Premier Sells Team Longport NJLongport NJ Real Estate

Jerome and Angel DiPentino of Long & Foster Real Estate

  • Home
  • Search for Homes
  • Our Listings
  • Rentals
  • Area Solds
    • Longport Sold Homes
    • Margate Sold Homes
    • Ventnor Sold Homes
  • Our Sold Homes
  • The Premier Team
    • About Long & Foster Real Estate
  • Contact Us

9 Reasons You Should Try Square Foot Gardening

gardening

Want to grow 100% of veggies in 20% of space? That’s just one reason to try square foot gardening, an easy and efficient way to grow your own produce.

In a nutshell, the square foot gardening method involves:

  • Dividing a 4-by-4-foot box into 16 squares; one type of crop in each square
  • Laying a permanent grid of 1-foot squares over the box to guide planting
  • Filling the box with a special, fresh soil mixture
  • Replanting each square after harvesting

The method was invented in 1981 by Mel Bartholomew, a retired civil engineer and efficiency expert who trained his time-is-money eye on traditional, single-row gardening.

“Traditional gardening was a lot of work and weeds,” Bartholomew says. “And when I asked, ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ I was told, ‘Because we’ve always done it that way.’”

Wrong answer for an efficiency guy. So Bartholomew analyzed everything he hated about gardening — weeding, watering, and long walks to large garden plots — and came up with a method that eliminates vegetable garden minuses and accentuates the positives — lots of organically grown vegetables in a fraction of the space and time.

Bartholomew’s book, Square Foot Gardening, inspired millions of small-space gardening acolytes and led to a foundation to feed the world, one square foot at a time.

Why should you square foot garden?

Bartholomew, 81, recently walked HouseLogic through the 9 reasons you should switch to square foot gardening.

1. Saves space: Square foot gardening boxes grow 100% of veggies grown the traditional way in only 20% of the space.

2. Saves water: Instead of shocking young plants with icy hose water, you water square foot garden plants with ladles of sun-warmed water from buckets or rain barrels. In the end, you use about 10% of the water you’d spray on a traditional garden.

3. Saves money on gardening tools: Since you never walk upon and pack down square foot gardening soil, you don’t need hoes, spades, or rakes to break it up. All you need is a hand trowel to mix the soil and a pair of scissors to cut greens.

4. No walking: You can place square foot gardening boxes anywhere there’s sun — outside your back door, on patios, and on decks. The closer the boxes are to your kitchen, the more you’ll tend and harvest produce.

5. No bending and reaching: Square foot gardening boxes typically are 4-by-4-foot square because Bartholomew figured adults can comfortably reach 2 feet. Gardeners can walk around their boxes, tending veggies without ever overreaching. If bending is a problem, build boxes on legs or rest them on a card table.

6. No weeding: Most weeds come from seeds or spores buried in soil. Square foot gardening soil, however, uses a 6-inch-deep mixture of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 coarse vermiculite, and 1/3 blended compost made with at least five different sources — leaves, manure, food scraps, coffee grinds, and eggshells. If a wayward seed does blow into a planting box, you can easily pluck it from loose soil.

7. Uses fewer seeds: Traditional gardeners sprinkle seeds around, and then thin seedlings. Square foot gardeners plant seeds and seedlings according to a precise plant-spacing formula: 1 tomato seedling per sq. ft, 16 onions, 8 peas, 4 celery, and so on. The formula eliminates guesswork and stretches a pack of seeds much further.

8. Raises little gardeners: Kids love to play in dirt and watch things grow. Square foot gardening lets them do both, without the tedious chore of weeding. As a bonus, kids are more likely to eat vegetables they’ve grown themselves.

9. Raises rolling crops: After you harvest 1 square foot of veggies, throw in a handful of compost and plant a different crop in the bare square. That way, you’ll have a steady supply of greens throughout fall or until the first frost, whichever comes first.

By: Lisa Kaplan Gordon
Published: May 14, 2012
Read more: http://members.houselogic.com/articles/square-foot-gardening/preview/#ixzz2xk4Y03fc

“Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.”

Powered by NJ Interest Rates

Featured Properties

1102 Atlantic Ave, Longport, NJ 08403
IDX Image
$4,295,000
Beds: 5
Baths: 4 | 1
 
2700 Atlantic Ave Ave #501, Longport, NJ 08403
IDX Image
$1,500,000
Beds: 3
Baths: 2
 
111 S 16th Ave #316, Longport, NJ 08403
IDX Image
$799,000
Beds: 2
Baths: 2
 
View all

About Jerome & Angel DiPentino

Jerome & Angel DiPentinoFormer owners of Premier Properties Real Estate Inc., Jerome and Angel DiPentino, shaped their business into a “boutique real estate firm” in Longport, New Jersey as the community’s leading real estate agency in 1990.

Premier Properties has joined forces with Long & Foster Real Estate – the largest real estate company in the Mid-Atlantic region. Long & Foster provides a one stop shopping experience with real estate, mortgage, title and insurance. While our name has changed, The Premier Team still prides itself on providing that “boutique real estate feel” in Longport. Read More...

Copyright © 2023 · Longport New Jersey Homes and Real Estate for Sale · Long & Foster Real Estate Longport

Jerome DiPentino and Angel DiPentino | Broker/Sales Associates
Jerome Cell: 609-432-5588 | Angel Cell: 609-457-0777
Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc | 2401 Atlantic Avenue - Longport, NJ 08403 | Office: 609-822-3339
All information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified.
Equal Housing Opportunity