Free Square Foot Gardening Template Printable & Cheat Sheet

Want to grow more food in less space? Our free square foot gardening template printable will have you well on your way to growing a productive vegetable garden, even in limited space. 

Free Square Foot Gardening Template Printable

Here at the American Farmsteadhers, our main goal is to help you discover ways to grow more of your own food. So, naturally, we had to create a free square foot garden template to encourage you along the way.

What’s Included in Our Free Square Foot Gardening Template Printable?

• Square Foot Gardening Plant List & Cheat Sheet
• Square Foot Garden Easy Planner
• ​Companion Planting Chart
• Crop Rotation Chart
• Recipe for Mel’s Soil Mix

How to Download the Square Foot Gardening Template Printable

You can get a sneak peek at the download below. All you need to do to download our square foot gardening template printable is click the download button. You can then print it out and get busy planning your garden layout using this simple method. 

Successfully Grow Food Now with our Square Foot Gardening Template Printable

From a master gardener to a beginner gardener, anyone can be successful using the popular method of square-foot gardening. It’s a great way to grow a beautiful, productive vegetable garden. It’s all about planting different crops in their own square foot section in your raised garden bed. 

Square Foot Gardening in the Beginning

in 1976, Mel Bartholomew invented the Square Foot Gardening Method after he saw how labor-intensive and time-consuming row gardening was. In 1981, his method became wildly popular after the experienced gardener published his first book, Square Foot Gardening. It became the largest-selling gardening book of its time.

What is the Square Foot Gardening Method?

This method of gardening takes a growing area and divides it up into square-foot blocks with a grid. Fruits, vegetables, and herbs are intensively planted in the square foot blocks.  The size of the plant determines how many will be planted into each little space. 

How to Plan Your Square Foot Garden

Planning a square-foot garden is easy, which is why it is so appealing, even to a beginner gardener.  If you haven’t already, go ahead and download our free square foot gardening template printable.  You’ll have everything you need to start planning your garden for a bountiful harvest. 

If you need a little extra help, check out How to Start a Garden From Scratch Right Now

Consider the Garden Size You Want

Typically a square foot garden raised bed is 4X4, which is a good amount of space for a beginner gardener. However, it can really be any size you want. You will want it small enough to reach across the bed though.  

For this reason, most raised beds aren’t more than 4 feet wide.  My preferred size for a raised bed is 8×4. 

My best advice for new gardeners is to start small with small gardens.  You can always start with one 4×4 or even 8×4 and add more beds next growing season to grow more of your own food.

How to Build a Square Foot Garden Box

Building a new square-foot gardening box can be as simple as using 4 pieces of untreated 2×6 lumber cut and screwed together to form a box.  The typical square-foot gardening box is only 6-12 inches deep.  

Adding a Visual Square Foot Grid

While not completely necessary, making a grid of 1-foot squares will help keep your garden organized and looking tidy.  These can be made out of small strips of wood, bamboo stakes, or even as simple as pulling a string to make the 1-foot x 1-foot squares. If you are skipping installing a grid, you can mark out your grid in the surface of the soil come planting time. 

How Many Plants Per Square Foot in a Square Foot Garden?

The guideline for the number of plants in each of your small squares will vary, depending on the size of the plants. This general rule of thumb is followed in the Square Foot Gardening Method:

• 1 Extra-large Plant Per Square
• 4 Larger Plants Per Square
• 9 Medium Plants Per Square
• 16 Small Plants Per Square

Using Square Foot Gardening Principles in an In-ground Garden

Square foot gardening principles can absolutely be used in traditional garden rows.  If you form your rows to be 12 inches wide, you can then mark out 1-foot squares down the length of the row.  This will give you rows mixed with different vegetables in every foot of row space.

How to Plant Your Square Foot Garden

After downloading our free square foot gardening template printable, you can design your garden and get ready to plant your own vegetables. The successes or failures of gardening start with the quality of the soil and plant spacing.  

Mel Bartholomew experimented with his soil mix until he found the perfect blend for the square-foot gardening method. It’s just the right blend of well-draining, loose, fertile soil that is amazing at conserving moisture in the soil.

Mel’s Mix: Equal Parts of Three Ingredients

• Peat Moss 
• Coarse Vermiculite
• Blended Compost

Making Mels Mix

The easiest way I have found to make a soil mix is by using five-gallon buckets and a large tarp.  On a laid-out tarp, add one five-gallon bucket each of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost.  By picking up one side of the tarp at a time, the ingredients will slowly mix. 

Benefits of Square Foot Gardening

• ​Shallow garden beds mean less soil and less material to build beds.
• Quick Setup with the simple, shallow beds.
• No fertilizer is needed if using Mel’s Mix.
• Planting the right plants densely means higher yields and less weeding.
• Easier to maintain with less weeding and less water.
• Eliminates waste of produce by only planting 1-foot squares.

Tips for a Productive Square Foot Garden

While square-foot gardening is an easy concept to understand, there are some tricks of the trade. These will help your garden be even more productive than the basic square foot gardening setup. 

Use a Square Foot Garden Seed Spacer

This nifty little seed spacing template will help you perfectly lay out the available space in your square foot garden. Simply press the seeding square into the soil. It will mark out your 1-foot squares and give you enough room to poke through the template to mark out your 1,4,9, or 16 holes for your seeds or seedling starts. 

Sow 2-3 Seeds Per Hole

I prefer to overseed when I am sowing seeds.  I do this for a few reasons.

• To be sure I get germination.
• ​Seedlings seem to get off to a good start with a little competition.
• To select the strongest plant at thinning. 

Top Hat for Root Vegetables

With a garden bed that is only 6-12 inches deep, you may find that you need more room for root vegetables.  This is where the “top hat” comes in.  It is a 1-foot x 1-foot square made out of untreated wood that you stack on top of the soil and then fill with soil. 

It is used to deepen the soil for the type of plant that may need more root space, in that 1-foot x 1-foot square only. The extra effort of building a “top hat” will save you money on not having a whole raised bed that has enough room for root crops. I think a “top hat” is also useful for tomato plants, which have a pretty deep root system.

Rotate Crops

Whether you are planting a square-foot garden or a traditional garden, crop rotation is a great idea. Using crop rotation is an effective way to minimize pest pressure and replenish the garden soil.

Grow Verticle

Growing verticle is a great way to maximize a small space for a productive garden. It also gives those climbing crops the verticle structure and enough space to grow to their fullest potential. Not to mention, growing verticle, especially on an arch trellis, is beautiful. 

How to Build an Arch Trellis

Building an arch trellis can be done in no time at all.  You just need a good helper, a cattle panel, metal t-posts, and some heavy-duty zip ties. 

Succession Planting in the Square Foot Garden

With a couple of square-foot garden beds, you should have plenty of room for succession planting. Planting seeds of a variety of vegetables every couple of weeks will give you a steady supply of produce throughout the growing season. 

Plant Close to the House and In Full Sun

Planting your garden close to the house is a great way to stay on top of garden maintenance.  If you have to walk by it, you are more likely to stop and take a stroll through your garden space.  

You know the old saying, “A garden’s best friend is the gardener’s shadow.” It’s just true. Vegetable gardens also need to be planted in an area that receives full sun.  

Pin for Later to Grow Your Own Square Foot Garden

If you aren’t quite ready to download the free square foot gardening template printable, you can Pin it to save the download link for later by clicking this link. https://pin.it/5JDgxVCR0

Using Your Square Foot Gardening Template Printable

Good luck planning, planting, maintaining, and harvesting your own food from your square-foot garden. I just know you’ll be successful using our free garden planner and this popular method of gardening. Simply choose your crops, plan it out, build your bed, and get to growing!

You may also want to check out our Crop Rotation Chart: Vegetable Garden Planning Made Easy

Happy Homesteading & Gardening,

Jenny @ The Grahamstead Family Farm

Jenny and her family have been homesteading for more than two decades. They currently live on a 10-acre farm in Northeast Florida, which they built from the ground up, nine years ago. 

On their farm, they grow 100% of their meat and most of their vegetables. With a small herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle, pastured poultry, sheep, and seasonal pigs, they not only meet their family’s meat needs but also sell their surplus to the local community. They are dedicated to sustainable practices like making compost, seed saving, and processing much of their garden and animal harvests at home. You can find Jenny wandering through her garden, making herbal tinctures, preserving food, making bone broth, and one of Jenny’s favorite hobbies, tanning all types of hides.

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