Reviewed by annieb123 on
All New Square Foot Gardening is a revamp and re-release of the classic gardening book by Mel Bartholomew. The first edition was released in 1981 and changed the face of home gardening forever. This third edition, published 15th Nov 2018 by Quarto on their Cool Springs imprint is 272 pages and available in paperback and ebook format.
The concept of square foot gardening will be familiar to most home gardeners by now. Mel Bartholomew changed the paradigm when he combined biointensive methods with the innovation to use containers and raised beds set up in grids instead of the (at the time) traditional parallel row method of growing vegetables in the home garden. The yields can be significantly higher, the plants shade one another so weeds are not nearly as much of a problem and pests can be hand picked so they generally don't get out of hand. Succession planting makes maximum use of the space and spreads yields out so that nothing goes to waste.
This edition is well illustrated and full of color photography. It's a valuable reference also, full of planting schedules, charts, germination tables, lists of growables along with 'all about' entries which give more in-depth information about the most popular veggies and flowers.
If I had to choose ONE gardening book to recommend to new and experienced gardeners, Square Foot Gardening would be the one. This edition includes some new projects and new photographs along with some new container and accessibility gardening solutions. I am not 100% sure that there's a lot of new content for owners of the other editions, though I adore the SFG foundation's mission statement: "End World Hunger" and buying the book supports their efforts for education and international gardening. 3
Five stars for all the editions. I have been influenced a great deal in my lifelong gardening journey by SFG and would definitely not be the gardener I am today without Mr. Bartholomew's influence.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Reading updates
- Started reading
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- 4 February, 2019: Reviewed