The Square Foot Gardening method, developed by Mel Bartholomew and initially published in his 1981 book, calls for dividing your garden into 12" squares, then sowing individual seeds in a pattern within each square based on the amount of room that each plant will require when it's mature and ready for harvest.
- Small plants can be sown 3" apart. If planned properly, you can sow 16 of these seeds in a square foot. These include radishes, green onions, carrots.
- Medium plants are sown 4" apart. If planned properly, you can sow 9 of these seeds in a square foot. Medium size crops include spinach, onions, beets.
- Large plants need to be spaced 6" apart. If planned properly, you can sow 4 of these seeds in a square foot. These crops are lettuce, swiss chard.
- Extra large plants require an entire 12" square all to themselves. Give this much room to peppers, broccoli and cabbage, kale, tomatoes
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This makes sense about planting the larger vegetables more spaced apart. I guess lots of gardening is common sense... I should try to get more confident about this healthy hobby, and not think about my past "brown thumb" experiences-lol. You are inspiring me, thx for all this gr8 info, Tom!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, Windy. I can tell you from experience that the soil makes all the difference in the world. Your green thumb can shine if you start with a proven formula of Mel's Mix for your garden bed. So the short answer for now is just get some Mel's Mix and get started. I'll have another blog post shortly about why Mel's Mix works so good.
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