Square Foot Gardening (SFG) Video Lecture | Learn the art of Garden Planning: Garden Planner - Hobbies

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Square Foot Gardening is a method of
intensively growing vegetables
in deep raised beds that are divided into one-
foot squares.
Since its development by Mel Bartholomew
in the 1970s, this practice has rapidly spread.
It's very easy to follow, gives good results and is low
maintenance
as the closely spaced vegetables leave little room for weeds.
The Garden Planner has a special feature
called Square Foot Gardening mode,
which makes it easy to plan a garden
using the Square Foot Gardening method.
To switch to Square Foot Gardening mode,
just click the SFG button
to the left of the plant Selection bar.
You only need to do this if you are planting one-foot squares of plants.
SFG mode won't work for your garden plan if you
are planting traditional rows.
The Garden Planner offers to
automatically switch on these features
which are appropriate for this method of
gardening:
Snap to Grid, which makes it easy to position the
squares of plants on the background grid;
hiding plant labels; and enlarging the
plan.
Click OK to begin gardening in Square
Foot Gardening mode.
Next, draw your raised beds onto the plan using the outline rectangle tool.
You can fit several beds onto a single plan.
Just use the Plan Size & Grid button if
you need to increase the area available.
Once the beds are drawn, it's time to add
plants.
Click a plant on the Selection bar once
to pick it up, then move it to the raised bed.
Click again to place it.
The number in the top left shows how
many plants you can fit into that one-foot square
and the color of the background shows
which plant family it belongs to.
When planting, it's a good idea to
follow the 3 general principles of companion planting.
First, mix up the plant families to confuse
pests.
The one exception to this rule is where
they require support,
for example a row of vertically climbing
beans along one edge.
Second, consider whether some plants will
offer shade or support to others.
And third, it's always worth
including flowering plants that attract
beneficial insects that will help combat
pests such as aphids.
Plants can easily be moved around
by dragging them until you have the perfect layout.
To remove a plant, first select it by
clicking it,
then use the Delete button on the
toolbar or the Delete key on your keyboard.
If you select a plant that's too
big to fit into the Square Foot Gardening method,
such as this fruit bush the garden
planner will show traditional spacing.
This enables you to mix traditional
planting for some areas of your garden,
with Square Foot garden beds, giving you
a lot of flexibility.
The number of plants per square foot can
easily be changed.
For example, you might be growing a
particular variety of carrot that needs more space.
Just double-click the plant, click the
+ sign button next to the Variety drop-down list,
and click New Variety.
Then, when you edit that variety, you can
specify a different number of plants
or your own custom planting and
harvesting times.
The dash represents the default variety,
and enables you to change the number of plants in each vegetable square by default.
If you need to exit square
foot gardening mode,
just click the SFG button again, but if
you do this
don't forget about the options that
automatically set earlier.
You may want to switch those back
which you can do using the Settings
button, such as showing plant labels and Snap to Grid.
When your plan is finished, simply click the Plant List button
to be taken to a complete customized summary of your garden.
The dates for your area are shown, together with the total number of plants
and you can easily add notes.
The Garden Planner sends reminders of the
vegetables you need to plant twice a month,
making it even easier to grow a successful
Square Foot Garden.
There are many other useful features,
such as Succession Planting and Crop Rotation
that work in Square Foot Gardening mode.
Just view the other videos in this series to learn about how the Garden Planner makes this easy.