Mel Bartholomew, a construction engineer who turned lattice into lettuce by popularizing a gridlike framework for what he called square foot gardening, died on April 28 in San Diego. He was 84.

The cause was liver cancer, his son Stephen said.

Mr. Bartholomew turned to gardening after retiring at 42 from his engineering and construction firm — a New Jersey concern that had worked on several State University of New York campuses — and moving his family to Long Island.

There, frustrated with weeding and watering rows of vegetables in his backyard, he applied his engineering expertise to conceive a densely packed, 12-foot-by-12-foot subdivided plot. It soon captured the imagination of aspiring horticulturists, introduced a bountiful harvest of vegetables into diets around the world, and inspired a public television program and a book that sold an estimated 2.5 million copies.

Mr. Bartholomew said in 1996, “I was always taught if you can’t go over a mountain, you go around it; if you can’t go around it, you tunnel through it; if you can’t tunnel through it, you stay and make a gold mine out of that side.”