Square Foot Gardening was first developed in 1976 by Mel Bartholomew. He turned this simple concept, first into a very successful retirement and, unwittingly, an extremely successful second career with many social projects thrown in. He developed a television program that became the longest running gardening show on television and one of the longest running shows on PBS period.
After many mediocre attempts at gardening here in Tucson, I have decided to give Mel's method a try. What makes it different is that everything is arranged in one foot squares (hence the name) of six inches of a special soil mixture. It was fun piecing the box together and coming up with my "greenhouse" topper, too.
So, in a four foot square, six inch high, weed-free space I am (hopefully) going to grow and harvest tomatoes, beans, chiles, herbs, greens, mesclun, and even nasturtiums (Did you know they're good in salads?). I'll keep you posted on the progress of my experiment.
For my crop choices I tried to pick a lot of heritage plants from the southwest. I went down to The Native Seed Search (they're slogan is "Ancient Seeds for Modern Needs") to see what I could find. I found exactly what I was looking for! I picked some native herbs, a regional low-moisture tomato, and two varieties of chile. I also picked their favorite lemon basil. I'm looking forward to growing these out. The tomatoes sound especially good and are supposed to yield "hundreds" of fruits. Yum!
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