The original square foot unit is 4×4ft, 16 sq ft, which can supply one person with vegetables and salads.

When I made mine I made raised beds and made them 36 “wide and since there were 6 of us I had to make two 3 ft. wide by 24 ft. long with a 20” path between them. Now if I had to do it over again I would make them 24” wide and do the math for the length. At this writing we are down to only two of us and one of them is not a gardener.

When I put the first square foot gardens in we removed the lawn and tilled the ground which is mostly red clay where we live so we had to modify that with top soil that we had hauled in and organic matter.

Then I read that about putting down old carpet between the beds. We did and I wish we did not because it looks like heck then and still does not because it was not biodegradable in my life time.

I suggest plain mulch. Even today’s cardboards and especially newspapers have a lot of chemicals in them and on them. We could get wood chip mulch for free from out local lumber mill at that time.

If you are starting from scratch you will need a good layer of top soil and organic compost and we put about 10-12 inches in our raised beds. Here again we used the “double digging” method for our beds.

At this point our beds became pretty high and with the sloping down of the sides we were reducing our growing area, so we made wooden sides for our beds and that allowed us to put up trellises or growing hoops where needed. It also allowed us to make “mini” green houses across the tops with plastic for early seed planting and hardening of our plants as they emerged from the seeds.

Do not use pressure treated lumber. We were able to get some good boards from our local Amish lumber mill. Plus because we were also building a house and stuff was being delivered on pallets we were able to salvage the wood from the pallets.

We had a good crop that summer. However, in the following spring we noticed our raised beds had settled and we had to add another 5-6 inches of dirt to them. We also used seaweed emulsion as an additive.

The years have flown by and it is now almost 9 years later. We no longer need all those beds as I said there are just 2 of us now.

The container method is good for the urban gardener who wants to do square foot gardening.

For the info about heirloom organic seeds and organic gardening tip - read the heirloom organic seeds blog.