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Re: hexagonal planting

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Might be easier for some of us to just lay it out in the garden.
You get the same result if you lay out the first drill (planting
row) and place the seed or transplant at the required plant
spacing in the drill, then lay out the other drills in the section
spaced at 0.707 (reciprocal square root of 2) times the plant
spacing.   Place the seed or transplant in the second drill midway
between those in the first drill.  Repeat for the remaining drills
until the section is filled.  For example, in a 2-foot square ( 4
sqft) with seeds spaced at 4 inches (9/sqft) there would be 36
plants in the section using a sqft grid (6 X 6).  But with the
triangular/hex grid, you can get 8 rows spaced at 2.808 inches
with 6 plants in every other row and 5 plants in the remaining
rows for a total of 44 plants all spaced at 4 inches from each
other (22 per cent more in the same space). It's more complex to
talk about than to just do it.  Probably not worth the effort if
you only have 1 or 2 small beds.  But if you plant larger areas
such as 4' X 4' with the same crop, it is pretty  useful.  Using
the triangle/hex system for the same spacing (9/sqft) scaled down
to 1 sqft, you would only get in one extra plant and the added
complexity isn't really worth it which is probably why it isn't in
the BOOK.  -Olin

----- Original Message -----
From: Kragen Sitaker <kragen@pobox.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 7:36 PM
>
> I guess some of you may be familiar with hexagonal planting;
basically,
> you can fit about 15% more circles into a given area if you pack
them
> in a hexagonal lattice instead of a square lattice.  Common
sense
> suggests that you might be able to pack a few more plants in
that way,
> too --- maybe not 15% more, but a few more.
>
> I guess a guy named John Jeavons advocates this as part of his
> "biointensive mini-farming" method, which has a lot in common
with
> square-foot gardening.
>
> Laying hexagonal gardens out on square graph paper is miserable.
So
> (here's why I'm posting) I made some hex graph paper that you
can print
> out on your own printer.  You can grab it at
>
> http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/sw/hexpaper.pdf
>
> Related links:
> - if you want to see what kind of stupid bugs are in the program
to
>   produce this grid, or maybe make a modified version (change
the
>   spacing of the dots, for example), the source code in Perl is
at
>   http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/sw/hexpaper.
> - I made a modified version that uses letters instead of dots;
it's at
>   http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/sw/hextextpaper.pdf, and the
program is
>   at http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/sw/hextextpaper.  This is more
silly
>   than useful.
>
> I'm going to be starting my first triangular-foot garden in a
month or
> two here in Dayton, Ohio (where the growing season is from late
April
> to mid-October; not sure what zone I'm in); it'll be a hexagon
four
> feet across the corners, about 10.4 square feet, and ideally, it
should
> hold as many plants as a 12-square-foot square garden.  I'm
planning to
> use scrounged bricks and new mortar to build the wall.
>
> "Ask not what the Internet can do for you; ask what you can do
for the
> Internet."
>
> --
> <kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker
<http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
> The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
> <URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>
> The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either.  :)


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