My 1st Garden: Plotting and Planting
Now that you’ve got your seeds, plants, beds, and dirt all ready it is time to plot and plant!
The first thing you have to do is PLOT. I chose to use a method of gardening called Square Foot Gardening. The reason I chose this is that you get more veggies per square foot.
Rather than planting in rows (which takes a lot of space), you plant in squares.
I found a really cool blog on square foot gardening that has a lot of great resources. Check it out if you are planning a garden!
The way that you create a square foot garden, is by blocking off your garden in square feet. Ah! clever right?
First you will need a few supplies.
Some people use thin pieces of wood to section off the garden, but I’m cheap and used Fence Ties
and Twisted Mason Line
How to Plot Your Garden in Square Feet:
Step #1: Begin by measuring your garden into square feet. If you are making a 4′ x 4′ bed, you will have 16 sq ft.
Step #2: Mark the squares with fence ties
Step #3: Mark the rows with Mason Line
Continue sectioning off rows…
Step #4: Repeat Step #3 in the opposite direction until all square feet are marked.
How easy is that? Now you get to start planning and planting where your plants will go.
There is a great resource on Companion Planting (which basically means what plants like being next to each other) here. It is important that you do this so that the plants are happy with their neighbors (we all know how terrible it is to have bad neighbors!).
I used these Large T-Labels to mark what plants were it what square.
But I also drew up a diagram to help me know where each plant was supposed to go.
Begin by writing in sharpie the names of all the plants you are planting on your labels and put them in their appropriate square.
Lay out plants and/or seeds in their squares
And then dig dig dig and plant!
And there ya have it! You’re very own garden!
Just a quick note about Square Foot Gardening…
On your plants or seed packaging it will tell you how far apart each seed or plant needs to be from each other and how far apart rows need to be from each other. For Sq. Ft. Gardening, ignore how far apart rows need to be and just pay attention to the distance between seeds.
For instance:
- 12″ apart, plant 1 per square
- 6″ apart, plant 4 per square
- 4″ apart, plant 9 per square
- 3″ apart (or less), plant 16 per square
That is awesome. i wish I had some space for a garden. But my apartment complex would probably not be to happy.
Love this series of post though