Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10009 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Good but don't take believe it 100%
Very much written for the "gullible American" market.

Don't believe all you read, but the main points are very strong and it does encourage one to think differently about gardening.

Recommended.

Great book - easy to follow
As a family we were keen to start a vegetable plot and only having a relatively small garden with limited space, raised beds seemed a good idea. But how to start?

A neighbour lent me his copy of Mel Bartholomews 'All New Square Foot Gardening' and I read most of it in one night and it all seemed to make sense.

You seem to have to outlay a lot of money on timber, netting, peat, compost, vermiculite etc but if it lasts a long time (Mel says the soil is good for 10+ years if you add compost on a regular basis) it will more than pay for itself (although that's not the main reason for doing it). We sourced coarse vermiculite realatively easily from a local builders merchant (TP) in 100L bags for approx £10 each.

Overall the book is very clear, and Mel's enthusiasm shines through and is contagious.

Highly recommended.

Practical and simple to follow - even for me!
I've been really wanting to get into gardening for quite a while now - especially vegetables & fruit. I am by no means green fingered, have little time, and have felt somewhat overwhelmed or bewildered by the gardening books which I've read. This is most definitely the exception. It has inspired me to try this kind of gardening, and I've made a start with it now. so far everything has been simple, quick, and very easy to understand. Of course, it's too soon to see whether I successfully grow things with it :-)

I used an online converter to convert the feet and inches to metric, and cubic feet to litres for the soil. Someone commented that they'd found vermiculite (a necessary component of the soil in Mel's system) difficult to find. Here in the UK it is very, very easy to get. Any garden centre has it, and many mail order garden supply companies (eg Thompson & Morgen) stock it also.

Just one tip: My husband carefully made the necessary raised beds for me, which I then had to carefully paint, avoiding any area that the soil would touch. And then discovered that we could have made them with link-a-board kits much more easily and cheaply! I'll order these online for any future square foot beds, and just make the grid to go over them.

As mother of a 3 year old who loves to 'help' me in the garden, I really liked Mel's suggestion that one or more of the square feet sections be given to a child as their garden, with their name written on the grid, making it managable and exciting for the child.

One last point. At the time of writing this review (and when I ordered), Amazon is bundling this book with Cubed Foot Gardening. I ordered the bundle and was very disappointed. The other book is simply an older, much more difficult to follow version of this book. The only difference (apart from ease of understanding and applying) is that this one contains a token reference to flowers, to show that you can grow them also using this system. Save your money - just get this book.