Square Foot Gardening Plans For Raised Beds
Square foot gardening is an excellent way to introduce beginners to vegetable gardening. Plant spacings in traditional row gardens can seem daunting when you are new to vegetable gardening but the 'Square Foot System' simplifies this making planning your garden a whole lot easier. The concept uses fixed numbers of plants for each square foot with easy to follow plans, you'll get it right first time around!
Square foot gardening is all about taking advantage of smaller spaces using raised garden beds to maximise your crop output. This is typically done by dividing the raised bed into square sections 12 inches per side using gardening twine or timber laths to achieve a grid system.
The aim is to assist beginner vegetable gardeners and also help create the highest yielding garden possible. The only difference between using square foot gardening and growing in raised beds is the placement of the plants. Square foot gardening is perfect for growing a broad range of vegetable crops from compact herbs and salad to larger crops like broccoli or Spring cabbage depending on what space you have available.
Raised Vegetable Bed Plans
We have created a ‘Square Foot Garden’ section on our site which contains an ever expanding selection of plans to fit our raised bed range but can also be used in any beds providing they can be broken down into square feet. Each square foot section in a raised bed will contain a certain amount of each crop depending on the size of the vegetable and how close they can be planted. Our hope is that our planting plans will provide an easy way in to vegetable growing for the beginner gardener and maybe some inspiration for the more seasoned grower. All our plans are printable pdf's in case you need a portable copy, and contains a key or explanatory guide. All these vegetable plants grow well in the Irish and UK climate.
You may notice the plant spacings we use for our plans are more generous than standard square foot garden spacings; this is a result of trials aimed at gaining the optimum yield. We find the spacings recommended in most SFG literature too close especially for larger plants and feel with our plans you will reap a far better harvest. Each plan includes an easy to understand plan split into square foot sections as well a key describing the planting layout for each crop in the bed.