I'd never heard of square-foot gardening (what it's supposed to look like, above) until my wife, Kristy, announced that it was what we should do. We wanted to take our home food production to the next level, which in this case meant, you know, a level. Any level. Trudging to the grocery store every couple of weeks to replace the broccoli we had to throw out because we never got around to eating it didn't count. But how?

Our house is in the city, and while we have a decent-sized yard it's not conducive to long rows of corn and beans. Almost all of our limited flat, open space is used by the dogs for their dirty, sinful outside business, and I'd already served notice that Chloe (right, protecting our friend Ben at the Green River) digging up my tender young vegetable seedlings on top of her proclivity for murdering possums and peeing in the floor every couple of weeks for no reason whatsoever could mean new living arrangements for one of us. So Kristy found square-foot gardening. Apparently, it's all the rage, man.

The idea is sensible: You theoretically can grow a lot in a small amount of space. Maintenance is minimal. Your biggest problem will be what to do with all the damn food. We could have built our own square-foot garden, it has been suggested, but if I'd "built" it it would have been a square-anywhere-from-8-to-14-inch abomination against geometry requiring wood that could be bent into a half-circle. I'm not a carpenter.

So we bought two, coming in pre-cut cedar. They were much too expensive, but all of the angles are 90 degrees. Can you really put a price on that? We also purchased All New Square Foot Gardening. It has charts and graphs and tips out the wazoo, which is to be expected, I guess, from "The Book That Changed The Gardening World!"

But why the whole square-foot thing? Well, author Mel Bartholomew tells you. And tells you. It gets rather tiresome, actually, but to him it's a critical part of maintaining the organization that makes square-foot gardening, well, square-foot gardening. For instance, one tomato plants fits on one square foot. Four bell peppers should fit in one square foot. Twelve radishes. Etc. Etc. If I can ever get anything to grow, I'll let you know if he's right.

Bartholomew also argues that traditional gardening, with its rows and tilling and weeding, is actually a really inefficient use of time and space. I helped my grandfather with his quarter-acre plot from the time to time, and while I loved it I have to agree. Your life is dedicated to fighting weeds, and even then you will likely lose. Those bastards just don't give up. It's like they want to live or something. You will also lose a lot of dirt when it rains because without said weeds the topsoil runs free like a 5-year-old in Chuck E. Cheese. Most of the garden space goes not to vegetable-producing plants but area for you to walk around muttering to yourself.

In a square-foot garden, everything's right there. You monitor your soil completely, and a barrier underneath prevents any other plants from trying to horn in on the action. Most importantly to me and my dreams of an organic garden, there's also an opportunity to control insect pests with plants that naturally repel said insect pests. At least, that's supposed to happen. I'm not sure what my marigolds would have repelled last year because the slugs, all hopped up on goofballs because of the thousand inches of rain we got, devoured them nearly as fast as I could plant them. Christ. I thought slugs were supposed to be slow. (Note to self: This year, look for a plant that repels slugs. I'm sure that plant, whatever it is, will attract killer bees or something, but I'll cross that bridge if I survive long enough to get to it).

Anyway. That's a brief history of why we are aspiring to be square-foot gardeners. I say aspiring because right now I'm more of a square-foot dirt gazer. Chin up, Ron, chin up ...

Next week: Preparing for the move.