Given how densely planted our garden is,
it may surprise you to learn that many of our crops were planted based on the spacing recommendations from the seed packets.
Though most seed packets talk about planting in rows,
It's very easy to take those same spacing recommendations that they make for rows and apply them to intensive planting methods like square foot gardening.
Today, I'll show you how
One of the primary features of intensive growing methods is that they maximize growing space and production by growing in beds instead of rows.
But when I say beds, I'm not talking only about raised beds.
A bed is simply a growing space that's significantly wider than a row,
but not so wide that you can't reach to the center without stepping on it.
Depending on how tall you are, a good width for a bed is three to four feet wide.
Now let's talk about exactly what the seed spacing recommendations on seed packets mean.
The packet of my New York Early Onions says I should plant the seeds four inches apart.
This is an on-center spacing,
which simply means I want the center of one onion to be four inches away from the center of the next onion.
So when I'm planting seeds,
I want the center of one seed to be four inches from the center of the next.
The same principle applies to large plants like this Patty Pan too.
The seed packet says to space these plants three to four feet apart.
Again, that means I want the center of this plant to be three to four feet away from the center of the next.
Any closer than that, and I'll have more problems with powdery mildew
and pollinators will have a hard time finding the flowers.
Now let's take a look at how you can apply row based spacing recommendations
to two different intensive planting methods.
We'll start with Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening.
All of my carrot seed packets say the same thing - space carrots three inches apart.
So here's a row of carrots, where the center of each carrot is three inches from the center of the next.
But square foot gardening plants in beds instead of rows, and conceptually divides the beds into square feet.
So, let's look at one square foot and see how I'd plant carrots in that area using the spacing recommendation from the seed packets.
With a spacing of three inches, I can fit four carrots in each row and column of the 12 inch square,
and when I fill in all four rows of four carrots, I have a total of 16 carrots per square foot.
And here it is distill down to a formula.
Plants per Square foot equals 12, divided by plant spacing in inches, squared.
The same formula works for all crops with a spacing of a foot or less.
For example my new York early onion seed packet recommends a spacing of four inches.
12 divided by 4 is 3 and 3 squared is 9.
So I can plant 9 New York early onions in a square foot.
And my celery seed packet recommends a spacing of 6 inches. 12 divided by 6 is 2, and 2 squared is 4.
So, I can plant four celery plants per square foot.
But what about plants that require a spacing of more than 1 foot?
That's simple.
If a plant needs 2 feet of space,
all you have to do is plant it in the center of a 2 by 2 foot square,
and a plant like this Patty Pan, which needs about 4 feet
would be planted in the center of a 4 by 4 foot square.
Now let's take a look at another intensive planting strategy that gives us even more plants per square foot than Square Foot Gardening does.
So, how can I plant more than 16 carrots per square foot, while maintaining 3 inch on center spacing?
Here I'll borrow an approach recommended by John Jevons in his book "How to Grow More Vegetables".
The key is to imagine the space in terms of triangles instead of squares -
specifically equilateral triangles with 3 inch sides.
If I plant a carrot on the corner of every triangle,
I'll keep my 3 inch spacing, but I'll be able to squeeze in more carrots in a given area.
Let's put our carrots back in their original square foot gardening positions,
and then move them to the corners of the triangles to see how many more carrots fit in the space.
As you can see, this approach staggers the rows of carrots and brings the rows a little closer together.
If we don't count the 4 carrots on the edge of the square foot, we now have 18 carrots in the square instead of 16.
Here's the same strategy applied to two square feet of my New York Early Onions.
Of course, you can use this approach with any crop to grow more food in a limited space.
And to help you determine the exact number of plants you can grow in a given area.
I've included a link in the description to this online calculator,
which allows you to input your seed spacing and the area you have available.
The calculator tells you exactly how many plants will fit into the area using both of the strategies I discussed today.
As I said at the beginning of the video, I use seed packet spacing for many of the crops that I grow.
I provided a list of these crops in the description below.
Hopefully, this video will give you a better idea of how to take those seed packet recommendations and apply them to intensive planting methods.
Of course, I don't always follow the seed packet recommendations, including when I grow vertically when I prune tomatoes,
and when I grow cut and come again greens, but I'll talk about those exceptions in a different video.
And when it's available, I'll post a link here.
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please subscribe for more videos on how to grow a lot of food on a little land
without spending much or working harder than you have to.
Hey Oscar
Some people think I should call you Zoro, because of your mask. What do you think?
No, you don't like it?
Why not? Oh my goodness?
Alright, we're keeping Oscar. We'll keep Oscar.