All New Square Foot Gardening | Mel Bartholomew

All New Square Foot Gardening | Mel Bartholomew | The new Square Foot Gardening

books:

All New Square Foo...

	All New Square Foot Gardening Mel Bartholomew Cool Springs Press, 2006 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 87 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Do you know what the best feature is in All New Square Foot Gardening?

Sure, there are ten new features in this all-new, updated book. Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground.

But, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a Square Foot garden. Children, adults with limited mobility, even complete novices can achieve spectacular results.

But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them.

1) New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square Foot Garden needs just twenty percent of the space of a traditional garden.

2) New Direction - Locate your garden on top of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or the never-ending soil improvements.

3) New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. Why, we even give you the recipe. Best of all, you can even buy the different types of compost needed.

4) New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true--the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.

5) No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer-ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.

6) New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed aboveground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).

7) New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.

8) New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize the planting squares and know how to space for maximum harvest.

9) New Seed Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch- literally two or three seeds--per planting hole.

10) Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable.

Of course, that's not all. We've also included simple, easy-to-follow instructions using lots of photos and illustrations. You're going to love it!

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Better than expected

In these days of so much hype to sell products, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book is and does exactly what was promised. Well worth the money for the information contained between the covers. We have already made and planted our garden. By the seventh day we have radish, squash, zucchini, spinach and green bean sprouts!

The new Square Foot Gardening

This soft-back book has helped get me out in the garden. It is well-organized, gives tables of how many seeds go in each square, and has a certain humorous approach that makes the reading far from dry. Following these directions, we spent about $200 to put two frames in (32 squares), planted according to directions, and I've got 2-inch tall seedlings of beans, peas, corn, watermelon and some herbs. Quite satisfied with the book and the price of it.

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Great gardening book

My husband insisted on this book and it provides great detailed information on container gardening. He has used it to build a large garden area full of containers as well as protective mechanisms to protect the new plants from frost. If you are considering container gardening - I would recommend this book.

redundant and annoying style, but hopefully the method works...

this book is so repetitive and redundant-- it really drove me nuts. it's a quick easy read, most of the author's points are common sensical and easy to understand, so why does he have to "sell" his method so hard? i had already decided this was what i wanted to do based on his website, but hoped the book would teach me more. with the exception of the frost/planting chart at the back of the book, it didn't add anything new to my knowledge... i am still using the method and m first crop is just now coming up, so i do recommend the book, but just be forewarned that it is written as if for dummies.

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Easy way to do intensive gardening

I've heard of Mel's book for quite a few years, with friends using his techniques. I have used the old Victory Garden intensive gardening techniques with great results, and hydroponics for most of my edible crops like toms, cukes, melons etc. I got this to try growing something without using energy for pumps, etc. Just got the first spring plantings in, will know the results soon.
Very easy to follow, he uses the old 'first I'll tell you what I'm going to tell you, then I'll tell you, then I'll say what I told you' repetition format to drive home the basics, so even a modern public school graduate can understand it.
He uses a home made planting mix and standard intensive gardening techniques to great affect, well organized for easy reference, worth a read if you love to play with gardens, and even better if you have any handicaps, or are just getting a bit older like me.
Recommended highly!

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