Choosing what to plant and where to plant it
By Mark Roach
OK, so you’ve built your boxes and grids, mixed your perfect soil and now you’re ready to plant some vegetables. Choosing what to plant in my Square Foot Garden, and where to plant it, gave me a few headaches. There are obviously two ways of approaching this – my way and then (quite possibly) the right way 
My way: Go out and buy a packet of seed for every different vegetable and variety of vegetable that you can possibly find. Get home and wonder why there are so many different varieties of tomato seeds in your knee high pile of seed packets. Sit down and pick a vegetable (like the tomatoes) and then start researching everything you can about planting seasons, companion planting, seed types & plant variety’s, crop rotation and seedling propagation.
This should lead you to even more research on the differences between Indeterminate (vine) and Determinate (bush) plant types, pruning practices, watering practices, plant pests & diseases and much, much more. You wonder why the back of the seed packets don’t tell you what the differences between the varieties are. You pick up the phone and spend a good half hour talking to the seed company sales and distribution manager and diligently writing everything down before requesting further information to be sent to you. Suddenly you realise that you are right back at the beginning again – Which seeds to plant and where?
The right way: Make a list of the vegetables that you would normally eat. Check our Planting & Harvesting Calendar to see which vegetables you should be planting at this time of year and go out and buy a packet of seeds for those vegetables. Quickly check the Plant Spacing Guide. Pick a suitable square in your SFG box and plant those seeds. It’s as easy as that.
Of course you still need to know whether those bean seeds that you are planting are for a bush or a vine variety so that you know whether to plant it in a trellised square or not (I like to have certain squares in my boxes permanently set up with a trellis and use only these squares for my vine plants). Again, check out the spacing guides for more info.
Don’t worry about all the different varieties of the same vegetable just yet, I’m sure that you will be trying many of them over the next few years to find your favorite but for now we just want to get you started.
Next:
Check our Planting & Harvesting Calendar
Check the Plant Spacing Guide
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Hi, please will you put up the planting and harvesting calendar. I am a little lost and any help would be great.
Hi Lyle
Thanks for asking. We have been away for a few days and I will put it up as soon as I get back this weekend.
Where are you situated and what are you wanting to plant? What is your setup (i.e. are you planting in “protected” boxes or are they exposed to the weather)?
Regards
Mark
+1 on the harvesting and planting calendar
Noted…
We put one up a while back but I took it down again almost immediately to update/expand it and I’m embarrassed to admit that I never got around to completing it. Will look at finishing and re-posting it soon.
You could always try doing it in a Google Calendar, embedded into your WordPress post/page? Won’t be all that pretty… but there’s a nice Google calendar-Wordpress plugin that would display whats next on the planting season calendar quite nicely, I think… Of course, if you want it purty, with pics and stuff, you’d have to do that yourself. I’ve just moved into a new house – what can I plant now (technically Autumn, but still hot as Summer)?
Hi Mark
I only recently found out about square foot gardening, wonderful idea, especially if you are stuck with the terrible soil I have here in Kuilsriver, Cape Town. Is the ‘Mel’s mix only for veggies or can I use the create a Bulb bed also? I am also confused about the ratios of the mix, saw Amandas comment, but Mark in your article “How much to mix” you mention that 6 cubic foot peat bale is 170 liters, but expands to double it’s size. And you also mention that the vermiculite is also light. So do I use straight out of the bag or do I first fluff then measure (should all of this be very accurate?)
I also read that people were struggling to find the products. I went to stodels (Bellville in Cape Town) and they had it all there.
Adwina
The “Mel’s Mix” is the ideal growing medium in the sense that it has the structure (light & fluffy), PH and nutrients as required by the widest variety of plants. Some plants however might need a more specialised growing medium – for example, roses and clivia’s etc might require a more acidic growing medium whilst carrots would require a more sandy soil. We want to keep this as simple as possible and we do not want to end up with a different growing medium for each plant, so we stick with the medium that is best overall (i.e. for the majority of vegetable plants) – Mel’s Mix.
It looks like I will have to attempt another, simpler explanation for the whole “how to mix” process but for now, the mixing part is actually very easy – 1/3 part peat moss, 1/3 part vermiculite and 1/3 part compost… That’s it, simply take a bucket or other container and measure out one bucket of each!
It is the “how much Mel’s Mix will I need for an ‘x’ sized box” and the “how much of each ingredient should I buy to get that quantity of mix” questions that generally present a problem, as each ingredient comes in bags that are measured in different formats (kg’s, liters, cubic decimeters and cubic feet). I will try and cover this in another article soon.
Hi Awina
Also a very keen veggie grower in Kuilsrivier – maybe we could compare notes? from Blossom
Can you point me in the right direction on the web to get planing calendar? I can’t find one for South Africa.
Any news on the planting calendar, can’t eem to find one on your site?
In your article, there is no link to the “Planting & Harvesting Calendar” which I very much would like to get. I also can’t seem to find one on-line anywhere. Not for South Africa at least. Could you please fix the link and make the calendar accessible. It would really be appreciated.
Hi Mark,
I find your site very informative and I would also like, Carmen, really appreciate it if you restored the link to the “Planting and Harvesting Calendar”. I have spent a lot of time looking for one on the Internet but cannot find one for SA. I am looking at planting a basic array of vegetables and herbs for daily use and would like to get the planting seasons right.
Thank you
Dave