All New Square Foot Gardening | Mel Bartholomew

All New Square Foot Gardening | Mel Bartholomew | Great book for the not so hot gardener

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All New Square Foo...

	All New Square Foot Gardening Mel Bartholomew Cool Springs Press, 2006 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 118 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Makes Gardening Easy

Straight forward easy to follow step by step instruction for basic gardening. my husband and I followed the steps and we've had great results in out garden. No pests or problems to report.

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Great book for the not so hot gardener

Great book with information explaining why this type garden works and why it is easy to maintain. I have a big yard, but I want several small gardens that are easy to maintain. A friend told me about the PBS shows he saw and told me buy the book. I plan to start this fall. The book gives all the information I need.

Square Foot Gardening

Best Gardening book I've ever read. I can do this.!! One Square Foot at a time. It takes out the weeding (no fun) out of gardening. I've even found free wood like the author suggests.Will be planting vegetables and flowers this fall.

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ALL NEW

The Original Square Foot Gardening book was an inspiration and kept me interested in gardening for many years. I always used the information loosely, but the new book has me excited again, and I plan on doing my garden over completely. I haven't got results on the garden to report, but the result of the book is that I plan on following the instructions to the letter this time.

You don't always have to listen to Mel!

I bought this book because I wanted some information on gardening intensively in raised beds. The best things about the book are the plant spacing guides and the timing charts in the back that help you know when to plant what, according to your frost dates. These are absolutely essential for the first time gardener, and I've referred to them many times. Aside for that, I don't care for Mel's writing style. He somehow comes off as pompous and condescending: "If you don't do __ , you don't have a square foot garden!" I don't care if I don't have a square foot garden, as Mel has defined it. I deviated from Mel's soil mix by purchasing landscape soil from a local company. My mix is 20% topsoil, 50-60% leaf compost, and the rest is sand. I also went 12 inches deep with the soil. It's nice to plant tomatoes deeply, and put carrots wherever I feel like it. Many, many people have admired my garden. It is incredibly productive and beautiful at the same time, with pictures that rival the author's. Oh, and that's another pet peeve--I wish the book had a few more photos, especially of trellised crops like tomatoes and melons. I can understand the need to start from scratch with your soil if you live in an area with terrible soils, but here in MI, the soil is nice to begin with. There's absolutely no reason to ignore great local resources if you have them. Instead of spending a fortune on the soil mix, I put my money into great-looking composite raised bed kits.

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