Whenever I’m telling a group about all the advantages of Mel’s Mix, you know how rich and nutritious it is because of the homemade compost (which is made from many different ingredients) also the water-holding capacity (because we’ve added vermiculite and peat moss) and the startling fact that just about all crops can be grown in only 6 inches of this marvelous mix, I can see several people in the audience clicking through their computer brains, checking out every single flower, vegetable and herb they can think of, analyzing it as to whether it can grow in those six inches, and finally their computer stops at “carrots” and they immediately raise their hand and their question is always the same: How do you grow 10-inch carrots in 6 inches of soil?

I’m very tempted to tell a funny story about that and I usually do. It involved patio gardening for the handicapped where we had a very shallow box built and set up on legs so that a wheelchair could pull right up to it. Now the first box was made out of 1x4 lumber for the sides. The plywood bottom was drilled with holes for drainage, and as most of you know, a 1x4 doesn’t really measure 4 inches, it’s only about 3-1/2 inches. So we were growing everything in just 3-1/2 inches of Mel’s Mix. Because of the high nutrient content of the compost, everything grew just fine and if you look on our website on the home page, you’ll see a picture of that box. In fact, it looks better than fine - it looks spectacular. If I do say so myself. Can you imagine, all those plants growing in only 3.5 inches of Mel's Mix and NO FERTILIZER!

Well, I had another patio garden like that. It was a 3’x3’ and it was something I took from school to school when we were teaching children about SFG. The 3’x3’ box fit nicely into the station wagon (this was long before SUV’s) and it was not heavy so that 2 people could carry it about. It was also made from 1”x4”’s. I planted carrots and they seemed to grow nicely. The tops looked good. Of course, you never know what is below ground and that is part of the excitement of a root crop. You just don’t know what you are going to get until you pull it up at the end of the season. When we finally harvested these carrots, they were just average size, medium length and I didn’t know what was going to happen to them - would they grow to the bottom and then flatten out, or what would happen? But, as it turns out, they went to the bottom of the box, which wasn’t very far and turned 90 degrees and grew sideways. So, when we pulled them out, they were L-shaped. At first I thought, “Oh, this is terrible.” This was kind of like admitting something was wrong. But, then I thought, “For kids, this would really be fun to grow an L-shaped carrot and who knows what other shapes we might get.”

In my lectures, I used to tell that story about what almost became an embarrassment or a disaster, turned out to be a fun thing to do for the children. Then, I would ask the audience, “You are probably wondering how they tasted”. When I washed one off and ate it, guess what? “It tasted like ‘L’!” That’s a little bit of lecture humor there.

Someone wrote me recently and said, “How can you grow things like carrots in only 6 inches of soil? I thought the carrot roots go down 3 feet deep?” And, I thought, this is the mentality of single row gardening. This is something that the garden experts have been teaching us year after year - that plant roots go very deep and spread out and you need a lot of room for them. This is, in a sense, a total myth if it is reasonably analyzed. What they are judging is how plants grow in your backyard or on a farm where the soil is usually terrible. We used to work so hard for so many years to improve the soil and when you think about it, all we’re really doing is improving the top few inches of our garden. Ever the best rototiller only goes 4 or 5 inches deep and that with a great deal of effort. Since gravity tells the roots to go down, what do they do? They keep going further and further searching for moisture and nutrients. Now reverse that whole situation and put your plants in perfect soil to start with - soil that has all the nutrients they need and constant moisture. If you were a plant, why would you go any further? The other purpose of roots is to anchor the plant, especially a big bushy or tall plant like a tomato plant. It has to send out a strong support system to hold that plant up.

But, in Square Foot Gardening, we hold that kind of a plant up on a trellis system. We grow all our vine crops on vertical frames and they are almost just hanging there on the frame. They don’t need a strong spread-out root support system. So, the end result, although the experts still pooh-pooh the idea, is just about every plant that I’ve ever grown does very nicely in just 6 inches of our perfect Mel’s Mix.

But, back to the carrots. When someone in the audience asks, “How can you grow a 10-inch carrot in 6 inches of soil,” my first response, although I don’t always say it is, “When is the last time you grew a 10-inch carrot?” If I do ask it, they sheepishly say, “Well, never, but I might want to.” But, in general, most of the carrot seeds on the market are for varieties that grow 6-8 inches and that's about it. Everyone thinks they want to grow the tall, slender ones, but they very seldom do and they don’t work very well in most backyard garden soils anyway. The carrots end up being misshapen and twisted and rather unappetizing looking. But, wonder of wonders, I’m going to show you how you can grow 10-inch carrots in 6-inches of soil.

One person wrote and said, “Do you just make your 4’x4’ box 12-inches deep instead of 6-inches deep?” And, of course, that would waste an awful lot of soil mix - you would double the cost for your wood sides and you would double the cost for your Mel’s Mix and all to accomplish space for perhaps only one out of your 16 sq. ft. So instead of that idea, we are going to build something that is specially made just for that 1 square foot of extra-long carrots. We are going to build what looks like a little high-rise apartment on the roof, just for that one square foot that we want to plant extra-long carrots in. Now we used to call this a penthouse until that awful magazine ruined the name, so now we stick with high-rise apartment or just high rise.

Use your imagination now and think about one square foot planted with extra-long carrots. Other square feet would be planted with other varieties that will grow in 6 inches. In fact, today, there are a lot of very short or round carrots on the market and they are kind of fun to grow, too.

So, to house those extra-long carrots we are going to build a little apartment on top of our roof where they will fit and grow nicely. To build that, we just build a bottomless box - in other words four sides. We are going to make it out of 1x4 lumber or maybe 1x6 lumber. It will just sit on top of one of the squares and, in order to fit inside your grid (and I sure hope you have a grid because a square foot garden isn’t complete without a grid), then the outside dimensions of your new little box would be a little smaller than 12"x12" - so it fits inside the grid in one of the squares. You could use thinner plywood but some people don’t like the looks of plywood. As soon as you may set that on top of your garden, inside your grid and fill it with Mel’s Mix, you are ready to start planting. Because the inside dimensions are going to be a little less than normal, your 16 plant spacing will be a little closer together, but remember, nothing has to be exact in square foot gardening. You merely take that square foot, divide it in half each way by drawing a line in the soil with your finger (Have you seen the Introductory Video yet? It shows it all in humorous detail.) and then you merely poke two holes at a time with two fingers spacing them evenly apart. Plant your seeds and you are all finished. I like the 1"x4" lumber size better than the 1"x6". You also have to consider because of its exposure to the air on all four sides, so you may have to water a little extra, especially once the carrots get to be half grown stage.

Now, some may ask why go to this extra work when you could just build a whole 4x4 box bigger? But again we get back to the economy and the necessity of only one of the plants requiring this extra depth. Back in the old days, when we used to dig down and improve the existing soil (this was, of course, before the latest improvements to Square Foot Gardening), we suggested that you clean out one square foot and dig down into your existing ground an extra 4-6 inches and then back fill that with Mel’s Mix and you would have an extra deep square, but that meant you would always be growing the same thing in that one square, so this new method goes along nicely with the latest improvement to Square Foot Gardening, because after your extra-long carrots have been harvested, you can easily move the box to another square, in order to grow something extra long somewhere else. That way you get crop rotation and this movable high-rise apartment satisfies all the requirements of your garden.

Now this unique method works well for other crops. For example, if you grow scallions or leeks or even celery, everyone wants the white part of the vegetable and by using the high-rise apartment idea, you can grow extra-long white portions of those vegetables. In fact, you can double, if not triple, the desirable portions. Of course the green part of those same crops are just as, if not more, nutritious, but everyone wants the white portion. This high-rise method also works well for potatoes, because, remember potatoes grow off of the main plant stem between the bottom root and the top of the soil surface. So, if that potato has an extra 4-6 inches in the ground, it is going to grow that many more potatoes. Remember the old-fashioned way of growing potatoes - once they are planted in a furrow, you then have to come along and hoe up the soil from the 3 foot paths along the side to provide that extra cover. Let's eliminate all that work, throw away your hoe. Now it is much easier just to back fill that square with Mel’s Mix or better yet, pure compost to get the extra harvest.

This new idea is just one of the advance treatments of the basic square foot gardening system. There are many more and you will find there are many adaptable special things that you can do with Square Foot Gardening that you CAN'T DO WITH ANY OTHER SYSTEM because our system is so modular, you can replant any square foot with a new crop any time during the season and it all fits together so easily. NO OTHER SYSTEM CAN DO THAT. You will most often double your harvest without any more space or work.

Some people ask if we can paint the wood and certainly the outside exposed to the air could be painted any color you want, either to match your garden or to provide some decorative logo. You can even have the kids draw things with either paint or magic markers on the side of the high-rise apartment. I could even see windows with people peeking out and it would be a lot of fun to get the kids involved here.

If you want something unique and different, take your Square Foot Garden and do some special things with it. Try this idea and see how much fun and enjoyment it adds to your garden. I'm also going to show you how to build a stepped up or cascading SFG in a future column.