I'm a long time raised bed gardener, really forced into that because the clay in my area is so difficult to deal with. If you mean square foot to be the gospel according to Mel, there are some differences mainly regarding the soil mix of peat, vermiculite, and compost. that is an addition to the new book however, and the original book isn't a great deal differnt than intensive gardening as written about by many authors. this is my first year of trying this mix in one of my raised beds. using the mix has some differences with the beds i have with organically improved soil. some differnces are good, and some i don't like so much, the cost for one. like most things in gardening, try it in moderation, (a 4x4 or 8x4 bed is a great size to experiment) find out what works for you and your area and go from there. i guess a more direct answer to your real question is, it's basically the same with the exception of the planting medium, IMO.

Thanks for the clarification, flatlander. I think that makes sense.

I am learning a bit about varios "mixes" since I've been hanging out over on the container forum a lot for my potted citrus and blueberries.

I am in Northern California and we have pretty decent nutrient rich clay soil here that my mom insists will be great if I just tilled in some organic material to uncompact it. Unfortunately, in the 10 years we've been here we've done 2 rather large remodels (siding, windows, etc), so I have some slight fears of possible lead contamination there. But also, the guy that lived here for 30+ years before us was a professional jeweler who did a lot of his work here in his hobby room, and I am more suspicious that he may have dumped his used materials in places on the property. I dunno... maybe stuff like lead or arsenic or mercury... not sure what else jewelers use to refine their stuff but he had a great hobby room full of drawers. Our first day owning this place we turned out every single drawer hoping to find a stash of diamonds but only found a single little nugget of gold.

Anyway... for those reasons, I'm a bit skittish of using our native soil. So if the main difference is just the planting mix, I think I can get behind this.

Thanks!

I usually phrase it as saying that Square Foot Gardening is a "standardization" of the ages-old intensive planting techniques, one that provides rather exact instructions to essentially guarantee enough production to feel like the effort was "worth it".

Over all I've been very satisfied with "Mel's Mix" after a year of growing vegetables in it. It was great to have soil that was really "ready" from the very start, especially compared to years of amending, testing, amending some more, first in conventional, and then in pre-raised-bed square foot gardening.

There are a couple of other principles Mel espouses that I think are important. One of them is to never make a bed you can't reach into the middle of from outside, which is why he suggests 4x4 foot boxes and having all boxes be 4 feet or less in at least one direction. Soil that is never stepped on stays in much better condition in my experience.

The other thing is that, once your plants have "taken off" the density of SFG planting will give you plenty of veggies with little room for weeds (and a growing medium that doesn't start out loaded with weed seeds and roots).

a comment about mel's mix....it warmed up much quicker early in the spring compared to my soil based beds. while that may be a disadvantage when it really gets hot, it let me plant and harvest about 2 weeks earlier than my other cool season beds.

I'm kind of counting on that fact - from the vermiculite - to make my direct sown bell peppers actually germinate. Didn't realize they need 70-85(F) soil temps to germinate, d'oh...