FIMBY: How to squeeze more food into less space

This is another in our “Food in My Back Yard” series, dedicated to edible gardening.

One revelation totally changes space management in the small garden: Vegetables do not need to grow in rows.

Yes, they need “proper spacing” – a.k.a. enough room to grow. But that doesn’t mean little transplants have to line up like soldiers on parade.

Farms plant in rows because of mechanization; straight rows give tractor wheels room to roll. But you’re not using heavy machinery to plant and harvest a 4-by-8-foot raised bed.

Instead, envision your garden space as “blocks.” These blocks can be uniform, too, as in one square foot.

Mel Bartholomew, a retired engineer with a passion for vegetable gardening, pioneered the concept of “Square Foot Gardening” nearly 50 years ago. He discovered that people in his community garden would quickly become discouraged by a common problem – weeds! The space between rows allowed weeds to flourish.

What if you could eliminate some of that space? Could veggies squeeze out weeds?

Using 1-inch lath spaced 1 foot apart, Bartolomew created grids across his raised beds. With his system, a 4-by-4-foot raised bed has 16 squares. He then mapped out the spacing for veggies within each square. One cabbage needed an entire square with the head planted in the middle. But 16 carrots (planted and thinned to four mini-rows) could fill another. Or the entire square could be carpeted with loose-leaf lettuce seeds, then seedlings thinned to 4 or 6 inches apart as the baby lettuces grew.

Bartholomew liked the symmetry and mathematics of his system. Every square had one, four, nine or 16 plants, depending on their size and space requirements.

Planted in this quilt-like grid, the assortment of plants allowed for little room for weeds – and a lot less work for the gardeners. It also produced higher yields than traditional row planting because more veggies were growing in less space.

In addition to the grid, Bartholomew recommended planting in a raised bed, at least 6 to 12 inches deep and filled with fluffy organic-rich soil to better retain moisture. Thinning is done with scissors, not pulling, so soil is not disturbed. And he recommended NEVER stepping on the soil in the raised bed to avoid compaction.

Which brings up an important point: How do you reach your plants? (Keep the grid under 4 feet wide so you can reach in from the sides.)

Larger plants – such as a zucchini or a tomato vine – need their own block of two or four squares. That’s when the wooden grid can get in the way. Instead, use anchored string, wire or other markers to delineate the squares.

No physical grid is actually necessary for square foot gardening; it’s mostly a visual aid for planning and planting as well as gives the garden a more orderly look.

Instead, I use onions as my markers. Onion bulbs sprout quickly and they grow straight up. Onions also make a good companion plant; they naturally ward off a lot of pests. (And if allowed to flower, they attract beneficial insects.)

I may plant a straight line of onions down the middle of a bed, dividing it in half. Or I poke a bulb in at 1-foot intervals, creating green points on a living grid.

Either way, the onions cue spacing for lettuce, chard, beets, radishes, carrots and many other crops that can be planted now. The onions will stay in place and keep developing as the early spring veggies move out and summer favorites move in. In late summer, the onions will be ready to harvest, too.