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I didn’t grow up with a vegetable garden. To me, having grown up surrounded by green square lawns, veggie patches were this thing that some of my friends parents had that made them a little weird. When I picture those gardens, they were like dusty rows of plants, some times dried-up looking ones, with bare dirt in between them and maybe a little wire fence around it. And we weren’t allowed to play in them. I still see these around town, but now I’m an adult who’s willing to be a little weird too. And I have YouTube!

Turns out there are oh so many alternative gardening methods, Back to Eden, no till, and Square Foot Gardening to name a few, that are super snarky about old-timey row and furrow gardening. Starting from the surface commentary (pun intended), the critics point out that you have a lot of area with bare dirt using this method, which is a waste, because you probably already tilled it, fertilized it, and water it, but now you’re using it to walk on and pull weeds out of. Aaarrgh!

Digging in a little deeper (I could do this all day folks!), proponents of many of the alternative gardening methods including Back to Eden and no till will helpfully tell you that tilling your soil the way we do in traditional gardening can destroy your soil structure. Now, I’ve taken exactly one horticulture class, and I can just about tell you from my vast knowledge that this… might be bad?

Sounds bad(?). But even if it’s not all that bad (who knows?), my soil is clay. I don’t want to till it because it’s freaking hard (haha!) work. Not to mention that when you start researching how to improve clay soil, the internet’s all like, “oh yes, very important! But NEVER do this if the soil is too wet or… too dry! You could ruin your soil structure!” You what? You want me to break up my clay soil to improve it at exactly at the right time, which I can’t identify because I’m not a clay soil expert? And if I get this wrong, I’ll… make it worse? Thanks, but no thanks?

Also I don’t want to wait. I’ve got a huge pile of murder compost that may or may not make a super awesome vegetable bed (or might kill everything it touches). So that means that no till sounds pretty awesome from here.

On the other hand, Square foot gardening is totally the hedonist’s gardening method. What’s hedonism? Think of it as pleasure for the sake of pleasure with the minimum amount of pain. I have no idea why this philosophy got a bad rap two thousand years ago. Sounds awesome to me.

Back to square foot gardening, it’s all about building a garden so you can put in the least amount of work to get the most amount of joy and veggies. Got crappy soil? Mix your own nice stuff and put it on top of your crappy soil! Use loose soil so you don’t have to fight it to plant and harvest; raise the beds so you don’t have to bend down; make your beds narrow so you can easily reach into them; fill the soil with desirable plants so there’ll be less room for weeds.

In my case, reinforcing the value of hedonist gardening. I do have a giant heap of murder compost and another heap of woodchips. I do not have a giant amount of ingredients to make perfect Square Foot Gardening soil or materials to build raised beds. I don’t feel like lugging these things home. Conundrum.

Well, I could say it was a conundrum, but actually, I got a wild hair and just went ahead and laid out some vegetable beds on top of my soil. I read Square foot gardening in 2014 and remembered about being able to reach across and not walk on the soil, so that was my design principle. Half an article about no till said to put a bunch of compost and mulch on the ground, so I did that too. Compost for the beds, mulch for the walkways.

I was feeling pretty good after this, except for being sore from filling and spilling some 13 wheelbarrows full of stuff and raking it into place. As I settled my stiffening body in to research more about no-till and permaculture, I got a bit of a shock.

Turns out I totally cowboyed this whole thing. I guess you’re supposed to put the mulch on top of the compost? Or pull the compost away from the ground and plant directly into the soil? My soil that’s hard as concrete? I dunno. Here’s what I do know. I spent zero money on this and can rake it right back up into a heap if it sucks.

I’m re-reading The All New Square Foot Gardening while I wait for seeds to arrive too.