The Ultimate Guide To Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening is a simple organizational practice in which you divide your growing area into small square sections that are usually 12" on each side. Turning a raised bed into a square foot garden helps keep each plant variety in its own section, allowing you to easily create a specialty garden of your own. Read on to learn how to take the square foot garden trend and use it to prep a pizza garden in your own backyard.

How To Build A Square Foot Garden

To start, you'll need to build a raised bed.

Step 1: Select and measure your raised bed materials.Measure your desired board lengths and widths to create a raised bed for your yard. I cut my boards into 5' and 3' pieces to build a large rectangle shaped bed. I did this because I started with 8' boards and wanted to divide my materials simply without creating any waste, plus this size gives me a large raised bed as my finished product. 8' boards are a standard size and easy to find in most stores. I like to use cedar or douglas fir boards to help prevent rotting and damage by bugs.

Step 2: Create the raised bed frame.Once you have the board pieces measured and cut, it's time to secure them together using the Fiskars IsoCore 20 oz General Use Hammer (15.5") and 3" nails. I doubled the height of my raised bed to make it easier to harvest veggies from, plus I'm giving the roots of my plants lots of soil depth in which to anchor themselves.

Step 3: Level the ground.Once the raised bed is created, level the area in your yard where the bed will sit using Fiskars Steel D-handle Digging Shovel (46")and the Fiskars IsoCore 5 lb Pick (36"). Leveling the ground will save lots of headaches in the future, making sure water that won't pool to one side of the bed and that your veggies and soil will have an even place to land.

Step 4: Set the raised bed in place.Once you've checked your raised bed with a level secure into place by tapping the frame into the ground with the Fiskars IsoCore 10 lb Sledge Hammer (36").

Step 5: Fill with soil. Now that the raised bed is in its spot, fill it will soil in preparation for planting. Rake smooth with the Fiskars Aluminum Garden Rake (60").

Step 6: Create garden dividers.Measure the length of your raised bed and cut wooden dividers to fit snuggly into the frame, giving enough equal space to each square in the raised bed. You can use string as the divider as well, but I find wood works nicely. The best space for each section is a 12" x 12" square, but that can be shifted based on your raised bed frame.

Step 7: Secure dividers in place.Place the measured and cut wooden dividers into the raised bed and nail in place. This will help keep you organized in the garden, and gives you a perfectly proportioned square foot to plant you different veggies and herbs.

Step 8: Plant in each square foot area and create a pizza garden.Plant herbs and veggies in the squares using the FiskarsBig Grip Transplanter (400S) to dig the holes and the Big Grip Cultivator (400S) to rake the soil area smooth. In this case, I planted veggies and herbs that could be used on a pizza since I love making pizza on the grilleach summer. Some of my favorite ingredients to plant in a pizza garden are:

• - Cherry Tomatoes
• -Heirloom Tomatoes
• -Garlic
• -Basil
• -Rosemary
• -Parsley
• -Arugula
• -Red Onions
• -Bell Peppers

You can use this idea and create your own salsa garden featuring lots of different pepper and tomato varieties or a cocktail garden filled with herbs, too. Now sit back and wait to harvest!