The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author
What's Wrong with Single Row Gardening?
Twenty-five years ago when I first took up gardening seriously and learned the single row method that was being taught by all the experts and gardening writers, I kept asking myself, "What's wrong here - something doesn't seem right". Then I said, "Let's look at the end result". After looking at other people's gardens, it was usually very predictable. Here's what I found out about single row gardening:

This is single row gardening.
  • Too big an area
  • Too much time
  • Too much work
  • Too much effort
  • Too many seeds
  • Too many weeds
  • Too many plants
  • Too many problems
  • Too costly
  • Too much harvest
  • Too many tools
IT'S JUST TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING!

And what I observed was, next year it's going to be the same thing all over again in everyone's garden. It's like de' javu all over again. I was finding out that it's not only all of that, but especially for men, it's an ego buster. Every spring every man and many women envisioned not what they had last summer - a field of weeds - but what they hoped for this year. Like a Cub fan, this year it's going to be different. They envisioned this manicured garden of lush plants in well spaced rows with attractive, recently loosened dark brown soil offsetting the glorious plants all standing at attention in neat rows just like a military drill parade.

I can't tell you how many men I've met and women who have told me "My husband won't reduce the size of his garden and he's getting a lot older - he still insists on growing everything for our entire family (grown children included) and often including all of the neighbors and frankly, I'm getting very tired of cleaning, chopping, preparing, canning, freezing all that stuff".

These women ask me with great dismay "Can't you convince him to reduce it all down and grow less?" Of course I know with Square Foot Gardening that less is more but I explain to those women and I truly do understand those men "there is no way we are going to convince them to cut down the size of their garden much less teach them a new way to garden".

Remember the answer I got from all those horticultural experts when I asked them why we garden in single rows? I expected many scientific and sensible, logical answers that I hadn't thought of in my search for a better way but the ONLY answer I got from the horticultural experts was "Cause that's the way we've always done it". The ONLY answer and I said then and there "I'm going to invent a better way to garden" and Square Foot Gardening was the result.

I remembered those same conversations after the method was perfected and my book was published. When it was time to develop a marketing plan my publisher, Rodale Press, never did understand Square Foot Gardening or the radical difference from other methods and they felt it should be treated just like any other garden book or method. After all, they reminded me, they were the Experts in garden books. When I tried to convince them the book should be marketed mostly to beginners and to those who have tried to garden but failed, they said "No, we market to gardeners, especially experienced gardeners".

Because of my TV show, the book sold not just in the spring like all the other garden books but all year long. Every month seemed to outsell the last month and the book's outstanding sales record (over 1 million copies sold making it the largest selling garden book in history) was supported mostly by beginners, new homeowners, and mostly by people who have tried to garden in the past but failed and were reluctant to try again. So much for Expert book publishers.

And you know the surprising thing; Rodale still doesn't get it after 22 years. They are still baffled by it's continued large sales every year. Oh well, the sun will still come up every morning even if some of us don't know when the moon comes up.

Going back to those men, you have to love them because they are so dedicated and determined to continue their huge single row gardens and they usually keep them looking pretty good. It takes a lot of time and maybe that's why the wives don't insist they reduce the size and then they'll have more time to hang around the house. It's hard for us all to change or to reduce (that could be a double entendre). I remember being a teenager and caddying at the local club. We had to carry the bags and clubs for two golfers. No carts back then. And I notice the oldest golfers usually had the most clubs and the biggest, heaviest bags. Boy, were they heavy (and they were usually the smallest tippers). And they hardly ever used all those clubs. But like everything else in life, we keep doing things the way we learned and the way we've always done them. We've gotten used to it and on a positive note, we're usually fairly successful at it.

Well there's a lot wrong with single row gardening. It doesn't belong in home gardens. Actually, single row gardening is really a HAND-ME-DOWN FROM FARMING. Single rows work great for farms although a lot are converting now to double, triple and quadruple rows in beds and machinery is being made different. Single rows certainly don't belong in the home garden. Why are the horticultural experts still teaching single row gardening? Why are many of the books and the seed companies and all the gardening equipment companies still promoting single row gardening? CAUSE THAT'S THE WAY WE'VE ALWAYS DONE IT.

I challenge anyone, anywhere, to justify single row gardening.


This is Square Foot Gardening!

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