How many square is too many squares?

Of course, everybody is different, however for the casual suburban/urban gardener. What's too many squares to moves it from casual hobby yielding delicious food to a chore.

The reason I'm asking is we are planning a major relandscaping of the backyard. In such, I'm reserving the area along the north wall for a pair of beds. A 2 foot raised bed adjacent to the wall for climbing type plants (cucumbers, melons, tomatoes) and then a walk/work space 3-4' and then another 4 foot wide raised bed. The area will have beautiful southern exposure and only the earliest and latest morning and evening sun shaded. Each bed will be between 15-20 feet long and 1 foot deep. That give me someone between 90 and 120 squares.

Would it be better to do two 4x8 beds with a narrower 2' between then while keeping the wide path between the wall and wall bed?

========= (2x18)

==== ==== (4x8)



120 Squares seems like a lot. Maybe I should do some test mappings and see what I foresee for plantings. I do love my melons both water and the various canteloupes and indorous (honeydew type) melons. Tomatoes, onions, and whatever else I experiment with. Maybe eventually even an artichoke.

I wouldn't mind having the spare bed squares for ornamentals mixed in. I'll just want a good growing mix of always something going. I'm in SoCal so I have 12 months of growing season. Right not, Lettuce, Garlic, Onions, Carrots, all going and struggling in non-prime sun locations.

Perhaps the better solution is to plan the three beds and only build two with the space for lawn (yes, evil lawn for the kids to play) identified for the future bed.

Q: How many square is too many squares?

A: No_Such_Reality



I'm adding some more this year, and might hit 400. Ask me in the fall?!

Seriously:
You're right: it all depends on what your veggie gardening objectives are. It's different for everyone. Leaving room for expansion is probably the best idea.

boffer wrote:Q: How many square is too many squares?

A: No_Such_Reality

I figured I'd get that answer. But on a serious note, the chore factor and just life balance when we have two jobs, and very young children and pending dog...

Gardening is time sensitive. Even in SoCal, the windows for planting are fairly small. Plant too late, it'll roast in the heat before it sets fully up. Neglect it for a few weeks and it's either a jungle for dead both of which mean double the work.

Maybe the better question is how much time to plan per week for every square foot in SoCal?

Build as big as you can. Plant flowers in place of vegetables, as they are low maintenance... you might want the extra space later and not want the hassle to go with building more.

I don't know the answer re: Southern California. I do know that 120 squares is a lot - at first! My answer changes every year. Others from SoCal will have helpful specific info for you, but I agree with Ashort, and would definitely plan on room for expansion. If you decide you don't want to expand, it's probably easier to put something else in, rather than be committed to stopping at 120.

PS - earlier this winter, I said that with the boxes I would be adding this coming spring, I would have 300-something, and I would have enough. Boffer laughed at me for saying I could ever have enough. And guess what? At this point, I am feeling that, with this year's additions, I will have enough - for now!

I agree with boffer, there’s no such thing as too many, but to do so, contradicts what Mel has said in the ANSFG book, and that is, start small and don’t overwhelm yourself. It sounds like you already have the right idea, by laying it out on paper prior to building and of course, you know better than anyone, what works best in your scenario.

I would say go for it and as you pointed out, maybe leave some lawn to balance the yard, allowing the kids to have an area. As they grow older and aren’t using the lawn to play, you can always fill it in with more boxes, should you feel you need or want the additional space.

My biggest concern with that many boxes would be, doing it right. That many will be pretty costly for the lumber alone, but then to add 60 cubic feet (or more) of Mel’s mix will add up fast and it would be better to have fewer boxes, done correctly than having to cut corners and not using the correct mix. Whatever you decide, be sure and post some pictures as it sounds like a great project.

Build more than you think you need and plant flowers at the beginning. Like ashort states, you'll have the hard part done if you decide later to expand your veggies and in the meantime, enjoy some lovely color.

Or if the kids are big enough, give them some of their own garden space and raise up some little gardeners.

For the more seasoned raised bed gardeners, which is more practical. The 2 4x8 beds or one long 4x20 bed?



I suppose these is an aesthetic issue to it. The Patio and outside dining area and grill will be to the south about 50 feet away. Hence for plantings, I'm in general planning low to high south to north through the beds which will be aligned across the narrow side of the bed. Is the one big bed practical or does having taller plants typically on the one side make it harder to get to the middle squares?

I've found the biggest time consumer once the planting is done is keeping up with the water requirements in the heat. Otherwise, the garden can go with only a few hrs per week including harvest time. So make arrangements for automatic watering and lose the expectation of picture perfect produce and you can have your family, work, and garden time. Also choose plants that don't need a lot of care or pollinating so you can reduce bugs with tulle covers. Is it ideal? NO! Are daily inspections and care better? YES! But you will get some good eating without them. BTW, I have 96 squares and plans for 64 more.

I left my garden for 4 months with a daily sprinkler on a timer. Came back to a mess, but still had harvestable chard, kale, and onions and even 4 butternut squash covered in beetles, some pretty yellow cayenne peppers and a few tomatos. Had to cut around beetle damage, but got 2 meals from the squash. Took me a few hours to clean out the mess and weeds, another few hours to top dress the living plants, fluff up and compost the squares, and plant some winter veggie starts and some lettuce seed (in early Nov). Spent another few hours in later Nov. to put up hoophouse covering. I've left the repaired garden for 2 week intervals over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Picked kale and lettuce about 30 minutes ago. Had a spinach, lettuce, chard salad last night.

Square Foot Gardening and MM made it possible.

Kay

This is a great question, which I will answer with another question, LOL. If you want to get to the other side of your 20' bed, you will have to walk all the way around it. How often do you want to walk that far? I prefer the shorter beds.

Answer: When your boxes start extending themselves into the neighbors yard, that is too many.

On a slightly (only slightly) more serous note. The only part I find tedious is the buying of the materials, and mixing. After that it really is a lot easier. Until you take into account harvesting and putting up your extra bounty. As you already said, it really is an individual thing and what your goals are for self sustainability. It also depends what you want to do with your yard. I don't think a urban yard to ever yield too much foot. Extra bounty, beyond what you can put up, can always go to food banks.

Aesthetics always drive my decisions. What would look right and balanced in the space? If you only build some now, will you be able to build them to match properly in the future? (If you're using brick or something, the stores may no longer stock the same ones a few years from now for instance, or wood will have aged, etc.). As others have pointed out, too many squares is better than too few. You can always grow into them, or convert them to perennial beds if you turn out to not be using them. Matching beds will still be attractive.

As far as size of beds I personally built a 4'x6' bed, thinking I'd always be able to reach in from either of the long sides to tend to plants. Then I put a trellis along the north side, and whoops! Now I can't reach all of my squares. You're already thinking ahead about tall plants on one side, so for sure put some more thought into it, graph it out and think about the two foot reach rule. I'm sure you can plant those long beds in a way that everything can be tended to. Matter of fact, I believe BackyardBirdGardener, one of the regional hosts on here, has very long beds and hopefully he'll come along and pipe in as to how he manages them.

camprn wrote:This is a great question, which I will answer with another question, LOL. If you want to get to the other side of your 20' bed, you will have to walk all the way around it. How often do you want to walk that far? I prefer the shorter beds.

This is what I was thinking as well. I would build a pair of 4x8 beds side by side with a nice isle between them and forgo the additional 16 squares in lieu of the 4x20.

That said, this is my first year as well, so I really don't know what the heck I'm doing either!

Regards,
Darren

I have a couple 20+ foot beds, and find them to be a pain to walk around. I finally gave in and started walking across the middle.

Since you have access on both long sides, I would make two boxes with just one or two feet between them.

boffer wrote:I have a couple 20+ foot beds, and find them to be a pain to walk around. I finally gave in and started walking across the middle.

Walking though the middle can't be doing the plants any good boffer, not to mention compaction of the soil. Since those squares aren't probably being used anyway, or any longer, what about this?

No_Such_Reality wrote:

Would it be better to do two 4x8 beds with a narrower 2' between then while keeping the wide path between the wall and wall bed?

========= (2x18)

==== ==== (4x8)

I like this idea. If the back are climbers, then 2 feet is probably all you want. And splitting up the long 4 foot bed makes sense for walk around access purposes.

It is easy to not use squares and sad to wish you had squares and not have any. I would max out and not feel every single square has to be in use every single minute. If you feel you have too many squares to plant, flowers are an option also. Remember that you will be growing year 'round. I find that each plant stays in its place longer than Mel gave it credit for so I think you will be happy to have the extra squares. And you can always pick one thing to can each year and overplant that item.

And for the climbing area, I find tomatoes would probably be happier with a square and a half.

And that said, the higher you can make these planting boxes, the better. Easier on the back.

My first two beds were 4 x 24. They are a pain to walk around, all subsequent beds are 4x4 or 4x8. If I get around to it, I will convert those "big 'ens" to 4x8 later.

BTW, 396 squares is just right

Gee, I love everyone's suggestions. The only thing I would add to keep the labor expenditures down is to suggest some perennials: herbs, rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries, etc.

I might also want to add something of a sunscreen for heat sensitive plants for those very hot summer days. A flat gauze type screen parallel to the ground say 3 feet off the ground might generate a light breeze that will help keep plants cooler.

tomperrin wrote:
I might also want to add something of a sunscreen for heat sensitive plants for those very hot summer days. A flat gauze type screen parallel to the ground say 3 feet off the ground might generate a light breeze that will help keep plants cooler.

Since this is extra expense and trouble, I will add that my own experience in So Cal is that in full sun all day I never needed a sun shade. Not to NOT do it, just that is probably is not needed. But, would my plants have thrived more with one? That I do not know.

I'm sorry if you've already clarified, but did you say how many people are in your family and if you were planning on some for preserving, dehydrating, freezing, etc.?

Small family, only three with son still counted in months. Hopefully growing the family.

We'll be trying more canning particularly of our tomatoes for sauces.

I should clarify that the raised beds won't be the only beds. I'll have to post a rough sketch, but we have existing Orange trees (2) with wonderful oranges. We planted a 4 in 1 apple that got loaded with apples last year, on the Gala and Golden Dorset but the Fuji and other one didn't take off. I'm trimming and will do more fruit thinning this year if it gets enough chill hours. It looks like the Fuji branch is about to bud out. I think fourth isn't going to be making it though making it a 3 in1.

In the relandscaping, we'll be taking out overgrown tropical trees and replacing with fruit trees. Maybe an Asian Pear, and possibly a peach or apricot. We're removing three large trees and will likely be able to replace with two or three fruit trees.

We are also removing ornamental bushes and replacing with berries. They line the fence between the driveway and yard. bordering the lawn area and patio, we'll have 2 or 3 in ground beds. Picture a lawn area 20x25-30' bounded on one side by the patio, the far side from the patio by the raised beds and down both side with small in ground planting areas for perrenials and bushes that have little pathways between. On the west side facing east, we'll have the flowering beds. On the side with the trees, facing west, we'll have the bush type stuff: things like Rosemary, Lavendar, Daisy Bush

Whooowheeee!

Ambitious plans, indeed!


Go big or go home!

Wow! That sounds like a lot of squares. It's just me and my husband right now, but I seriously found 48 squares (that includes a 2x4 strawberry bed) produced more food than we could eat, and we ended up with five gallons of chopped onions and a gallon of cherry tomatoes in the freezer at the end of the season(that we're still working on).

Now, that said, I AM still planning on expanding, lol. I'm adding 2 4x4 beds, bringing me to 80 total squares. Mostly I plan on using the extra space to grow space hog plant types, like squash.

And as someone said before, if you find yourself with too much food, there are food pantries that would really appreciate your vegetables.

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention. My 48 squares usually took me 30-60 minutes of care every day last year. That includes watering (which the MM needs every day to keep from drying out), weeding (which takes the least amount of time), pruning, and harvesting. I probably could have spent less time on the garden, but I don't think it would have done quite as well.

Yes, it does seem like a lot, however, I like to experiment. And I want to continue trying veggies until we find the ones we like.

It's completely realistic for me to plant 3 different kind of melons and another 2 kinds of water melons. Literally first year, I'll probably plant Canaries (4 SQ), Charentais (4 Sq) and Jenny Lind (4 Sq). I'll allocate another 4 watermelons probably having Moon & Stars and a simple Icebox watermelon type. That's somewhere between 4 and 8 squares. Plus the Cucumbers, English type and regular. That's 8 square. I'm a firm believer that most (Cucumbers, melons need a minimum number to actually set well, I've never had luck with solo plants producing.

I already have a problem, I've run out of trellis.

Tomatoes (Beefsteaks and Plums) 4 each. Peppers (Sweet) 4X, (Hot) 4x, if not 8x so I can have two varieties.

Plus squares for things like squash (scallop variety that are expensive in the store).

Plus mainstays Carrots, Onions, Garlic, lettuce, spinach & cabbage in the winter.

And experimentation with things like Celery, Beets, Corn, Turnips, Rutabagas, Broccoli, Brocolini, Brussel Sprouts.

Most of these get a lot per square, but... I plan for losses and experimentation.



Oh, and the big thing. I'm in SoCal, I need to plan year round crop rotation with staggering so that I'm not drowning one week and barren the next 12. I can start melons or peppers over a six month window, carrots year round. I currently have the beefsteak tomato from last spring in the container sitting in the little 6x8 greenshouse with a dozen tomatoes ripening.

Yes, I'll rub that in, January, one the vine ripening beefsteaks...

Okay, it is struggling a bit because of the cold and shade, but some nice little beefsteaks trying to make it.

My beds are 4x8, lined up to be 24' long, to accommodate soaker hoses that are just the right size for them. The sides are 8" tall, and the boards in the middle are 6" tall, so the soaker hoses can run straight across. Works great for me. I work my way up one side, and down the other. The 24' length is not a problem, and it really simplified watering for me.

I started with 7 4x8's, and a 4x4. Hope to add 50% more this spring.

Go for it. You really won't regret it.

j