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Re: square foot gardening, plant spacing

At 09:45 AM 4/22/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Thanks, Kurt, it's always nice to find a little good old common
>sense show up in these threads. I really think it is easy to get
>a little anal about this `# per square' concept. Apparently, many
>of you are not flexible enough to deviate from the `equal spacing,
>integer number per sqft' mold. If 1 per square is too few, and
>4 per square is too many, then by all means plant 2, 3, or even
>2.5 per square!

In The Book in the section on canning and freezing, there is a diagram of a
block with 25.0 corn plants. That would be a 9.6" spacing, or 1.5625 plants
per sqft. Evidently Mel isn't anal about it either (unlike the many decimal
places in this thread :-).

>If you want 2 plants per square, that represents 72 square inches
>per plant, or 8.485" plant spacing. Most of us could live with either
>8 or 9 inches. Three per square yields 6.93", or 7" for the more
>imprecise among us. 2.5 per square requires 7.59", which can perhaps
>be rounded to 8.

In fact, in the fertilizer section he says not to get too caught up in the
numbers game. Sound advice, perhaps; i still can't get some of the numbers
in that chapter to agree with those on my calculator.

>It is this kind of reasoning that tells me it is foolish to put
>physical dividers every 12" in the beds. If I want 16 corn plants
>with a spacing that represents 2.5 plants per sqft, I can actually
>use a square 30" X 30" in my 4 foot wide bed. No lightning bolts
>will strike, no SQFT police will show up. (really! I promise.)
>
>That's my recommendation, take it or leave it - loosen up! Go wild!
>Let a few of those planting straddle the magic 12" boundaries!
>In the long run, you'll feel better for having done it.

My first year with this method i deviated from the standard so-many-per-sqft
setup, because i wanted my spacing to agree with the strange numbers printed
on the seed packets. Nowadays, i just stick mostly to the standard setup to
preserve my sanity. I'm thinking about an alternate 9.0 squares per block
(16.0" x 16.0" per square) arangement for the brassicas (brocolli, collard,
et al) and the gourds. Of course, except for the initial construction of the
beds, no ruler comes near the garden. My squares are all delimited with a
precise, rigid, indelible finger drawn across the soil.

>--------------
>Don Gross                     gross@ims.com
>The "No Boundaries" SQFT'er

Actually, the feature i find most attractive about square foot gardening is
the boundaries. Not in the sense of getting down on my hands and knees and
measuring, but of setting limits to the garden. (No offense is intended; i
have no police powers. :-)

@->-`-,-------------------------------+
|  Cousin Ricky      USDA zone 11     |
|  rcallwo@uvi.edu   formerly zone 6  |
+-------------------------------------+

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