For all of the hype about square foot gardening and raised beds, when two of my sisters, both avid and experienced gardeners (better than I am) stopped by last week, we had a little discussion and all decided that raised beds and square foot gardening is less productive and harder than the time tested standard row garden.
I can hear it already, “Heresy!”
So, here is why three sisters in Minnesota are going back to row gardening:
- The raised beds dry out faster and hence need more water.
- The raised beds aren’t high enough to stop the back breaking work of weeding.
- The raised beds get just as weedy, if not more so after a few years of use, than regular in-ground beds.
- With the intensive planting of a square foot garden, if you go on vacation for a few days at just the time the weeds are coming in, you can lose a whole crop of root vegetables (carrots, onions, radishes, etc.) because as you pull out the weeds the intensively planted fledgling veggies also come out.
- Raised beds need tending at least 3 times a week. A standard row garden and you can get by with once a week weeding.
- It is a lot easier to work a hoe between rows of plants while standing up than to sit and constantly be bent over weeding in a raised bed.
- It seems to be actually easier to manage the fertility of the soil in a standard garden than in a raised bed – we don’t know why, we only know what is…
- It is easier to water the whole garden than individual plants.
- Intensive planting in small beds leads to more conflicts with companion planting.
- Lots of paperwork recording when you planted what, where, how to plan rotations, companions, etc.
- Expensive and time consuming to put in and get the right mix of soil in them.
I recently got this private email that Phil said I could share…
As in any system there good and bad things. Everything you say about them is true. My wife had a stroke 2 yrs ago in June and I had left my garden in beautiful green plots and when I came back to my garden the weeds had completely taken over. The soil/mix is so rich the weeds out grew my veggies and had gone to seed.
When I had laid out my garden, I laid weed barrier down and then covered it with wood mulch and now I have weeds everywhere. In desperation I have sprayed industrial strength vinegar, weed whacked, used a blow torch and finally I lowered myself and used some Roundup.
I’m thinking I will have to pull up everything and go back to doing it in the dirt. However, if one has the time, and energy to pamper their garden, you will get some fantastic results. but not massive amounts.”
-Phil
Don’t tear up everything! Just cover it with black plastic for a month and that should kill all of the weed seeds and anything else bad. I use black plastic and tarps to clear an area before I start a new garden – it works!
All that said, what is good about raised beds and square foot gardening?
- Fewer tools and no rototiller or cultivator needed.
- Good for wet areas.
- They can be very attractive.
- Great for someone who has the time and is obsessed with their garden – picking at it every day and never leaving home.
- It is easier to build little mini-greenhouses over the beds thus extending the growing season.
So, what do we three sisters see that could work?
- The original square foot gardens were in-ground – retains moisture and uses the soil that is there.
- Intensive planting and vertical growing can save a lot of space in a small garden plot.
- It is easier to fertilize and water a small garden.
- It is easier to fence a small garden and protect it from wildlife.
- You only need a shovel to dig it and because you don’t step in it the soil doesn’t compact.
We three sisters from Minnesota….. think Mel got obsessed and made a good thing too hard and complex.
I have had raised cinder block beds for 10 years and I also have an area of traditional row garden. The raised beds and the traditional garden are both auto drip-taped…so watering is easy. The beds were built over commercial grade landscape cloth (20 year guarantee), in 10 years I have pulled less than a wheelbarrow full of weeds…I hoe that many in a week with my traditional garden. My raised beds are planted year round…never too wet, easy to cover for frost or bug protection and the grounds warms faster, too. I love my raised beds..I get 3X the production of my traditional garden.
We used raised beds for root veggies because of our clay soil. I would never break them up for square foot gardening for the same reason you mentioned. Our beds are big and constructed using pressure treated 4x4s, one is 24′ x 8′ and one is 16′ x 16′. We purchased top soil to fill the beds. Both beds can be managed with a broadfork.
Chimming in with Lynda; with an added note…ALL gardens take WORK of some sort, and some gardeners seem to be allergic to that word. We put our SQFT on a drip hose, on a timer and we aren’t bound to it for watering. It also takes VERY little water…at least for ours (Mels Mix) in our area. We enjoy “low tunnel” covers so we’re able to start our garden earlier and see it though until late growing, and don’t fear hail & high winds demolishing our plants…if we are careful to watch weather forecast. Also, like Lynda says…we haven’t pulled but about a WalMart sack full of newly growing weeds in any of our seasons. We also put down the weed mat before we ever put our growing medium in so if a weed does sprout, it takes a thum and forefinger to pull them out. We don’t enter into any “back breaking” positions to tend any of our garden. We simply sit down on our cushion in a comfy position and take care of each 4×4. We’re able to reach all the way across without even moving our cushion, but if we move the cushion we can easily reach from any position. We also don’t need gloves to protect our hands from hoes, rakes etc. We don’t spend near as much time “out in the sun” because it just doesn’t take very long to pull a week or two here and there. Our summation…to each their own. Happy gardening! LOL
Lynda and WE2s you are obviously doing things right in your raised beds – CONGRATULATIONS!
I figured I would be stirring up some controversy with this post, but I love gardening discussions and sharing experiences so that was part of the intent.
Some things are just plain better in row gardens – and it sounds like Lynda knows that too – corn and potatoes for example. I have two 25′ x 4′ raised beds with no intention of taking them apart as I have low tunnels over them, etc. but I am looking at them now as just a part of the overall gardening scheme – not the end all solution to everything.
I put Mel’s mix in one of the beds and the first couple of years weeding was easy, but this spring with all of the rain the weeds popped up and I took literally 2 bushels of weeds out of one bed so far! I sit on a five gallon pail and weed as getting up from the ground is getting to be a struggle and that position is a back breaker. Bob even helped me one day try to catch up with the weeding – that was a first! And yes, I’m in the garden daily. :)
So, to each his own experiences. Just sharing from 3 sisters in Minnesota. :-D
We did a combination at the large garden we began this year. We are row gardening but with planting a double row of plants about a foot apart (walkway, 2 rows of plants, walkway.) We put down landscape fabric between the rows 3 feet wide for ease of working with the plants. No hoeing between rows. Good working space and 2 rows of crop in each section.
We used two, 3×8 rows for our corn but it was still in Mels Mix. One thing I think a lot of SQFT gardeners don’t do is to add fresh compost EVERY new season or when they pull out produce. I agree that potatoes will be better served in a different way (we used hanging buckets) when we plant again. One of the things we did the 2nd year was add another “level” of wood around the squares, making them higher and added more Mels Mix…only because we felt it would give a greater root depth for the plants. We still didn’t have many weeds. Perhaps adding the compost every time one pulls out their produce etc., and then again at the beginning to the next season would help? :-)
Perhaps some of the phrasing was a bit “forward”? Like “For all of the hype about square foot gardening and raised beds” or “Great for someone who has the time and is obsessed with their garden – picking at it every day and never leaving home.” Sort of raises the hackles right from the get go, intimating that some of us are “hyped up” or “obsessed”. Glad we can all have our own opinions :-) but perhaps be a bit less “crude” in the way we approach? :-)
Good points WE2s, I was rather brash wasn’t I… :-) Gotta watch that! :)
I like to experiment, and what I have been frustrated with for a long time is the wholesale deriding of row gardening. If you really have to plant enough to survive on, you are going to need a row garden unless you have your sqft gardens all ready to go to handle that kind of production.
That said, I think it was my compost that put in the weed seeds to my gardens. I composted heavily this spring with 3 year old composted horse manure and I got WEEDS!
Agreed…compost would definitely be a deciding factor. And yes, to have to survive on a garden we’d all need bigger gardens for sure. MrWE2 and I discussed that after our first year of SQFT. Fortunately, we have ample room at the homestead (where we gardened…didn’t plant this year, wanted to do some other things) but when we sell it (after Mother’s moved to heaven) we’ll need to buy a small acreage (which we plan to do) and put our cabin on it. We gained a lot of hands on experience when we went to a friends new homestead to put one of your buildings together for her and lived off grid for 5 days (as long as you don’t count our propane tanks). We’ll be storing our Mels Mix in covered buckets when we get ready to move it. Right now it’s just covered up with black plastic.
I’m gong to put this also in the comments, because anyone who has read the article won’t go back and see the update…
“Hi Bev
Well I’ve been an SFG addict since I first read Mels first book, became a SFG certifed instructor and have been doing SFG ever since, and I couldn’t agree with you more.
As in any system there good and bad things. Everything you say about them is true. My wife had a stroke 2 yrs ago in June and I had left my garden in beautiful green plots and when I came back to my garden the weeds had completely taken over. The soil/mix is so rich the weeds out grew my veggies and had gone to seed.
When I had laid out my garden, I laid weed barrier down and then covered it with wood mulch and now I have weeds everywhere. In desperation I have sprayed industrial strength vinegar, weed whacked, used a blow torch and finally I lowered myself and used some Roundup.
I’m thinking I will have to pull up everything and go back to doing it in the dirt. However, if one has the time, and energy to pamper their garden, you will get some fantastic results. but not massive amounts.
Phil”
THANKS PHIL!!! :-D
And hey Guys and Gals, I’ve been playing with SFG for almost 20 years and always thought it was my fault as a gardener that it just wasn’t turning out – give me credit for being persistent though, or being willing to bang my head against a wall over and over again. :)
Between my two sisters and Phil, I don’t feel like such a failure anymore!
Just got my laptop back from the bookkeeper today, so just chiming in on this article. This is our first year for SFG and I can’t be more enthusiastic about the results. First, we used NO weed barrier of any kind and haven’t had a 5 gallon bucket of weeds all season. Of course, I pull them when they’re 2 or 3 inches high, just big enough to get a grip on, so a bunch of them don’t amount to a lot of bulk. The watering (for a 35′ X 40′ garden, (11) 3′ X 8′ beds and (1) 3′ X 5′ bed) takes me about 20 minutes a day. I try to do it every day, but some of the larger plants, black eyed peas, peppers and such are now heavily mulched and can really go 2-3 days without watering, even in our 95-100+ degree weather and low humidity. The smaller stuff, carrot starts and anything too small for mulch, gets a sprinkle every day. And, I don’t use nearly as much water as before.
Our boxes are 12″ high, approximately. One of the things I’ll do before next season is to line the insides of the boxes with galvanized metal roof flashing to keep the water from leaking out of the joints (boxes are made with 2 X 6, 2 boards high). Since our beds are new this year, the soil we put in has subsided somewhat. I’ve been buying some garden soil from Lowe’s, a few bags at a time to fill them a bit around the larger plants, and as one crop comes our before another goes in. I anticipate that I may add another 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 to the boxes as they stabilize and get fuller from compost and added soil, which will make them higher and easier to tend to. The boxes tend to get lower as I ‘harvest’ my lawn weekly and add the grass clippings to the paths where we let it sheet compost.
A word about ‘intensive’ gardening. Karen planted the first box of black eyed peas and has 48 plants in that 3′ x 8′ area. They are the best we’ve ever had, 3′ high (above the box), easy to pick and I just started picking them this week and have taken approximately 3 gallons (unshelled) in two pickings so far. They need picked every 2 days. The pepper box has 32 plants and they are doing great. We made the mistake of planting some zucchini, squash, watermelons and maybe a pumpkin in some of the boxes and won’t do that again because of the space limitations, but those are producing abundantly as well.
I’ve learned that some things ‘need their space’ and aren’t as suited to SFG as other things. Tomatoes, any kind of vines, etc., will probably be better suited to standard rows because they tend to take up all available space. But anything that stays where you put it, bush beans, okra, peppers, black eyed peas, carrots, radishes, broccoli, lettuce and a multitude of other vegetables I think will work well for us. I told Karen just this afternoon that I’ll probably eventually convert our new east garden to SFG with raised boxes.
Randy
WONDERFUL RANDY! I am so glad you are having such great success! And also that you recognize that certain crops are just not suited to SFG. :)
I’ve had great success with SFG with lettuce, radishes, carrots, onions. Not so much with strawberries, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash and beans.
I think it is moderation in all things. Take what you want and leave the rest. Whatever works for you. :-D