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Back in 1997 I read a book called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew . Based on what I learned I built 8 - 4' X 4' boxes 1' high, and filled them with quality topsoil.

I grow more than we can eat in a year from just those 8 boxes.

There are a lot of advantages:
1- NO RABBITS! Before rabbits could and did clean out a whole row of beans in a day. In 10 years we have not had any losses from critters.

2- Less water wasted. Because you only water the raised beds and not the whole area you use less water.

3- NO soil compaction. With the size of 4' x 4', the farthest you need to reach is 2'. So there is never a need to walk in the soil compacting it.

4- EZ weeding. With the box being 1' high it is a cinch to sit there and weed. Even in the wheelchair it is no problem to weed once a week.

5- EZ Harvesting. Once again, the size and height makes it a breeze to reach any plant to harvest.

As a side note . . . I looked on Google Earth and the boxes are visible from space. Not real clear, but you can tell what they are if you know about them.

I’ve got a big garden, but loved the square foot method so I modified it. Basically went to 24 ft plots separated by 6 ft of grass.

Each plot has a different category. I have five: greens/roots, corn/beans, tomatoes/peppers/eggplant, peas/cabbage/onion family and melons/gourds/cukes/squash which is on a 6 year rotation with one fallow plot for cover crops, and also one permanent plot for herbs and seed saving. I wish I could go the biblical 7 year rotation but don’t have the room right now.

I make 1 or 2 ft wide beds by going over it with a tiller set 3 in deep and then with a broad fork to loosen it to about a foot, and a second pass with three tine fork if necessary. Then hill it up like I’m doing potatoes and flatten off the top to a 3 to 4 in. deep bed. Between that and broadforking it makes for a 1 ft deep bed without the needs for sideboards and gives access to the subsoil.

Then make my rows in the beds or a trench in the case of peas. The deep soil really boosts the crop yield and with creativity have double crops on a number of the beds. Because 24 foot is dividable by 2,3,4,6,8,12, & 24 you can fit several different things in a bed down to a 1X1 ft square. It’s efficient and has worked well for me.

Yes, the square foot gardening has solved problems for many people.

I have known several people who swear by it.

Back in the early 1960’s, Rodale published the information on growing on bales of straw.

I tried it and it works, from an old memory, you put on an inch of manure, then a layer of sand then more manure, until you had several inches on top of the straw, all the time running the sprinkler on it.

when it is soaked in well, plant seeds.