Frequently Asked Square Foot Gardening Questions

Patti: Hi! I’m Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl. Mel: And I’m Mel Bartholomew, the Square Foot Gardening Guy. Patti: We are going to talk about the most frequently asked questions. Mel: Right. Patti: So, let’s just get started right away and our first question here is, “What wood should people use to build their boxes?” Mel: Good question and the best answer is, free wood. Free is a good, good answer right? Patti: Yeah! Mel: Because it doesn’t cost you anything and we’re practicing the 3 R’s – we’re recycling, we’re reusing, and with square foot gardening, we’re reducing. Now, where do you get free wood? Well first of all, we’re going to be building boxes that are going to measure approximately 4 feet by 4 feet, and they’re going to be 6 inches deep. Where we’re going to get this? Well, you go to any construction site, you look around your neighborhood or wherever you’re driving, and if you see a construction site, you will also see big dumpsters sitting there. And what do they do with those dumpsters? Fill it in with scrap wood and carting it away and putting it in the landfills. So, you go to the foreman, find the boss man and say, “I’m building a square foot garden at my house and I need some scrap wood. If you have any lumber like that if you will.” “What length do you need?”, “Well it’s 4 feet.”, “Oh! We’ve got tons of 4 footers.” “What size of wood?”, “Well, I need either 6 inches deep, either 1 x 6, or 2 x 6.” In our most construction sites, that would be the framing lumber. It would be 2 x 6. And he’ll say, “I’ve got some 2 x 6. I’ll cut them for you, 4 feet long.” You’ve got it all done. Patti: What kind of wood specifically should we be using? Mel: Well, if you’re going to go buy your lumber and you go to a lumber store, you have quite of a few choices. Number one, you have pine or fir, which is the cheapest, and again, you could buy 1 x 6 or 2 x 6 lumber. Then, you have cedar, and that usually comes in 1 x 6, or again 2 x 6. It’s starting to get more expensive, and red wood is the ultimate. That will last the longest and it’s the most expensive, but it looks the nicest too. So you’ll get what you pay for. But people say, what won’t rot out real fast? Is there something I could paint or cover them with? You can paint all the sides except the inside. And speaking of painting, we do not recommend that you use treated lumber. We’re not convinced that the different chemicals in the wood to keep it from rotting won’t reach out into the soil. We don’t want to grow our vegetables in that. Patti: I think that’s actually a good point to make sure that everybody knows. Definitely, when you’re going to build you’re going to build your raised bed, don’t use pressure treated wood. When we build our decks outside and anything out of wood, we want to use pressure treated wood because it’s going to last longer but not in our vegetable garden. Pressure treated wood contains chemicals and we don’t want that seeping into our vegetables. Mel: So, we got those different kinds of wood at the lumber store. Now the nice thing is, all lumbers come in 8 foot lengths. So all you do is you pick out the wood you want, you pick out the nice, best pieces, and then you tell them, “Would you cut those in half for me?” and they’ll cut them for free. And now, you have all your wood cut, you just take it home, put it together. Another wood that you can use when you go to the lumber store is man-made wood. This is where they take and recycle things like either plastic or wood products, for example, saw dust, and they mix a glue in with the saw dust and then form lumber from that. It’s very good, it will lasts of course forever and it won’t rot. Insects or termites won’t get into it. It is expensive now but it’s gradually coming down in price. So, we’re going to build the boxes first. You’ll of course want to look over your garden site, decide how many boxes you want, and remember, we want 6-8 hours of sunlight. You want it close to the house, as close as you can to the back door. You can see your garden outside your kitchen window, and then you’ll take much better care of it. But you put your boxes down where you think best, leave at least a 3 foot walking space between the boxes and then you would take out any grass or weeds that are inside the box. Lay down a weed cloth there to keep any future weeds from coming up. And now, we’re going to fill that with Mel’s mix, remember that’s 1/3 pit moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost. The best way of attaching it is not with nails because they’ll come loose after awhile, it is with deck screws. And all you could do is drill a pivot hole with a power drill and then put those deck screws in. And I like to use three in every corner. That’ll keep the wood from twisting and turning and warping. So that’s the ground boxes. And now for patio boxes, if you want them up off the ground or you want to move them about, and these could be different size, maybe 2 x 2, or 3 x 3, or 4 x 4. We use a plywood bottom. And depending on the size on how far it’s spanning, if it’s a 2 x 2, you could use fairly thin plywood. And you could put legs on it, or even better yet, I like to, for easy cost, is to go to the thrift shop and find an old table. A couple of bucks for a table, put it outside, and put your box right on top. Now there’s another advantage to that. If you have someone in a wheelchair or who is handicap in any way, they can sit down and still garden right in front of them. Or you make the legs a little higher, or raise the table a little bit and now you have a stand up garden. As for people that can’t get down, have arthritis or can’t get up and down a lot. So now, we have ground boxes, sit down gardens, and stand up gardens, all three, all made with the same wood. And now, you still have to provide drainage in that. So, how many holes do you think we have to put in that plywood? 1 per square foot. Patti: Easy, easy to remember. Mel: And then, we put an extra one in each corner. And that would drain all the water out when there’s excess water. There won’t be much because remember that Mel’s mix soaks up the water and holds water. So unless you’re over watering, and that’s the secret to it if you see a lot of water dripping out continually every time you water, you put too much water in. But luckily, it won’t kill the plants as it would in most containers because it comes right out the bottom and the Mel’s mix not only holds water, but then it drains well also. With a square foot gardening, you could do all kinds of things and different things. And the reason is it takes so little space that you could do this sort of thing, and you could have a square foot garden either a part of it, out in the ground or you could have it on your patio or your deck, you can even build it. You go to the all new square foot gardening book to show how to build the boxes that go right up the steps into your bath. Or you can have something real fancy out front. Patti: Well thank you so much Mel for answering our questions, and stay tuned for more answers to the most frequently asked questions.