{"id":900,"date":"2011-05-18T11:08:25","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T15:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?p=900"},"modified":"2011-05-18T11:08:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T15:08:25","slug":"square-foot-gardening-by-mel-bartholomew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=900","title":{"rendered":"square foot gardening by mel bartholomew"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, my mom and I would routinely try to catch episodes of {{Square Foot Gardening}} (SFG) on <a href=\"http:\/\/pbs.org\">PBS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hosted by {{Mel Bartholomew}}, a retired civil <a href=\"http:\/\/www.squarefootgardening.org\/whatissfg#!__whatissfg\/about-mel\/vstc3=bio\">engineer<\/a>, SFG was a program whose aim was to enable gardening by the masses in confined spaces (though,\u00a0naturally, if can be implemented in larger settings as well). Mr Bartholomew&#8217;s aim was to take his years of experience as an engineer, and turn gardening on its head: too much focus was (and still is, though less prominently now) given to {{gardening}} as miniaturized farming, rather than as a practice in its own right. It also promoted organic gardening and growing years before the current organic marketing wave.<\/p>\n<p>The basic premise of SFG is to plant cooperatively, intensively, rotatively, and sequentially (see the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Square_foot_gardening\">wikipedia<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.squarefootgardening.com\/\">SFG.com<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.squarefootgardening.org\/\">SFG.org<\/a> sites for even more information).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cooperatively: plant different types of flowers and vegetables together to reduce the likelihood for disease transmission, to ward-off predators, and to give a dynamic look to the garden.<\/li>\n<li>Intensively: carrots only needs a few cubic inches of <em>good<\/em> soil in which to grow &#8211; plant them 4&#215;4 in a 1&#8217;x1&#8242; square.<\/li>\n<li>Rotatively: once a given crop has finished, reuse the plot, but for a different plant type to not overly wear-out the soil.<\/li>\n<li>Sequentially: if you want to go with a more\u00a0homogeneous\u00a0garden, plant in a cyclic fashion to spread the harvest over a period of time throughout the year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Soil preparation takes a bit of practice, but once you have a garden going, continually supplying compost <em>should<\/em> become easier (take all garden waste and add it to the pile). The only ingredient you should need to buy on a semi-frequent basis is peat moss, and that only once every 2-3 years per box. Vermiculite refresh is needed less often &#8211; closer to every 4-5 years per box.<\/p>\n<p>The program and book had enough of a lasting impact on me that I used it as the basis for a paper in college &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/warrenmyers.com\/eatintro.php\">Eating Off the Grid<\/a> (full <a href=\"http:\/\/warrenmyers.com\/eatoffgrid.pdf\">PDF<\/a>^*` and <a href=\"http:\/\/warrenmyers.com\/gridgarden.pdf\">appendix<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>A second book referenced in the television series, {{CA$H from Square Foot Gardening}} (of which I also own a copy), goes into further detail of expanding the SFG approach into a source for local users to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables!) of your labors, in exchange for compensation. In particular, Mel highlights supplying local restaurants and\/or farmer&#8217;s markets with your produce.<\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in growing even <em>some<\/em> of your own food, I strongly recommend {{Square Foot Gardening}} as the\u00a0place\u00a0to start.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Quality of writing: 4\/5<\/li>\n<li>Accessibility: 5\/5<\/li>\n<li>Understandability: 4\/5<\/li>\n<li>Ease of implementation: 4\/5<\/li>\n<li>Overall: 4.5\/5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><sup>^<sub>Prices accurate as of Jan 2006<\/sub><\/sup><br \/>\n<sup>*<sub>Yes &#8211; I know about the typo at the end of page 3 (&#8220;there&#8221; vs &#8220;their&#8221;) and on page 5 (&#8220;them&#8221; vs &#8220;the&#8221;)<\/sub><\/sup><br \/>\n<sup>`<sub>See also <a href=\"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/2011\/04\/20\/producing-your-own-power-by-many\">PYOP review<\/a> for information on windbreaks<\/sub><\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, my mom and I would routinely try to catch episodes of {{Square Foot Gardening}} (SFG) on PBS. Hosted by {{Mel Bartholomew}}, a retired civil engineer, SFG was a program whose aim was to enable gardening by the masses in confined spaces (though,\u00a0naturally, if can be implemented in larger settings as well). Mr Bartholomew&#8217;s &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=900\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">square foot gardening by mel bartholomew<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,15,31,38,41],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-food","category-personal","category-review","category-technical"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=900"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}