[blue]

I recently purchased an American book on "square foot gardening" quite fascinating, has anybody tried adapting it to allotment gardening. the main problem i could see was acquiring vermiculite cheaply
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

[richyrich7]

I've done it at home in the back garden and had excellent results, don't know how it would translate to a whole plot though that's a lot of sq feet.

[blue]

I was thinking of trying a couple of beds on the allotment, any suggestions as to the best place to get vermiculite

[Trillium]

Once watched Mel Bartholomew on telly showing his square foot gardening method, and when pressed for an answer, he was actually using commercial potting mix as 'soil' rather than loosening up what's in the ground. It's an awful lot of money for a lotty plot. I'd personally go with lots of coir and I believe it's vermiculite that's much cheaper. Price check both in as many stores as possible. You'll also need to thoroughly remove all stones (make a homemade sieve from finer chicken wire or hardware cloth) as they'll adversely affect the crowded growing conditions. I believe Mel also does a zig zag spacing which I've always used and find most effective and the best use of space. The smaller blocks (beds) he advocates make everything much easier to reach, weed and water. And if you're building a bed on top of existing soil, I'd go to the trouble of first forking loose the under soil because the roots will go down that far.   :

[Aidy]

Boss has done it in his back garden, I would say he has done better than at certain things, he found it very easy.

[richyrich7]

To add to what Trillium mentioned we used 145l bales of multi-purp in ours about £6 from B & Q. We used about 4 bales in a7' x 3'  x 12" high bed plus some compost from the heap and some garden soil/old grow bags :shock: We are just removing them to make way for a conservatory I'm supposed to be building    

[Aunt Sally]

What do you do when the marestail grows up through it  :shock:

[richyrich7]

What do you do when the marestail grows up through it  :shock:

Use it to scrub your pans ?

[Aunt Sally]

Aunty scrubbing pans  :shock:  Wash your mouth out Richy  

[richyrich7]

 Sorry Aunty is that wurzels job then ?

[Aunt Sally]

Certainly is  :!:  

[Hopalong]

I have been using square foot gardening for a while now. As a septegenarian I can only manage half a plot and I have it in 10 four foot square raised beds (soon to be 12).
I don't use the growing compost advised in the book. All my beds were built up gradually with well rotted horse manure, spent mushroom compost and topped off with my own garden compost. The beds do need regular mulching to top them up as the compost settles and is worked upon by the worms etc. and as all my beds are no dig beds, making compost is my top priority.
I don't claim this is the only way, or even the best way to do it, it is simply the way I like to work.

[richyrich7]

Hi Hopalong just thought I'd welcome you to the forum  

Must agree with the "no dig" bit we never dug ours, do you find they need more attention than standard growing? the only downside I found was they need a lot more watering due to plant density, very little weeding tho'

[Hopalong]

Hi RR7,
My beds are only four foot square so tending them doesn't take much time or effort and because the growing medium is 100% well rotted compost it acts like a gigantic sponge and retains water far better than the ground outside the beds. The closer spacing means that weeds don't get much of a look in and those that do are easily lifted out.

However, I'm not too hot on the computer so how the heck do you get those emoticons to where you want them?

[Trillium]

For emoticons, leave the cursor at the spot you want an emoticon on, and click onto the one you want. Voila!