Square-Foot Gardening Basics: How to Plant a Square-Foot Garden

Square-foot gardening is a fun and effective way of designing a backyard garden made of one-foot by one-foot squares. Beginners and small space gardeners will love this method as it’s easy to visualize, care for, and harvest from, and you can start one on a patio, tiny backyard, or in a metal or wooden raised bed. 

Engineer Mel Bartholomew devised this interesting method and wrote a book about it in 1981, which is still frequently referenced today. He saw gardens with row systems as chaotic and difficult to manage for beginners, so he designed a garden using squares and found it highly effective and practical. Square-foot gardening is low maintenance, and its dense planting style reduces weeds, disease, and the need for frequent watering, perfect for growers in dry regions. Plus, it adopts a no-till method, which further benefits the soil structure and microorganisms living beneath the soil surface and is beginner-friendly. Check out Mel’s book here: Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening.

Here, we’ll explain in detail how to plan a square-foot garden, start seeds with your design in mind, choose the best varieties to try, and care for and refresh your garden for maximum results. 

Planning Your Square-Foot Garden

Let’s jump into how to start planning your square-foot garden, beginning with the ideal location. 

Location

Selecting the right location for your new garden is crucial to its success. Ensure the following:

• Access to water

• Ample sunlight, ideally south-facing 

• No nearby structures that cast shadows 

• Walkability 

• Crops you can grow 

• Protection from harsh winds

Instead of creating a garden in a faraway space where hoses and the sun don’t reach, transform a sunny, unutilized (but nearby) corner in your yard with a raised bed kit, seeds for your region, and a design; you’ll be square-foot gardening in no time. Add irrigation for raised beds with a raised bed drip irrigation kit. Set the irrigation on a timer if you’re forgetful! 

Soil And Materials 

Many gardeners design a square-foot garden in a ground-raised bed, but you may also create a grid inside a metal or wooden raised bed for a more ergonomic garden. It’s essential to get the soil right when starting with an empty raised bed so it will provide the nutrients and drainage your crops require. Traditionally, square-foot gardens call for just six inches of depth, which is challenging with some deep rooters, so you may consider building a bed at least 12 inches deep or using in-ground garden space to allow carrots, parsnips, and tomatoes to root deeply. 

Popular summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and lettuce require well-draining and composted soil. If your native soil is clayey, you can alter its composition by adding mulched leaves, aged manure, and compost. A loamy, aerated soil will allow roots to develop correctly and access the necessary food and nutrients. Here are a few popular soil mixes to try:

• Mel’s Mix from his book includes equal parts peat moss (or coco coir brick), vermiculite, and compost. 

• 1:1 Compost to topsoil. We recommend using bagged materials from trusted sources.

• 4:1:1 Coco coir to perlite to worm castings. This mix will perform well with directly sown crops like arugula and radishes. 

• 4:3:2:1 Topsoil to compost to coco coir to worm castings.

Each grower’s ratios may differ slightly based on native soil, climate, and crops. If you select a deep metal or wooden raised bed or container, save money by filling the bottom ⅓ to ⅔ of it with organic scraps like spent microgreen trays, small twigs, rotting logs, grass clippings, brown cardboard, and mulched leaves. Layer them a few inches at a time and spray them with water before adding more materials. Doing so will prevent sinkholes from forming as the materials break down. 

Related: Reusing Spent Trays of Cut Microgreens

Design Considerations

One of the reasons square-foot gardening is so easy to plan and care for is you’ll only ever have to remember the size of the squares, which will always be 12 inches by 12 inches. Review the spacing requirements for crops you’ve selected, then fit them properly into each square. For example, one square may fit: 

• One large crop like cauliflower, cabbage, pepper, or tomato

• Two cucumbers or basil  

• Four medium crops like lettuce heads 

• Four to nine gloves of garlic 

• 16+ spinach, radishes, beets, or salad turnips

• Nine carrots or green onions planted in a 3x3 grid 

Consider the height and sun requirements of crops and avoid surrounding short crops with tall ones that may shade them out as they grow. Plant crops with similar water needs nearby. We’ll discuss selecting proper companions later to assist with yields and pest control. Experience and taking ample notes will lead to more success each season. 

Draw your garden squares on grid paper after scaling them to size. You can also use our printable square-foot garden planner as a template. Adjust crops based on your family’s favorites. 

Seed Starting for a Square-Foot Garden

Square-foot gardening combines directly sowing seeds and transplanting crops. The benefit of transplanting is placing seedlings exactly where you want them and selecting the healthiest, most vigorous plants for your garden. If you’re new to starting plants from seed, you’re not alone.

You can purchase seedlings from a local nursery if you’re not ready to plunge into seed-starting, but Bootstrap Farmer’s 1010 seed-starting kits make seed-starting a breeze! The air pruning of the cell trays will give you some wiggle room if your seedlings need to stay in the trays before transplanting. 
Related: Air Pruning Basics

Planning Your Sowing Schedule

A sowing schedule can be a simple spreadsheet or notebook with days to maturity, special seeding requirements, temperatures and light required to germinate, spacing, transplant date, location, the number of successions recommended, and other pertinent information. More advanced options include apps and spreadsheets pre-populated with formulas and dates you can pay for. Growers should adjust the columns in their sowing schedule based on what they find pertinent for record keeping. 

Below is a snippet from Partners’ Gardens’ 2024 sowing schedule. It’s elementary but has all the necessary information they want to track for each crop. Sowing schedules should be a living, ever-changing document throughout the season and help you plan for next season. 

When To Start Seeds

How early you can start seeds indoors will depend on the crop and your region’s last anticipated spring frost. If you start them too early, they risk becoming rootbound, stressed, and running out of nutrients in their container as you wait for temperatures to allow them to be transplanted. If you start them too late, they won’t have enough time to establish before the heat of summer, or they may not have enough days in the season to reach their full potential. 

Locate the days to maturity on the back of the seed packets and note it in your sowing schedule. If you don’t know your last frost date, enter your zip code into the Almanac’s frost date calendar, then count weeks backward recommended on the seed packet to find the recommended seed sowing date. If a packet says to sow them six to eight weeks before, mark down seven weeks before, and note any changes for the following year if necessary. 

Related: The USDA's New Plant Hardiness Zone Map - Explained

Which Crops To Sow First

The first seeds you should sow need the most time before transplanting. Below are some popular crops you might be starting this season.

• Bulbing onions need 8 to 12 weeks before transplant, so in some regions, you can start them indoors as early as January. 

• You can plant cold-weather crops like spinach, kale, and some head lettuce varieties in cooler soil. Start them about ten weeks before the last frost date. 

• Start crops like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant six to seven weeks before the last frost date. If they need more time before transplant, pot them into larger containers like 5" Reusable Seed Starting Pots with Insert. 

• Monitor the extended forecast before starting summer crops like squash and cucumbers as they only need three to four weeks in Seed Starter Pots - 2.5" Extra Strength and will become rootbound soon after that. Because these crops are extra sensitive to root disturbance, consider planting them in biodegradable CowPots®. 

Fight the urge to start all your seeds simultaneously, as this will result in stressed plants waiting to be transplanted. Get in the habit of paying close attention to the weather report and monitoring soil temperatures. Stagger your seed-starting as needed. 

How To Plant Successions For Continuous Harvests 

Some seed packets include a recommended sowing succession schedule for continuous harvests and instructions to start seeds “X” weeks before or after the last frost date. The timing will depend on how long you can harvest from the same plant. For example, you may only get two cuttings from lettuce mix or baby kale in peak summer, while you can harvest summer squash from the same plants for many weeks until they peter out or become infested with pests. So you’ll need to sow leafy greens more often than summer squash. 

Pro tip: Cover cold-hardy crops with Greenhouse Shade Cloth—30% Black to prevent premature bolting and extend the harvest as temperatures warm in the spring and summer. 

Related: Succession Planting for Success in the Market Garden

Crop Rotation

Rotate crops throughout the season to break pest lifecycles and keep the soil from becoming depleted of nutrients. Vegetable families to rotate include: 

• Cucurbits (winter and summer squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons, zucchini)

• Brassicas (kale, cauliflower, radishes, cabbage, collard greens, brussels sprouts, mustards, turnips, arugula, kohlrabi, bok choy, broccoli)

• Alliums (onions, chives, garlic, shallots, leeks)

• Legumes (peas, beans, chickpeas, fava beans, cowpeas)

• Nightshades (eggplant, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes)

• Parsley (carrots, fennel, dill, parsnips, cilantro, parsley)

VIDEO: Unboxing: 1010 Seed Starter Kit for Backyard Gardeners

How to Plant a Square-Foot Garden

Now that we’ve covered the basics of square-foot gardening, let’s discuss how to prepare the site, set up your squares, and get you planting. 

Preparing The Site 

When using metal or wooden raised beds, level the ground before positioning the bed and filling it with material and soil. Doing so ensures even distribution of water and nutrients. If you’re creating a plot out of in-ground garden space, simply stake it out and create pathways around it so the squares don’t get trampled. Using the edge of a spade shovel, dig a few inches down into the path and toss the soil on the bed. Measure the bed width periodically as you move down to ensure it’s not getting wider or narrower. Broadfork the area before adding amendments, then smooth it down with the back edge of a rake. A smooth and level planting surface is best for direct sowing and will keep the distribution of amendments even. 

Setting Up The Grid 

A fun aspect of square-foot gardening is how unique each garden can be. Create your squares with tubing or something local, like twigs in your backyard, upcycled broken tool handles, disease-free pruned fruit branches, clean old pipes, bamboo sticks, or twine. Use something mostly straight to keep the design neat. Measure the one-foot squares and mark them before adding your dividers. Bartholomew originally suggested four-foot by four-foot beds because they’re easily accessible to kids and adults without stepping on or over them. 

Not all crops will succeed using the grid system, which is a downfall for some growers. This method may seem rigid if you want lots of space and intercropping flexibility. Also, if you like a fluid, natural flowing garden, the grid may seem too formal of a style. 

If you have drawn your garden on grid paper, reference it when planning next season and simply rotate crop families in the same direction. Here’s a simple example of what year one could look like:

Planting Seeds And Seedlings

Use the 12 x 12-inch square to determine your spacing and plot crops in your grid design accordingly. For most transplants, you’ll want to dig a hole about the same depth as the rootball, plop it in, bury it with native soil, and give it a firm tamp down. The exception to this rule is cucurbits, which don’t like their roots disturbed, so take extra caution when transplanting them. 

Position crops like sugar snap peas along the north edge to avoid shading out other plants at one to three-inch spacing. Since you’ll only use the edge of that square foot, consider adding some directly sown radishes on the other edge to utilize the space and keep the soil covered. In contrast, one cabbage plant will take up an entire square foot, so plant it in the center of the square.  

When direct seeding, follow seed spacing instructions on the seed packet, which may indicate, “sow 12-15 seeds per foot at ¼ inch spacing.” Thin as needed once germination occurs. As you harvest quick crops like arugula and radishes, plant new crops in their place to keep the soil covered. 

Companion Planting 

Companion planting is a method of co-mingling crops that boosts yields, deters pests, and attracts beneficial insects and pollinators. Read our article Boost Harvests with Companion Planting: Top Garden Pairings to learn more about successful companion planting. A few examples: 

• Flowers like borage, marigolds, and borage will attract bees and hoverflies, and prevent slugs, rabbits, and deer. 

• Plant sweet alyssum at the base of tomatoes to attract tiny pollinators, retain soil moisture and reduce weed pressure. 

• Flowering cilantro may help keep tomato hornworm populations down by attracting parasitic wasps.  

A type of companion planting is trap cropping, which directs pests to a crop they love even more than yours to keep damage down. The key is hand-picking them from the trap crop; otherwise, they’ll destroy it and move on to your garden goodies. Blue Hubbard winter squash is a highly effective trap crop. Start seeds earlier than your other cucurbits so they’re more robust at transplant. Add seedlings to grow bags and position them near your cucurbits. Pests like squash bugs and cucumber beetles will flock to them. 

Best Varieties to Plant in a Square-Foot Garden

First, no matter what you read about the best plants to grow in a square-foot garden, focus on growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs you and your family enjoy eating, cooking, and preserving. Creating a high-functioning and abundant garden is hard work, so the fruits of your labor should be appreciated, not wasted. 

Start simple and increase the crops within each square as you gain experience. When you intercrop within a square, consider growth time, root systems, nitrogen fixation of legumes, and the mature size of each crop. Here are some crop combinations that will yield success within one square foot: 

• Pepper and basil 

• Tomato and carrots 

• Pole beans and radishes

• Strawberries and green onions 

• Broccoli and arugula 

• Cucumber (trellised) and head lettuce 

Plant crops like cauliflower, large basil cultivars, and zucchini alone in a square foot. 

Some gardeners build multiple 4X4 gardens and diversify within each of them. For example, they interplant flowers with vegetables to attract pollinators in one entire bed, herbs in another, companion-planted veggies and herbs in another, and all veggies in another, allowing the most bang for their buck. This method also allows beginners to get used to square-foot gardening. With gained experience, you may combine herbs, veggies, small fruit bushes, and flowers within one large container.

• Line the northern edge with marigolds to deter aphids and whiteflies and cosmos to attract hoverflies, lacewings, butterflies, and honeybees. 

• Seed sweet alyssum around tomatoes to retain moisture, attract hoverflies and ladybugs, and suppress weeds. 

• Sow early-season spinach and lettuce near overwintered garlic. The scent will deter pests, and you’ll take advantage of the space before the garlic experiences a growth spurt. 

Diversification among crop families, root systems, and scents will provide many benefits. Perennials will perform best in a dedicated garden so they don’t overcrowd and compete with annuals. 

Caring for Your Square Foot Garden

Now that you’ve set up your garden and selected crops, let’s discuss how to care for it so you get high yields and consistent harvests. 

Watering Techniques And Frequency 

To avoid under or overwatering, plant nearby crops with similar watering needs and use a moisture meter. We recommend drip irrigation lines so crops are deep watered, ensuring water gets to the roots. Overhead watering increases the risk of fungal disease.

Square-foot gardening suggests planting crops more densely than you might be used to, so you’ll likely need to water less. Most crops require at least one inch of water weekly. Adjust this amount as needed, depending on your region and the current conditions. Water more during drought conditions. 

To Mulch Or Not To Mulch 

When considering whether to mulch and what material to use, consider your region’s climate and what crops you’re growing. Growers in colder areas like the Midwest and New England may surround small seedling transplants with straw, mulched leaves, or grass clippings to keep them warm and block weed seeds from germinating. In contrast, someone in the South may not require the additional heat and protection. On the West Coast and Southwest mulching will help retain water and help plants resist drought. 

If you get a lot of rain remove the straw when temperatures increase in the summer and add it to your compost pile or use it in pathways. Compost offers the same benefits as straw, with the added perks of improved soil, increased soil drainage, and the ability to help the garden retain moisture. 

Pest Control

According to the Square-Foot Gardening Foundation, the most common and damaging pests to watch out for are aphids, cutworms, and squash bugs. However, not all insects are harmful, so you’ll want to incorporate flowers and herbs that help attract beneficial insects to keep your backyard environment healthy and thriving. Diversify your plot to create a never-ending cycle of food, prey, and predators to keep your garden low-maintenance and abundant. 

Preventative measures include: 

• Wrap transplants in collars made from toilet paper or paper towel cardboard rolls. Cutworms emerge at night to feed, so be prepared for them before they strike. They love young, vulnerable plants with tender stalks. More mature plants won’t be at risk for extreme damage so you can remove the collars after a few weeks. 

• Scout often for pests and their eggs. Squash bugs lay shiny golden eggs that form clusters on the underside of squash plant leaves, including summer and winter squash, watermelons, and cucumbers. This video from UCIPM is great resource for identifying insect eggs. 

• Aphids blend in more than other pests and come in green, black, white, and orange. An intense burst of water will effectively blast them off your plants, but keep your eyes peeled for them before they do much damage. 

• Attract beneficial insects like lacewings, ladybugs, ground bugs, assassin bugs, hoverflies, and braconid wasps to your yard by planting flowering herbs like dill, parsley, and fennel, strongly scented flowers like sweet alyssum, nasturtiums, marigolds, wildflowers like black-eyed Susans, and butterfly bushes. Provide fresh water and plant crops with various bloom times so there is always food for them. 

• Avoid harmful chemicals, opting for IPM or organic sprays as a last resort.

• Companion plant

• Keep the soil covered so insects feel welcome to make your garden their home. 

• Diversify

Providing a safe space for beneficial insects to live and breed will help you create a healthy backyard oasis.
Related: Beneficial Insects for Organic Pest Control

Maintaining Soil Health

Test your soil regularly to ensure plants have access to the required nutrients. If you practice good crop rotation, keep your soil covered in the off-season, and add compost each season, your fertilization schedule may be as simple as adding well-balanced, slow-release fertilizers. 

Rotating crops between square feet is easy if you keep maps of what’s growing each season. Pick a direction of rotation, like counterclockwise, and stick with it. Most gardening experts recommend rotating crop families every three to four years to reduce pest and disease pressure. Moving crops around also provides diversity underground, including root systems, beneficial bacteria, and earthworms, which keep the soil healthy and stable.

FAQs

What types of plants are best for square-foot gardening?

Successfully grow leafy greens, alliums, brassicas, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, herbs, flowers, carrots, lettuce heads, turnips, and radishes. Provide deeper soil for root vegetables for uniform growth. Pick patio or dwarf varieties for larger crops like squash and cucumbers. 

What crops should I avoid growing in square-foot gardening?

You may struggle to fit large and deeply rooted crops into this growing method: 

• Corn

• Large bush tomato cultivars 

• Potatoes 

• Long-vining plants like melons, pumpkins, and squash varieties 

• Asparagus 

• Rhubarb 

• Heavy-feeders like artichokes 

• Aggressive spreaders like mint 

How much maintenance do you need for a square-foot garden?

Square-foot gardening was created to remove some chaos and guesswork from gardening, so it should be much easier to manage. While your garden will still require attention, water, and regular harvesting, weed, pest, and disease pressure will remain low.

Can I use this method in any climate?

Adjust your soil type, watering schedule, and crops grown to garden this way in any climate successfully. 

How do I prevent overcrowding in my garden?

Refer to the spacing requirements before plotting your grid and adjust your seedings as needed. Some experts recommend starting with large crops and working to more advanced, densely planted square feet. Symptoms of overcrowding are stunted growth, legginess, pest issues, yellowing, or failure to thrive. Overcrowded gardens lead to competition for resources and increased pest and disease pressure. Adjust spacing as necessary to avoid overcrowding. 

What are common pests, and how do I deal with them?

Square-foot gardening has the potential for increased pests as the spacing is much closer, so look out for slugs, flea beetles, cucumber and squash beetles, aphids, and cutworms. Keep tomato and tobacco hornworm pressure down by companion planting nasturtiums, garlic, onions, and borage. Increase natural predator and pollinator populations by planting parsley, sweet alyssum, and marigolds.