Hello from Iowa

New to here and SFG. I have been a gardener for several years. Up until a few months ago, I was more of a traditional gardener, mostly long single rows of vegetables. Although a few years ago I started running more and more "wide-row" plantings, as I found I could increase production while doing less weeding. Last year my trusty roto-tiller broke-down and I thought that there had to be a better, easier, more enviromentally freindly way of producing fresh vegetables. I was walking through the Dollar General store a few weeks ago, when I saw Mel's new book on the shelf, and remembered an old gentleman that lived down the road from my mom and dads, that started doing his gardening using this method back in the early 80's. The only machine that he had was a lawn mower. He raked his leaves in the fall, and would pile them up and "mulch" them by running over them with the mower, rake them up and put them in his compost pile. He didn't even have a tiller, now I see he didn't need one. It's going to take a while for me to get used to this "New Fangled" way of gardening. It looks like I will be in good company here, hope to learn a few things from all of you, and prehaps share a few things that I have learned along the way.

You have come to the right place. Prepare yourself... hope you look forward to handling less weeding, less use of water, less space, less seed and more. I think you will quickly and happily join the rest of us in this wonderful way of gardening. Welcome and bring on your questions and feel free to use the white search box above for many topics.
!!

JohnIII....That version you bought is probably the condensed one and not nearly as helpful as his All New Square Foot Gardening book so if you can, get it from the library and read it, or buy a copy. You'll find it comes in mighty handy all thru the garden season if you have your own at hand.
Welcome to the forum. We were all newbies to SFG at one time but have learned by trial and error and by asking questions and getting answers from other SFG folk.
It sure beats tilling and double digging and intense weeding.
Welcome again.

quiltbea wrote:JohnIII....That version you bought is probably the condensed one and not nearly as helpful as his All New Square Foot Gardening book so if you can, get it from the library and read it, or buy a copy. You'll find it comes in mighty handy all thru the garden season if you have your own at hand.
Welcome to the forum. We were all newbies to SFG at one time but have learned by trial and error and by asking questions and getting answers from other SFG folk.
It sure beats tilling and double digging and intense weeding.
Welcome again.

Thanks for the welcome. I was wondering if I purchased a condensed version or not. The title is All New Square Foot Gardening. It's paperback, 175 pages and lists for $14.95. I was thinking about looking for the original book to have for my library too.

There is a new version came out this month! Welcome to the forum

The regular ANSFG book is 270 pages and has lots of helpful charts in it, so yours must be abridged or condensed.
The 2nd Edition is out this month and more helpful they tell us so if you buy your own, that would be the one to get.