In our popular 4×4 Raised Garden Bed Kit shown above, our 4×4 Garden Grid™ watering system evenly partitions the planting space into equally sized square planting sections and surrounds all plants with gentle water streams.
Related Article: Square Foot Gardening Spacing – How Does it Work?
What are the advantages of square foot gardening?
The advantages of square foot gardening make it attractive for both novice gardeners and seasoned green thumbs alike. The gardening method uses raised garden beds that require minimal yard space, making it suitable for those with limited space and urbanites wishing to start a garden. A raised garden bed can also provide edible landscaping in a front yard.
A raised garden bed allows for gardening in places where the soil is of poor quality. A raised garden bed can bypass rocky and clay-type soils that drain poorly and don’t allow plants to establish strong root systems. With a raised garden bed, you are in full control of the soil your plants will grow in.
In addition to saving space, the dense planting arrangement can lead to the growth of organic mulch, making it very difficult for weeds to grow. Square foot gardeners also find planting and fertilizing to be easier as the soil is loose and manageable.
How does a Square FootGardening Grid help?
As veteran gardeners know well, and those yet to plant their first seed will soon find out, different plants and vegetables require varying amounts of space to thrive. While not an exact science, a degree of precision during planting time will pay dividends come harvest.
Traditionally, with square foot gardening a gardener will measure and stake outsquare foot planting sections by making a grid out of a varietyof instruments such as string or thin wood slats. Using the square foot gardening grid sections a gardener plants by area instead of rows, (reference our related article noted above) to grow in a condensed space. Upon quickassembly, the Garden Grid™ watering systemtakes care of all the measuring for you, dividing your growing area into equal planting sections. What’s more, the Garden Grid™ serves as your primary garden irrigation system. A square foot gardening grid and garden irrigation system wrapped into one; it doesn’t get much easier than this.
Square foot gardening grid plus watering, a simple and quick solution for a square foot garden set up.
How much will I be able to grow?
Most gardeners will be surprised at the amount of produce that can be gleaned from even a small raised garden bed using the square foot gardening method. A 4×4 foot raised garden bed may yield enough vegetables for a small family to enjoy during the growing season, and freeze for later. Trellises can be used to maximize the amount of plants per square foot and ultimately increase the yield of your raised garden bed.
Check out our square foot gardening plant spacing guide with over 60 plants here.
Ready to Start Your Own Square Foot Garden?
Here Are Two Popular Plants To Try Out
Square Foot Gardening Tomatoes
In square foot gardening, you can comfortably grow one tomato plant per grid square.
A delicious addition to any garden salad, tomatoes are one of our favorite plants to grow. Square foot gardening tomatoes have a surprisingly high yield; a single healthy plant can provide approximately 20 pounds of produce. The Brandywine and Early Girl varieties are excellent tomatoes for square foot gardening as they grow well vertically and require little square footage.
Square Foot Gardening Cucumbers
Using square foot gardening, you can comfortably grow two cucumber plants per square foot.
Another great plant for square foot gardening is the cucumber. A healthy square foot gardening cucumber plant has a yield of approximately 5 pounds, and can also be grown vertically with support from a trellis. If you use the square foot gardening method in a 4×4 foot raised garden bed you can comfortably grow eight tomato plants and 16 cucumber plants at the same time!
This is just one of countless plant combinations you can grow in a raised garden bed. To understand more about how to space different plants with the square foot gardening method, check out our plant spacing guide.
NEXT STEPS
Square foot gardening gives gardeners the opportunity to grow healthy, bountiful gardens, all the while using less space and requiring less time and effort than a traditional row garden.
If you want to begin square foot gardening, but not sure where to start, check out our Raised Garden Beds page and learn about our Raised Garden Kits that include our Garden Grid™ watering systems.
Are you starting a square foot garden? Or are you an experienced grower? Tell us about your favorite plants to grow or what you’re looking forward to growing below!
If you're building more than one raised square-foot gardening bed, leave enough space between them to roll a wheelbarrow. The formula for planting is simple: one extra-large plant per 1x1-foot square, four large plants per square, nine medium plants per square, and 16 small plants per square.
To keep the planting simple, there are no plant spacings to remember. Instead, each square has either 1, 4, 9, or 16 plants in it, depending on the size of the plant—easy to position in each square by making a smaller grid in the soil with your fingers.
The general rule of thumb when it comes to growing a garden is to have 100 square feet of gardening space (traditional row gardens) per person for fresh eating only. To preserve food and put it up for the non-growing season, you're looking at 200 square feet of gardening space per person.
SFG recommends planting one indeterminate tomato per square in the grid. We're assuming you're attaching your trellis to the north end of your raised bed and that the tomato is planted in those adjacent squares.
For a square bed, multiply the length of the bed by its width to determine how many plants per square foot. For a circular planting bed, you can calculate how many plants per square foot is ideal by multiplying 3.14 by the distance from the center to the edge of the bed.
Some crops, like large, indeterminate tomatoes, need more space than a single square foot—otherwise they'll start stealing nutrients and water from other plants. Plus, plants can deplete moisture and nutrients quickly in a square foot garden due to the intensive planting technique.
Square foot gardening is an efficient and space-saving technique that involves dividing your garden into small, manageable squares. Each square is typically one foot by one foot and is planted with a specific number of plants depending on their size.
A square foot garden can be thought of as a grid. For example – a raised bed that is 4 feet by 4 feet would have 16 square feet. With square foot gardening you could plant 16 different vegetables if you wanted, one in each square. Or you could have 16 squares of the same vegetable.
As a general rule, put tall veggies toward the back of the bed, mid-sized ones in the middle, and smaller plants in the front or as a border. Consider adding pollinator plants to attract beneficial insects that can not only help you get a better harvest, but will also prey on garden pests.
One common approach to square-foot gardening is to build 4' x 4' raised beds, but any size will work with this method. The important feature is using string, wire, or other materials to create a lattice or grid of one-foot square blocks to help you plant efficiently.
The number of plants you can plant in a square foot garden will depend on the type of plants you are growing and the spacing between them – you can typically place 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, or 16 plants per square foot.
For a family of four, the Morning Chores calculator recommends a garden 40-feet-by-20-feet. “That would allow you to grow an adequate amount of vegetables to feed that family of four,” Lindley said.
A typical 10'x10' garden space you could grow the following: 3 indeterminate tomatoes or two tomatoes and 1 cucumber on a trellis.4 eggplants. 5 peppers.
With good soil and close planting, you might estimate a conservative yield of about 1 pound per square foot. So in a 400-square-foot garden — just 20 by 20 feet — you can grow enough veggies for yourself.
In one tier, you can grow up to 100 plants in a 100 square foot area. Most cultivators utilize roughly 70% of a room's floor space as the canopy. In this scenario, a 10 x 10 room can hold up to 70 plants.
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