Intro to Square Foot Gardening...

I did a search and didn't find anything relevant to my post, so here it is...

Introduction to Square Foot Gardening​

First I'm sure you're wondering what the hell Square Foot Gardening (SFG) is, and why you'd want to use it. SFG is a wonderful adaptation for getting 100% of your harvest in 20% of the space and 50% of the cost of straight row gardening. Not that any of you outdoor growers are really planting in straight rows, but perhaps some of you might glean some knowledge of general gardening techniques that might improve your next outdoor grow.

Now, I know some of you are probably experts in the garden, and most of this may not apply to you, and some of you are guerrilla growers, and other parts of this may not apply to you. However, I think that everyone can get something out of it, even indoor growers.

Perhaps the coolest thing about Marijuana and Hemp is that they are Nitrogen Fixing plants. This gives you 2 obvious benefits, and a few not so obvious ones that I might not be able to cover here, because you really won't notice them. The benefits you'll recognize right away are:

1. you won't have to worry about any other weeds in your outdoor garden. Marijuana likes to keep all the nutes in soil for itself, and will kill off anything else that tries to take anything away from it.

2. after your weed harvest, pull up the stem and whole root ball, shake off the dirt from the roots, add more organic soil to top off the boxes, and you're ready to grow more weed, or it's perfect for a summer salsa grow.

One 4x4 foot SFG box holds 16 plants from seed to harvest, or you can build multiple boxes and have a little seedling box with 4x4 grid inside each square foot, have a box that's split into only 4 sections for monster plants or mothers... what have you... The possibilities - while not endless - are extensive.

So getting right down to business, start by finding level ground wherever you want to plant. If you don't have level ground, make it by either digging out, or filling in with sand/dirt/gravel mix so it's nice and solid. You're going to build a 4x4 foot square box out of 2"x10" or 1"x10" UNTREATED lumber. The untreated part is VERY important, and you want the INSIDE dimensions of the box to be 4'x4', not the outside dimension. If you must use 8' boards to start with, cut them in half, and place 2"x2" sticks at the corner to nail/screw into with galvanized or stainless hardware. Don't use drywall screws or metal that will rust... it's not pretty, and it will weaken the box structure.

Once you have your 4x4 box set up, you need to line it and divide it. Grab a 6mil (or thicker) sheet of black poly or visqueen plastic, and line the inside of the box, stapling the sheet at the tops and corners to make a leak proof seal. You don't necessarily want it entirely leak proof, you do need drainage, but you don't want your clean soil sitting directly on your regular old soil.



Ok... now you have your boxes, you need to choose a soil medium to grow in. Just like indoor gardening, you'll need to prep your soil with perlite or vermiculite to make your garden airy, and you might even decide to start with a whole inch of a hydro medium like lava rock so you have good drainage. I have my own personal stash of (going on 5 year old) cow manure turned black dirt, and it is by far the most nutritionally complete and complex soil I've ever used in a garden. If you can find a beef cattle farmer and use his shit pile for your dirt, you'll be blown away by the size and strength of your new plants... and forget about adding nutes throughout the grow cycle, the compost has enough for 2 full grow cycles of regular veggies, but keep them on hand for surprise floods and other things that might leach the nutes out of your soil other than your marijuana plants.



Go to your local bait shop, and buy 2 dozen night crawlers (or 4 dozen red worms) per box that you just built. Dump them in, and throw a load of shredded newspaper or grass clippings into your gardens. Mix this up well, don't worry about hurting the worms, they regenerate, and they're going to breed like rabbits... wait... like worms anyway. These guys will provide your garden with a LIFETIME of nutes, and because weed is a Nitrogen Fixing plant, the only thing you'll ever have to add is MORE organic soil and compost material for the wormies to eat... After the first application of newspaper or grass clippings, you don't have to mis anymore, just toss it in there. It insulates the roots, holds humidity, and provides much needed food for the worms. This is KEY... if you are not using an organic composted soil like I do, you will need to add nutes, so keep your test kits and nute bottles handy.

Next you'll want to use lathe boards to make your 16 boxes. You'll need 6 sticks of lathe 4' 3" long, so start with 5' or 10' lathe. Weave them through each other for extra strength, and again fasten to the sides of the original box with stainless or galvanized nails/screws. Now you have a 4x4 foot box with 16 1x1 foot boxes inside. You won't need to put in dividers, the lathe on top of the boxes is enough... your roots will eventually start intertwining, but that's ok... the amount of growing room they will have is fantabulous...


I love the vine screen on this one... just think of how easy it would be to ScrOG this setup...


At this point, it's time to soak the garden. You only need 10% of the water of a regular outdoor garden because you have self contained it. The layer of Lava Rock/Hydroton will hold the water below the root system, but not out of reach of the soil to wick it up to the roots. If you want to figure out how much you need to water per day or what have you, put in your ballast (Hydro material) and add water by the gallon until it is all submerged. Write down that number, because that's all the water you'll ever have to add at one time, and much likely less than that in optimal conditions. If you're used to going through a 55 gallon drum of water a week... Try 16 gallons a week with this system, or less. Get the soil nice and moist... if you pick it up and squeeze it, it should feel wet, but nothing should drip out when you squeeze.

Take your rooted cuttings or seeds, and plant them 2 cuttings or seeds per square. At ~$10.00 per seed, I know this is kinda expensive, but place them a few inches apart, so if one of them is a male, you can pull it, and if you find females, you can always just build another 4x4 box, amirite? Planting cuttings 2 per foot will give you the option of growing 2 plants per square foot (which is fine) or pulling a male if one should develop, and your entire box will be the same age. After you thin out the crop, you can always move some of the doubles to an open box, or again build another 4x4 box.

Your plants - if you're growing anything other than autoflowers - will likely follow the same growing patterns as tomatoes, and will be enormous. In a straight line garden, I had tomato plants at 3 feet tall by the end of June, and we harvested in August after a late April planting. In a Square Foot Garden with the same soil compost, worms, and less water, I had taller - stronger - plants, bearing more - and bigger - fruit, and harvested at the end of July.

The best thing is, you can build these things pretty much any size. 2x2 for your 4 year old to play with gardening for the first time, 3x3 for your 10 year old who wants to learn more about organic composting, and 4x4 for adults. Anything bigger than that is kinda hard to work, since you can't really stand on your dividers, and it's hard to reach past the second row of plants unless you've got a reach like Ed "Too Tall" Jones...

When you're done with your harvest, add more compost material, more manure compost, and start again...

I hope you guys enjoy the fun.

Here's a couple examples of how you can divide up the garden to get the most out of it per square foot...

 

Thanks bro.. =)

 

LOL... thanks man... I appreciate the visit and the rep.

 

Hell yeah... worms are GREAT for your garden, and MJ plants... the worms make airy tunnels through the soil bed, which allows water to flow easier, air to flow easier, and they are constantly pooping and breeding and dying and decomposing, giving you more nutes all the time.

Thanks for the rep bro.

 

LOL.. yeah, 2 sqft gardening for big Sativa plants... but really, I think the 1sqft is quite enough for most plants... especially autoflowers... I think I might have to build a box this summer... but where I want to build it, that's something else entirely...

 

gracias mang...