We just got a community garden plot after years on the waitlist. After a bunch of reading, I decided we should follow the system in All-New Square-Foot Gardening, for two reasons: 1) less ongoing maintenance (WEEDING, tilling, amending soil), and 2) maximizing yield in a small space. I have a lot of experience with traditional row gardening from working on a vegetable farm for 7 years as my high school/college summer job. I spent a LOT of time weeding at 5.40/hour, and I certainly don't want to do much weeding now. Also, as a kid, I had seen my parents' garden attempt fail because they didn't know to test or amend their soil. I have since learned a thing or two about soil, so I knew that improving the soil that came in our plot would be a lot of work. And even with all that work, it would always be full of weed seeds. But as I looked for people's real-world experience with SFG, I was dismayed at first to read about not-too-successful gardens. However, as I kept reading, I noticed that NONE of the failures used Mel's Mix. All over the internet, people say they are doing "square foot gardening," but it's really just raised beds, and maybe some close spacing. Mel stresses using 5 different sources of compost as 1/3 of the mix, and many people don't bother to do that. I bought bags of balanced, high-quality compost, with 5 or more ingredients, rather than use the free compost of our community garden, which looks like partially-decomposed shredded wood and bark, contains no nitrogen and too much potassium and salt. In the future, we'll mulch and amend with the compost we are now making (which Mel also insists is necessary for this method), where we added a bunch of green waste to the community wood-chip stuff. It was also a pain -- and expense -- rounding up the vermiculite and peat moss from different stores, but the pain lasted only 2 days, whereas the pain of trying to grow in bad soil lasts forever. As far as the spacing in Mel's SFG, most of the time, his recommendation is the same as the seed packet instructions "thin to X inches." Some of my seeds indicated even closer spacing (scallions, baby carrots). Also, Mel advocates frequent/continuous harvesting of many of the veggies while they are still small. If you let plants grow as big as they can, say broccoli, kale, or Swiss chard, they won't fit in Mel's spacing. But they also won't be that good to eat when they're that big. Mel wants you harvesting and eating them while still small, sweet, and tender. Obviously, for someone who has an enormous backyard already full of good rich soil, who wants huge crops of tomatoes, beans, cukes, etc to can or preserve all at once, SFG may not be ideal. But for us, with a small space, wanting to eat as much tasty produce as we can every possible day of the year, without too much weeding or backbreaking work (after the initial structure building), SFG is the way to go. Just to emphasize: HARVESTING early and often is an important part of Mel's method and critical for making the spacing work. Also, trellising/pruning/training is required to make spacing work for big vining plants. If you're not going to prune and train a tomato up a trellis, it will not fit in 1 sf. Because I am planting mostly seeds, which are cheap, I don't see any downside to trying Mel's spacing. The worst that can happen is that some end up too crowded, so I pull them out. I still will have wasted fewer seeds than if I had followed traditional sowing/thinning methods. The one deviation I have done from the SFG book is inspired by a woman named Emily who has done SFG for 5 seasons, first following the book and then tweaking and experimenting each year. Her blog comes up high on Google search results. Rather than trellis and prune tomatoes 1/sf, she plants one in 4 sf, with a sturdy cage. She feels that pruning and training tomatoes up a trellis is too much work. Tomatoes are a priority for us, so I planted 5 on the trellis, which will need to be pruned and trained, and 5 in 4-sf squares with concrete remesh wire cages 5' tall. We'll try both ways and see how they go. Here's a pic of our newly planted SFG: You can't see from the above shot, but many squares are planted with seeds, which all sprouted rapidly and are growing strongly. Some squares are still open for succession plantings every 2-3 weeks. About aisles: Mel INSISTS that you leave wide aisles to work between beds -- and he is definitely right! We at first wanted to maximize our bed space, so we were going to build 3 beds 4' wide (rather than the 2 beds you see above). This would leave aisles only about 18" wide between them. However, Mel also warns against the common pitfall of enthusiastically planting too much at first. After reading about so many people who enthusiastically build and plant, but then fail to maintain their garden through the summer, we decided to listen to Mel, build 2 beds only, then expand next year if we need more growing space, and then decide how much aisle space we can live with. After just planting our beds, I am SO GLAD we have lots of room in the middle to squat down and work in! A neighbor's plot has 3 beds, and her aisles are too narrow to work in, very uncomfortable. So I COMPLETELY AGREE that wide aisles are a must. Here's one more example of how Mel's system is well planned. He always puts the trellises at the end of a bed. But I decided to try to trellis peas up one side and tomatoes up the other, so put the trellis 1 foot in. Also, our tomato cages are a deviation from Mel's system. Both deviations make it impossible to put a wire-mesh cover, about 18" high, over an entire bed, as he says to do. Well, guess what? Crows ate a lot of our pea and bean seedlings before we figured out an alternative way to protect them. But Mel had seedling and young-plant protection built in from the beginning, for those following his system completely.

If you do a cut & come again salad bed or "baby lettuce heads" it should work out fine :) fortunately, many lettuces & other greens need not be grown to full size before harvest. I usually add the maximum from both the days to germination and the days to harvest to estimate the amount of time under less than ideal conditions (i.e. shorter days, cooler weather, etc.) Some plants will come in under target others may need an additional 10% or so. Another trick is to slip the transplants directly in with the with almost full grown crop in hopes that you will harvest the old plants before the new ones grow large enough to need the space. And, some shade is okay in this case because you can use the shade from the almost-ready-to-harvest plants to transition/harden off indoor started seedlings for the outdoor full sun conditions. Just be very careful when you harvest.

All I have room for is a raised bed. There are five sections. #1, 3, and 5 are about 4x3' and #2 and 5 are about 4x2'. We face the north and the whole backyard is trees. I suppose I could grow veggies in the front yard but I am more into the flower thing out front. I've had great success with most things in my raised bed....tomatoes, green beans, carrots (work GREAT because of the loose soil), peas, peppers, lettuce, cukes, zucchini, melons, herbs mixed with flowers... But with the small space I have I do have to be creative. Many things grow on homemade trellises. Here's a couple of pics I took just now so you can see it's getting to be that unattractive time of year. But this works well for us. My neighbors adorable side garden is in the background. Kristy :)

Yaeli, how about containers on a patio or balcony, or on the concrete next to an outside door (if your own apartment has one)? That way the plants would have something better than asphalt to grow in. If you have a really sunny window (south or west are usually brightest), you could try growing indoors also.