by Mel Bartholomew
347pp.
As folks begin to reassert control over their households, their thoughts will often turn to gardening. Not many things are more gratifying (or more humbling) than growing your own food. You quickly come to appreciate the mystery of God?s providence—how little He requires of us and how bountifully He rewards the faithfulness of His children. However, gardening is often the place where many stumble badly, as the enthusiasm of springtime dwindles in the face of summer heat, tedium, and unexpected setbacks.
Mel Bartholomew found himself in charge of a community garden one year, and was surprised and dismayed to see how the initial excitement and good intentions of his neighbors steadily faded as the season progressed—the work was just too much to hold their interest. Then he began to wonder how much of the work was necessary, and how much was due to poor planning and misguided techniques? Bartholomew rethought the process of gardening from the ground up, and his approach creates a garden which is abundantly productive while requiring surprisingly small amounts of time and effort to maintain. Best of all, it can be implemented on a tiny scale to good effect
When he created the "square foot gardening" method, Bartholomew, a retired engineer and efficiency expert, found the solution to the frustrations of most gardeners. His revolutionary system is simple: it's an ingenious planting method based on using square foot blocks of garden space instead of rows. Gardeners build up, not down, so there's no digging and no tilling after the first year. And the method requires less thinning, less weeding, and less watering.
We've used Bartholomew's methods successfully, and we're always learning of folks who use them to turn their own gardens around. The system works well at very small scales, so if you want to try your hand at gardening we suggest that you start with a minimal square foot garden, growing just a few of the plants that Bartholomew recommends as easy to manage. As with so many other things, a little bit of success in the beginning will spur you on to more ambitious efforts in the future.
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