Review of the Seeding Square for Square Foot Gardening
Whether you are new to Square Foot Gardening, or a veteran of using this gardening method, the Seeding Square tool will bring a new sense of order to your vegetable garden!
Disclaimer: This site participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program. Some links in this article are affiliate links that pay this site a commission at no cost to the reader when a purchase is made after a click.
The Seeding Square is a deceptively simple tool, but oh-so-useful for square foot gardening! The green square base of the tool is exactly one foot square, making it easy to lay out any configuration of square foot vegetable garden.
The color-coded holes correspond to a chart on a card that is included with the Seeding Square. You simply look up the type of vegetable you plan to plant, and it will tell you what color (how many) to use for square foot gardening of that item. Then you simply lay down the Seeding Square and use the included orange seed dibbler to poke the planting holes for your seeds.
(If you aren’t familiar with the concept of Square Foot Gardening, visit the Square Foot Gardening Foundation website or check out Square Foot Gardening books on Amazon.)
The seed dibbler is marked with measurements to use as a guide in ensuring that holes are made to just the right depth for the seed you are planting. At one end there is a scoop that can be used to actually plant the seeds but I usually find it easier to just plant them by hand. When you’re done using the dibbler, it stores away safely in a slot on the green square.
For easier use of the seed dibbler in planting, there is a small orange funnel that stores on the back of the green grid (not pictured). You just pop it into each hole and it helps get the seed into the hole easier.
The Seeding Square is a brilliant solution for planting seeds with kids! Even the youngest kids can follow the color coding so that you don’t don’t end up with a random mash of plants on top of each other in your square foot vegetable garden. My daughter has no problems using it
Although the funnel and dibbler are included to plant the seeds with the square still in place, we usually just lift the square and drop the seeds right in the holes. This way we can see that they go in the hole correctly and we can cover them immediately so we know which holes are filled to avoid missing one.
The result of using the Seeding Square tool is a square foot garden that is wonderfully orderly, with perfectly spaced vegetable plants! I must say that seeing the orderly rows in the garden makes my slightly compulsively organized heart happy.
Perfectly spacing your plants isn’t just about appearances, however. Square Foot Gardening is designed to maximize yield from a small space. Perfectly spacing your plants gives each plant the maximum access to water and nutrients, and also helps protect against diseases and pests. So those orderly rows of beans in my photo above don’t just look good…they’re healthier too!
Although we first purchased the Seeding Square to enable my daughter to plant seeds without causing garden disasters, I now consider this tool a must-have for any Square Foot gardener. Plant away gardeners….and get perfect gardens, one square foot at a time!
