Seeding Square Product Review: A Useful Tool For Square Foot Gardening

Are you frustrated with spacing plants properly, especially with Square Foot Gardening? The Seeding Square is the perfect tool you need for spacing plants.

Have you struggled with spacing your seeds or transplants properly?

Do you find you try to cram too much into too small a space? And then have plants that don’t thrive.

Or the opposite: not utilizing the space fully? And then you don’t get the full harvest that your space could produce.

Maybe you have tried square foot gardening as a solution but didn’t like the grids of string or lattice that is recommended.

What you need is a tool that makes spacing easier and faster, especially when you have a lot to plant in the spring.

That’s where the Seeding Square comes in. It provides that template you need to space your vegetable plants the right distance apart.

Why Is Square Foot Gardening Better?

Square foot gardening (or it’s metric equivalent, square meter gardening) was coined by Mel Bartholemew back in 1981 in his book Square Foot Gardening (available on Amazon).

The main practice of SFG is dividing up the planting space into squares that contain just the right number of plants based on plant spacing recommendations.

Plants are not planted in rows as in traditional gardening or agriculture.

The idea here is that as plants fill out, they shade the ground, suppressing weed growth and keeping the soil from drying out.

In order to divide the plant space (usually raised beds, although SFG can be done in traditional in-ground beds as well), grids of string or thin pieces of wood (lattice) are used.

Mel also came up with “Mel’s mix” to fill the raised beds used in SFG: 1/3 peat moss or coconut coir, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 compost. This mixture is supposed to be light and airy so easy to plant into and has all the nutrients for plant growth.

Compost is added every time you rotate your crops and plant something new in a square (this is called succession planting).

Why Using Strings And Lattice Don’t Work

In the book, the recommendation is to use either some string or some thin pieces of wood (lattice) to create a grid of squares across your raised bed.

I’ve tried the string method. I didn’t like it!

The string once strung gets in the way when you need to weed or harvest. Also it’s extra work to remove and restring when renewing the bed at the start of the new growing season or between crops.

Plus I used nails to secure the string on the edges of my raised beds and I can’t count how many times I kneeled on the nail heads trying to reach something in the bed! OUCH!

The lattice is a bit better in that you can make them removable. However it’s extra work to nail together the lattice and it will eventually rot away as it’s made from thin wood.

So ideally you need something that you grab from your garden shed and easily use when you plant. And that you can then remove, clean and store for next time so it’s not in the way.

That’s where the Seeding Square comes in. This tool is a template to seed and transplant your veggies in the proper spacing used in square foot gardening.

It replaces the cardboard templates you might have seen some square foot gardeners create. The cardboard template is a good cheap idea, however like most cheap ideas is not very durable, especially in the wet, dirty environment of a garden.

Can You Use The Seeding Square If You’re Not Square Foot Gardening Or Growing In Raised Beds?

Not everyone wants to do square foot gardening in raised beds.

Maybe you don’t want to spend the money and time to build the beds and just want to plant directly in the ground. You can definitely use the Seeding Square for this type of growing.

You just won’t have a straight edge of a raised bed to guide the Seeding Square along, so you may need to use a string that you have staked along the edge of the bed or a long piece of wood.

Or you perhaps prefer planting in rows. The Seeding Square can work in this situation and even space out the rows, depending on which seed spacing holes you are using. More on that below.

What Is Included In The Seeding Square Box

So let’s unbox the Seeding Square and see what you get.

Seeding Square: a sturdy, colourful molded plastic template with coloured holes.
Seeding Spoon and Wand: a round plastic cylinder with a spoon molded into it on one end. It has etched measurements along the length, marked off in 1 inch increments which is used to make holes at the proper depth. The spoon on the end can hold several small seeds (brassicas, lettuce, carrot) or one or two larger seeds (bean/pea). There is a molded depression in the Seeding Square to store this tool and both the Seeding Square and wand are magnetized so it won’t easily fall out.
Funnel: this has it’s own spot underneath the Seeding Square, where it snaps into the central hole. It’s used to funnel seeds into the correct hole.
Planting guide: this double-sided laminated guide has a list of veggies for each hole spacing/colour so you know how to space each type of veggie property. The back of the guide has brief illustrated step-by-step instructions of how to use the Seeding Square.

So let me show you how to use the Seeding Square.

Preparing The Soil For Square Foot Gardening With The Seeding Square

In square foot gardening, the soil used in the raised beds is called Mel’s mix. It consists of compost, vermiculite and peat moss.

While you can follow the recipe (and perhaps replace the peat moss with coconut coir as the latter is more environmentally sustainable), you can also use a garden soil/compost mix and amend it with such amendments like rock dust, organic slow-release fertilizer, etc.

The important thing is to make sure the soil is fairly fine consistency (but not over-tilled), is free of large chunks of non-decomposed material and has been levelled.

You can lightly fork your soil to make sure it’s not compacted. If you have problems with compacted soil, you need to mulch heavily with either compost, wood chips or mulch, especially in winter.

I don’t recommend roto-tilling as it can cause damage to soil tilth, bring up weed seeds and is extra work. The no-dig or no-till gardening technique is much easier.

Once the soil is loose, I use a garden rake to flatten the surface and break up any clods of soil. I’ve found with the Seeding Square that any unevenness in the surface or large chunks of organic material that has not yet decomposed, causes issues with pressing down the Seeding Square to make it’s square impression.

And you’ll also find that with the wand/dibber included, you will have a harder time making holes if the soil is compacted or filled with large chunks of organic material.

If the soil is very dry you probably should water it lightly to at least get the first inch or so moist. This will help keep the holes you make with the wand open until you can throw in seeds or a transplant.

How to Position The Seeding Square

NOTE: remember to remove the included funnel from the bottom of the square before you use it. It snaps out easily.

Starting at one corner of your bed, place the square on the surface of the soil and lightly press it into the soil to make an impression all the way around it.

The square impression you make will then act as a guide for the square when you move it to the next location.

If you are planting in the middle of the bed as the photo shows, simply start at a corner, press the square in and keep moving it, lining it up with the previous impression.

In chunkier soil, I found I had to press quite hard. Ideally you want the surface of the bottom of the square to sit on top of the soil.