Gardens are great!

I can not wait for spring! The snow is melting and seed catalogs are coming in the mail every day. Soon I will start to plan my gardens. I have two raised beds in my yard, about five feet wide by ten feet long. Although I have lots of space, the soil in my yard is very acidic (we live in the woods) and we have lots of deer, chipmunks and turkeys who would love to have a free buffet! So, we build raised, fenced beds to ensure the safety of our vegetables. The beds aren't huge, but I did get a good bit of produce from them last summer. Before I did my planting last spring, I was reading and dreaming about fresh vegetables when I came across the square foot method of gardening. It was quite different from the long rows I helped to tend as a child, but for someone like me with limited space, it makes great sense.
The premise is that by using raised beds with weed barriers and a rich growing medium seeds can be given advantages over growing directly in the earth. Then, when planting the seeds, a grid method is used to maximize companion plantings and growing space. In a square foot garden there is no waste. Rather than spreading a whole packet of seeds in a row and thinning the seedlings later, this method advocates planting each seed individually, with just enough space around it to avoid crowding as they grow. Modern seeds are almost all good, and by making each seed matter the money spent to buy them doesn't end up composted!
This year, I will adjust the space I give to each type of plant and skip some of the more sprawling varieties, but I think that even with the mistakes I make I ended up with higher yields using the square foot method that would have been possible in traditional rows. I just can't wait to get started!
http://www.squarefootgardening.org/