Talk:Square foot gardening

Fair use rationale for Image:Square Foot Gardening Book Cover.png

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Comment

The use of peat moss is questionable as it is not good sustainable practice. See also under peat moss. 202.82.143.78 03:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Infinite soil?

an open-bottomed box to contain a finite amount of soil

"Finite" is not the same as "small", which is what the writer probably meant.--Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 22:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Too one sided

I see that we have "Benefits of Square Foot Gardening" but nothing on the downsides. This article would benefit from more information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chippothenut (talk • contribs) 17:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

@Chippothenut: you're right that criticisms are noticeable by their absence. But I think that may be a function of a deeper problem, namely that square foot gardening is barely enough of a concept to merit an encyclopedia page. In other words, this article is struggling to meet WP:NOTABILITY. It's a bit like having an article on "Sharp Pencils", which contained no criticism of keeping the things sharp. As far as I can see, the best thing would be to delete the thing completely, but I'm not going to propose that at this point. Thomask0 (talk) 03:07, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Baffling animated GIF

The caption says,

A basic, 4x4, 16-unit "square-foot garden."

I agree that 4x4=16, but the captioned animation seems to disagree in some of the frames. Can we please just have a static image of the 4x4 thing? It's just irritating and the animation has no apparent benefit. 220.241.144.250 (talk) 13:35, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Confusing details

Lose the irrelevant photos.

How is the first photo in the article a square foot garden?

Replaced with another which should be more representative. Thomask0 (talk) 03:08, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

In the Overview, the "Example of a square foot garden style with a modern parterre design" is confusing and inconsistant with Bartholomew's definition of a square foot garden. "Without a grid, your garden is not a square foot garden." p36 "All New Square Foor Gardening". Also, the photos do not show raised beds. These problems also apply to the photo of West Marina Gardens near the end of the article.

In the Synopsis, the use of "decayed" preceding "Sphagnum peat moss" is redundant, and might confuse the reader that this is a special product, different than other peat moss. — GWAnkney 12:40, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Too biographical?

As it stands, this article seems to be almost as much about Mel Bartholomew as about the gardening method. With 28 mentions of "Bartholomew", and three out of five "External links" being to sites by or about him (and one of the other two pointing to an organization of which he is a part) it reads too much like an advertisement for him and his website and book.

Fixing this should start with the lead which is particularly problematic. It would improve things if only the first section was preserved; sure, with the final sentence referring to Bartholomew coining the phrase (although it would be good if that assertion had an RS since it's not obviously verifiable), but without the link to his book. The next lead section entitled "Mel Bartholomew" doesn't belong in the lead at all. If Mel really is that significant he probably does merit a section, but only a single section (and again, an RS would be nice) and it needs to respect weight considerations. The last lead section, "Lawn to Garden" could probably be deleted entirely. It reads like an exhortation or set of instructions and doesn't add anything to this as an encyclopedia article.

Thoughts?

Thomask0 (talk) 22:37, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

And notability

If this article was pruned to retain only what actually pertains to square foot gardening it's doubtful enough of substance would remain so as to meet WP:Notable. For example, the following would be best removed:

• The section entitled "Square Foot and Raised Bed Gardening". It is actually about the benefits of raised beds, not division into small squares and so isn't relevant to the article
• Most of the biographical information about Mel Bartholomew. For example, it is of no relevance that Bartholomew retired to Long Island, led a community project, had "many travels", etc
• Much of the section "Mel Bartholomew's synopsis", relying as it does on a single book (Bartholomew's). It's arguable that entire section is really just a review of the book.
• Several points that essentially are adverts for: Bartholomew's two books (the cover of one of which is shown as a photograph), a DVD, a TV series, and even a form of compost named "Mel's mix"
• The subsections "Cover Crops" and "Urban Food Production", both of which are general gardening points and simply have nothing to do with the subject of the article

Thomask0 (talk) 06:17, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, I've pruned this thing like roses. The bulk of the reduction comes from two things: 1. removing content that was simply not specific to SFG (e.g. a lot of stuff was about raised beds, not SFG in particular), and 2. toning down the Mel worship a bit. I still think we have a serious notability issue, but I'll leave it for a while as it is to let anyone else who cares comment/discuss what I've done. Thomask0 (talk) 03:01, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I fully support the good works you have done in making this a more acceptable article but a merge into Raised-bed gardening would seem very sensible. This current article has a neologism as a title, it refers to a single person's idea and is very US centric (who else still uses foot as a measurement). I would be happy for it to be simply merged now and a sub-set of this text be included under a new heading in Raised bed gardening. This article would then be a simple re-direct  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   07:26, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

No real sources

I did a cleanup and discovered that this article has no real sources. The first 2 citations are only sourcing that "Mel B made it popular"; the third citation only sources "large variety of crops in a small space also prevents plant diseases from spreading easily" (source doesn't even mention square foot gardening). That leaves the bulk of the article unsourced.

I went through the "Further reading" books and removed four that don't mention square foot gardening or similar techniques (sorry, but raised bed and small space gardening are related BUT NOT identical to square foot gardening method). One book (Cubed Foot Gardening) looks very promising as a source for this article. The other is Mel Bartholomew's book, which I suppose is a decent source for this technique (even though he invented it/named it). I suppose one could argue that Mel B's book(s) are primary source, but for simply describing the technique and not making extraordinary claims, I think it's an acceptable use. There are, however, other books describing the technique, too, and they should also be used.

I added 2 more images to illustrate "dividing methods". I swapped out the GIF for a static image (per talk page discussion) and added a better caption.

Shortened the short description to less than 40 characters (per guidelines) and re-tagged the article after someone inappropriately removed the 2012 tag which was never resolved. The new tag has links for finding web articles, newspaper articles, books and google scholar results. I checked, and there are good results for all of the categories of sources. So use those links liberally.

It's about time this article got properly cited.

  ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:20, 24 December 2023 (UTC)