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High Rise Carrots
Whenever I'm telling a group about all the advantages of Mel's Mix, you know how rich and nutritious it is because of the homemade compost (which is made from many different ingredients) also the water-holding capacity (because weve added vermiculite and peat moss) and the startling fact that just about all crops can be grown in only 6 inches of this marvelous mix, I can see several people in the audience clicking through their computer brains, checking out every single flower, vegetable and herb they can think of, analyzing it as to whether it can grow in those six inches, and finally their computer stops at carrots and they immediately raise their hand and their question is always the same: How do you grow 10-inch carrots in 6 inches of soil?
I'm very tempted to tell a funny story about that and I usually do. It involved patio gardening for the handicapped where we had a very shallow box built and set up on legs so that a wheelchair could pull right up to it. Now the first box was made out of 1x4 lumber for the sides. The plywood bottom was drilled with holes for drainage, and as most of you know, a 1x4 doesn't really measure 4 inches, it's only about 3-1/2 inches. So we were growing everything in just 3-1/2 inches of Mels Mix. Because of the high nutrient content of the compost, everything grew just fine and if you look on our website on the home page, you'll see a picture of that box. In fact, it looks better than fine - it looks spectacular. If I do say so myself. Can you imagine, all those plants growing in only 3.5 inches of Mel's Mix and NO FERTILIZER!
Well, I had another patio garden like that. It was a 3x3 and it was something I took from school to school when we were teaching children about SFG. The 3x3 box fit nicely into the station wagon (this was long before SUVs) and it was not heavy so that 2 people could carry it about. It was also made from 1x4s. I planted carrots and they seemed to grow nicely. The tops looked good. Of course, you never know what is below ground and that is part of the excitement of a root crop. You just don't know what you are going to get until you pull it up at the end of the season. When we finally harvested these carrots, they were just average size, medium length and I didnt know what was going to happen to them - would they grow to the bottom and then flatten out, or what would happen? But, as it turns out, they went to the bottom of the box, which wasnt very far and turned 90 degrees and grew sideways. So, when we pulled them out, they were L-shaped. At first I thought, Oh, this is terrible. This was kind of like admitting something was wrong. But, then I thought, For kids, this would really be fun to grow an L-shaped carrot and who knows what other shapes we might get.
In my lectures, I used to tell that story about what almost became an embarrassment or a disaster, turned out to be a fun thing to do for the children. Then, I would ask the audience, You are probably wondering how they tasted. When I washed one off and ate it, guess what? It tasted like L! Thats a little bit of lecture humor there.
Someone wrote me recently and said, How can you grow things like carrots in only 6 inches of soil? I thought the carrot roots go down 3 feet deep? And, I thought, this is the mentality of single row gardening. This is something that the garden experts have been teaching us year, after year - that plant roots go very deep and spread out and you need a lot of room for them. This is, in a sense, a total myth if it is reasonably analyzed. What they are judging is how plants grow in your backyard or on a farm where the soil is usually terrible. We used to work so hard for so many years to improve the soil and when you think about it, all were really doing is improving the top few inches of our garden. Even the best rototiller only goes 4 or 5 inches deep and that with a great deal of effort. Since gravity tells the roots to go down, what do they do? They keep going further and further searching for moisture and nutrients. Now reverse that whole situation and put your plants in perfect soil to start with - soil that has all the nutrients they need and constant moisture. If you were a plant, why would you go any further? The other purpose of roots is to anchor the plant, especially a big bushy or tall plant like a tomato plant. It has to send out a strong support system to hold that plant up.
But, in Square Foot Gardening, we hold that kind of a plant up on a trellis system. We grow all our vine crops on vertical frames and they are almost just hanging there on the frame. They dont need a strong spread-out root support system. So, the end result, although the experts still pooh-pooh the idea, is just about every plant that I've ever grown does very nicely in just 6 inches of our perfect Mels Mix.
But, back to the carrots. When someone in the audience asks, "How can you grow a 10-inch carrot in 6 inches of soil," my first response, although I don't always say it is, "When is the last time you grew a 10-inch carrot?" If I do ask it, they sheepishly say, "Well, never, but I might want to." But, in general, most of the carrot seeds on the market are for varieties that grow 6-8 inches and that's about it. Everyone thinks they want to grow the tall, slender ones, but they very seldom do, and they don't work very well in most backyard garden soils anyway. The carrots end up being misshapen and twisted and rather unappetizing looking. But, wonder of wonders, I'm going to show you how you can grow 10-inch carrots in 6-inches of soil.
One person wrote and said, "Do you just make your 4x4 box 12-inches deep instead of 6-inches deep? And, of course, that would waste an awful lot of soil mix - you would double the cost for your wood sides and you would double the cost for your Mel's Mix and all to accomplish space for perhaps only one out of your 16 sq. ft. So instead of that idea, we are going to build something that is specially made just for that 1 square foot of extra-long carrots. We are going to build what looks like a little high-rise apartment on the roof, just for that one square foot that we want to plant extra-long carrots in. Now we used to call this a penthouse until that awful magazine ruined the name, so now we stick with high-rise apartment or just high rise.
Use your imagination now and think about one square foot planted with extra-long carrots. Other square feet would be planted with other varieties that will grow in 6 inches. In fact, today, there are a lot of very short or round carrots on the market and they are kind of fun to grow, too.
So, to house those extra-long carrots we are going to build a little apartment on top of our roof where they will fit and grow nicely. To build that, we just build a bottomless box - in other words four sides. We are going to make it out of 1x4 lumber or maybe 1x6 lumber. It will just sit on top of one of the squares and, in order to fit inside your grid (and I sure hope you have a grid because a square foot garden isnt complete without a grid), then the outside dimensions of your new little box would be a little smaller than 12"x12" - so it fits inside the grid in one of the squares. You could use thinner plywood but some people don't like the looks of plywood. As soon as you may set that on top of your garden, inside your grid and fill it with Mel's Mix, you are ready to start planting. Because the inside dimensions are going to be a little less than normal, your 16 plant spacing will be a little closer together, but remember, nothing has to be exact in square foot gardening. You merely take that square foot, divide it in half each way by drawing a line in the soil with your finger (Have you seen the Introductory Video yet? It shows it all in humorous detail.) and then you merely poke two holes at a time with two fingers spacing them evenly apart. Plant your seeds and you are all finished. I like the 1"x4" lumber size better than the 1"x6". You also have to consider because of its exposure to the air on all four sides, so you may have to water a little extra, especially once the carrots get to be half grown stage.
Now, some may ask why go to this extra work when you could just build a whole 4x4 box bigger? But again we get back to the economy and the necessity of only one of the plants requiring this extra depth. Back in the old days, when we used to dig down and improve the existing soil (this was, of course, before the latest improvements to Square Foot Gardening), we suggested that you clean out one square foot and dig down into your existing ground an extra 4-6 inches and then back fill that with Mels Mix and you would have an extra deep square, but that meant you would always be growing the same thing in that one square, so this new method goes along nicely with the latest improvement to Square Foot Gardening, because after your extra-long carrots have been harvested, you can easily move the box to another square, in order to grow something extra long somewhere else. That way you get crop rotation and this movable high-rise apartment satisfies all the requirements of your garden.
Now this unique method works well for other crops. For example, if you grow scallions or leeks or even celery, everyone wants the white part of the vegetable and by using the high-rise apartment idea, you can grow extra-long white portions of those vegetables. In fact, you can double, if not triple, the desirable portions. Of course the green part of those same crops are just as, if not more, nutritious, but everyone wants the white portion. This high-rise method also works well for potatoes, because, remember potatoes grow off of the main plant stem between the bottom root and the top of the soil surface. So, if that potato has an extra 4-6 inches in the ground, it is going to grow that many more potatoes. Remember the old-fashioned way of growing potatoes - once they are planted in a furrow, you then have to come along and hoe up the soil from the 3 foot paths along the side to provide that extra cover. Let's eliminate all that work, throw away your hoe. Now it is much easier just to back fill that square with Mel's Mix or better yet, pure compost to get the extra harvest.
This new idea is just one of the advance treatments of the basic square foot gardening system. There are many more and you will find there are many adaptable special things that you can do with Square Foot Gardening that you CAN'T DO WITH ANY OTHER SYSTEM because our system is so modular, you can replant any square foot with a new crop any time during the season and it all fits together so easily. NO OTHER SYSTEM CAN DO THAT. You will most often double your harvest without any more space or work.
Some people ask if we can paint the wood and certainly the outside exposed to the air could be painted any color you want, either to match your garden or to provide some decorative logo. You can even have the kids draw things with either paint or magic markers on the side of the high-rise apartment. I could even see windows with people peeking out and it would be a lot of fun to get the kids involved here.
If you want something unique and different, take your Square Foot Garden and do some special things with it. Try this idea and see how much fun and enjoyment it adds to your garden. I'm also going to show you how to build a stepped up or cascading SFG in a future column.
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Growing Potatoes
Potatoes are a fun crop to grow because being underground you don't know what you have until it is time to harvest them. They fit very nicely into a square Foot Garden. For large-sized potatoes we plant one per square foot. If you are going to harvest them early, called new potatoes or if they are a small variety, we have actually grown four plants per square foot.
Now, here is the way you grow them: First, if you understand how potatoes are formed on the plant, it will enable you to understand the planting method. Potato plants start from a piece of an old potato called a seed potato that has a few eyes in it. Those eyes sprout and a stem comes up. The new crop grows off of that stem and the longer that stem is below ground, the more potatoes you will have. So, in the old-fashioned way, the seed potato piece was planted and then you started hilling up from the side aisles to cover the plant and kept covering it so you had more stem below ground and also to protect the new crop from the sunlight. But, it was a lot of work - a lot of hoeing. We've eliminated all of that with Square Foot Gardening.
Now, we take one square foot, remove the 6 inches of Mel's Mix from that square foot and, in the bottom, put in about 2 inches of pure, homemade compost, the best you have, this is for the roots. Then you put your seed potato pieces right on that and cover them with about an inch of compost. By the way when you cut up your seed potatoes, you cut them into big chunks that have 2 or 3 eyes in each one. If they are small potatoes, some people like to put the whole potato in, but that seems a little wasteful and they provide too many sprouts. You can buy certified seed potatoes in most garden supply centers early in the spring, or you can just take a chance and use store-bought potatoes. However, they are usually sprayed with a material that prevents them from sprouting. This makes them more saleable in the store and they last longer in the vegetable bin at home. It is best, after you cut them, to let them sit in the sun (to heal over the wound and then it won't bleed and rot when you put it in the ground). This is done for just a few hours.
Once that hole is all planted, you have about 4 inches of material in the bottom. Then, once or twice a week as the plant sprouts through that layer of compost, you cover it again with more compost and you keep covering it as it grows. It would seem like it would discourage the plant from growing, but it just keeps pushing up through our new layer that you've covered it with and, hence, you have a vary long stem underground and you'll have many, many more potatoes. Instead of getting out the hoe and bringing all that soil up and doing that hard work, all you are doing is taking compost and backfilling that hole - a very simple process. Of course, you can have as many square feet planted in potatoes as you want. We like to plant different varieties in different square feet scattered around the garden boxes.
Once the potato reaches the top and you've filled in right to the top of your garden, then it is either time to quit and let all the new potatoes form, or if you've gotten an early start in the season, some people like to go to our High-Rise Method where you build a 12" x 12" square bottomless box and put it right over that square foot. Make sure it is small enough to sit on the inside of your grid. You continue the process of filling in and the plant just keeps growing. I've found that 6 more inches is a little too much for the potato, so I like to use a 1 x 4 lumber so that you have the first six inches to grow in plus another 4 inches.
Finally, when you are through covering the plant, it will grow to maturity and you can either dig the potatoes out near the middle of the season to get the smaller ones, or you can let them finish the season. You will know when the plant is finished because it dies off, withers and turns brown and is rather unsightly looking, but that is nature's signal that it is all over for this year and the new potatoes are all in the ground waiting for you to harvest them.
In a later column, I'm going to tell you how to do the same thing, but in a simplified method that is great for grandchildren. It not only encourages them to garden, but it encourages them to come visit their grandparents or at least call them and ask them. "How are my taters doing, Pop?"
Grow Zucchini Vertically
Show the kids how easy it is to grow squash vertically. You know what they will say ? "COOL"
Our most often asked question in the wintertime when everyone is pouring over those seed catalogs and ordering all of the new selections is, What variety of squash is a vine and which ones will climb?
Answer: Any that are not labeled or marked bush variety will probably be a vine. Some varieties will grow very long vigorous vines easy to train vertically while others will have short stumpy vines not as easy to train up your vertical frame.
Vertical growing of squash is quite a unique procedure in the general gardening field, and was virtually unknown by most of the traditional gardening authors, methods and seed companies until SFG came along. The planting spacing is quite different so it is not easy to find the right varieties that will do what you want to do in your Square Foot Garden. Let's see what sense we can make out of the whole situation.
Winter Squash
First lets identify the different types of squash. The first group is winter squash with varieties like hubbard, acorn, and the favorite of many people, butternut. These varieties are usually left to ripen on the vine and are good for storing inside your house well into the winter. You usually don't harvest them when they are young or eat them until they have become full size. That usually happens only after the vine has been killed by the first frost. After that frost, the vines will turn yellow and die then become quite brittle. At that time or slightly before, you can harvest the squash by cutting off and leaving a stem on the squash for proper storage. They can be eaten at any time after that. Just about every variety of winter squash grows with a very vigorous vine and is very easy to grow vertically as they will all climb by themselves. In fact, you have to keep them from jumping from one vertical frame to another or from dropping down from the vertical frame and starting to grow on the ground crowding out the rest of your square feet of crops. In an old fashioned, inefficient, single row garden, they just virtually take over the whole patch. They spread rapidly, growing very long vines, but in Square Foot Gardening, you can contain them on your vertical frame and still receive the same harvest from just a few square feet on the ground. Besides all that, they look spectacular growing on a vertical frame. It is almost a living wall of green.
Summer Squash
Just think how impressed your neighbors will be when you grow all your squash vertically in just a few square feet of ground space.
The next group of squash are called summer squashes and these include varieties like straight or crook neck, patty pan, and any soft variety of squash that you eat right away. You harvest while the plant is growing and before the squash gets too large. All of these varieties except those labeled bush will grow in a vine type with some being very vigorous and long vined while others have short stumpy vines. All the vine type can be grown vertically by just keeping the end of the plant or the vine up into your vertical netting or strings. They will hang on all by themselves with their tentacles. You just have to keep the top pointed up once a week or so. Remember now, this type of squash you do not grow to maturity, as they will get quite large and very tasteless. You harvest them very small, some just shortly after their blossom phase where the fruit is only four to six inches long. This type of squash does not store very well, certainly not for a long period of time like winter squashes do.
The last is also a summer squash but is in a class all by itself. In fact, it is quite often considered the queen of the garden. Everyone grows zucchini and let me tell you, zucchini loves all the attention. She will take over the garden with her leaves so big that each one will shade out an entire square foot of some other plant. The plants get huge although they do not have a long vigorous vine. Because the leaves are so big and the leaf stem is so long and thick it is very hard to coax them to grow vertically. They want to lay down on the ground and spread out. In fact it's very hard to figure out how to grow them vertically.
My Secret
The trick is to have the vertical support whether it be string or netting or just a stake, very close to the plant. You can do that by putting a stake in the ground first and then planting the seed or young plant around it so you don't drive the stake into the roots of a growing plant. That way it is much easier to gently lift and bend the plant end up and tie to the stake or string. After you get it started up your string or netting every few days it will have grown out a few inches. Not up, but out and it will try to lay down again. You just gently talk to it, lift that head up, and tie it again to your vertical support. You just keep doing that every couple of days.
Why Vertical
Because of all of the advantages. What are the advantages and is it all worthwhile ? It seems like a lot of work doesn't it. Well first it is a challenge, next it is kind of fun and third it looks great in your garden. Of course, the real reason is so it doesn't take up so much space in your Square Foot Garden, only a couple square feet. Now here is the coupe de grace ? Or in gardening terms, here's the cooty grow . After I perfected this method of growing vines vertically on a frame or Stake, I noticed a completely different growth pattern of the basic squash plant, particularly the summer squashes. In single row gardening, the plant spreads out with its single stem having blossoms and fruit forming near the near. Back near the base the leaves start dying and the stem becomes quite ugly. The end continues to grow new leaves and fruit but only out there at the end. With Square Foot Gardening and growing the squash vertically I noticed almost the opposite growth pattern. Once the plant got a few feet high instead of the bottom stem being bare and ugly, the plant started sending out new leaves and fruit all along the bottom and middle of the plant. No ugly bare base was visible, hence it was not only much more attractive, took up less space, but turned out to be more productive, more fruit per plant as well as more fruit per square foot. Now you can't beat that so why not give it a try.
Please don't write us or call us and ask what is the best variety that you can order so you can grow it vertically. Call or email the seed company and tell them that you want to grow a strong vigorous vine vertically for your Square Foot Garden. They know their own varieties better than we do and can advise you on the best variety to select for that purpose. Good Luck and have fun!
P.S. One of the reasons it's hard to get up to date practical advice for vertical gardening is that most of the gardening world is still teaching everyone how to grow the old-fashioned, inefficient single-row gardening method. In addition, they do the same thing with the vine cropstheir advice is give them plenty of room so they can spread out and grow. In addition, the same wasteful practice of planting many seeds, then going back and thinning them out again, is still preached. For example, I'm looking right now at one of the prominent seed company's package and the directions for their zucchini squash is to plant four to six seeds in groups or hills, spaced 1-1/2 to 2 ft. apart along rows spaced 4 ft. apart. Then they say thin to the two strongest plants in the group. Now think about that for a minute. All the companies guarantee that about 95% of their seeds will sprout. It's called the germination rate. So, if 95% of 4-6 seeds will sprout, that's 4-6 plants. Then they say thin to two. So why plant six if you only want two ? That's a lot of extra work and many wasted seeds.
And next, I'm going to quote from one of the very well recognized garden writers of America, on how to plant your squash. He suggests (uh-oh I've given away who it could be, by at least 50%) plant a seed about every 8 inches in a row with the rows being 3-4 ft. apart, with the final distance between the plants 36 inches. Now why plant one every 8 inches only to rip out 3 of every 4 you plant ? Does that make any sense ? Why that's 75% WASTE. Using his directions, you would need between 9 and 12 sq. ft. per plant. Now if you look at the SFG book for summer squash grown vertically, it's recommended that three plants be spaced in a 4 sq. ft. which equals one and one-third sq. ft. per plant. That sure is a huge difference from the 9-12 sq. ft. needed. Actually, it's almost 10 times as much. Why waste all that space? Space that has to be amended, fenced, fertilized and roto-tilled, watered then weeded. It just doesn't make sense does it? So, stick with SFG and grow all your vine crops vertically on a strong frame like the one I've described in the book.
All above names and included material are copyrighted by Mel Bartholomew and any extended use by others except for review, brief descriptions, and credit mentions, must receive prior written permission.
Saving Seeds
Except for a kid's project, I think growing plants in order to save the seed is usually not worthwhile.
FIRST REASON
The first reason is because (and this applies both in this country and for anywhere around the world, especially those third-world countries where we are taking our humanitarian projects) it is taking up valuable space in your garden in order to let the plant mature and go to seed. This usually takes quite a bit longer than just growing crops for the produce you would have picked. Now, of course, this doesn't apply to fruit that has the seeds inside like tomatoes, melons and squash. In that case, you obviously have to wait until the fruit ripens before harvesting and once it is ripe, then usually the seeds are fairly ripe, but not always. Some fruit has to over-ripen beyond the point of eating in order to become soft and mushy for those seeds to fully mature before they can be cleaned, dried and stored. But I'm thinking more about things like lettuce or radishes or cabbage. All of those crops have to be left in the ground well beyond the point of harvesting them. In fact, in the case of cabbage and lettuce, you have to let them continue growing until the actual cabbage head splits in half and a stalk comes out of the center. That's the seed stalk. Then, you have to wait for that to blossom, become pollinated and then turn into the seed pods. That has to continue to stay in the ground until the seed pods are fully mature, ripe and ready to harvest. That takes a long time and aside from using your valuable garden space, you have to continue to water and take care of that plant during its entire period.
DOLLARS PER SQUARE FOOT
Another way to analyze that is if you were growing for market and you had sixteen radishes growing in one square foot, they would be ready to harvest in just four weeks. Let's say that they brought a nickel a piece in the market, so that's 16 X 5 or $.80 per square foot for less than one month's time. To leave that plant in the ground so that it goes to seed, you might, at the end of close to three months, be able to harvest perhaps $.50 worth of seed, so the economical advantage is not there.
NOT TRUE STRAIN
In addition to the time and care and costs to produce seed from your own garden, unless you are a real expert and have lots of room and can separate all your different plants, you can never be sure that they have been pollinated correctly and that their seeds will turn out true to that particular strain and variety. This is particularly true with the newer varieties of flowers and vegetables, those that have been especially cross-bred to produce certain favorable qualities. When they are pollinated by nature in an open field, they are actually called "open-pollinated" and that bee or insect that carries pollen from one flower to another may or may not visit some varieties that would cause an open pollination between two different varieties.
CROSS POLLINATION
In the case of squash and melons, it is usually believed that they will cross-pollinate and the resulting seeds will never be true to the original varieties. It is my understanding that you don't have to worry about cross-pollinating various varieties in your garden the first year. In other words, when you are harvesting the fruit to eat it is not a problem, but it is only a problem when you are trying to save seeds from that fruit for the next year that you will run into trouble trying to get the same variety. Of course, if you are trying to create odd and unusual and new strains or new varieties, then that's the way to go.
SEEDS ARE CHEAP
The second major reason that I feel trying to save your seed is not worth your time and effort, is because seeds are really very cheap, despite the high price tag you may see in the spring on some seed packets, upwards of one or two dollars a packet. Those are usually for the unusual newer varieties and when you are thinking about sending seeds for overseas humanitarian projects, those are not the seeds you would pick in any case. You want the standard, everyday, tried and proven varieties that everyone has grown for many years and can depend upon. Those packets are not usually as expensive and you have to realize that quite often those packets are on sale at a deep discount. In fact, there are many seed packets that stores offer as an attraction. I know my local hardware store always had ten cents a packet seeds at the beginning of the season. You may not recognize the brand name, but from my past studies, I have found that very often the same seeds were packaged in different company's packages. Each had their own advertising and promotion programs and quite often those same seed packets had different price tags on them, yet they were the same seeds inside. It is my understanding that this also happens in many food items. Quite often you are paying a premium for the brand names because they have to advertise more and it costs them more to put that product out.
INEFFICIENT SINGLE ROW GARDENING
The third and actually the main reason that I feel that trying to save your own seeds is not worthwhile is because the seed packets and the entire seed industry is all based upon old-fashioned, inefficient single-row gardening. You know the kind of gardening where you dig a long furrow from here to there by stretching a string and then taking a hoe and opening the soil along this long furrow underneath the string. Then, you tear off the top of the seed packet and start pouring the seeds out along that furrow, hoping you will have enough seeds until you get to the end. Then, you find a stick and poke it through the seed packet and stick it in the ground so you know what seeds and what varieties you have planted there. That was one of the revelations that caused me to say, "There is something wrong with this method" and that's when I invented the Square Foot Gardening System.
WHY PLANT ALL THOSE SEEDS
After asking the question, "Why are we planting all these seeds and then we have to come back, according to the directions, and thin them all out to only 3 or 6 or 12 inches apart ?" "Why not just plant them at 3, 6 or 12 inches apart, just a pinch of seeds ?" And, that's how I started my experiments many years ago. Then, I thought, "Let's count the number of seeds." And, when I found that a packet of, let's say, lettuce seeds contain over 1,000 seeds, I thought, "This truly is ridiculous and terribly wasteful to plant all these seeds when I only want 10 or 15 or 20 heads of this lettuce. I want other varieties too and maybe at different times." So, it was not only a terrible waste of seeds, but think of all the work involved in preparing all that soil and fertilizing and amending the soil and loosening it up with a rototiller and all those different things from conventional single-row gardening.
WASTEFUL SINGLE ROW GARDENING
Another thing wrong with old-fashioned, inefficient, single row gardening, which most people don't realize until it is too late, is that when you plant all those seeds at the same time in one long single row they all come to harvest at the same time. Wonder of wonders - I wonder if anyone ever thought of that as something home gardeners don't want. Farmers, yes, home gardeners, no. But no one ever told us that's what we would get. Who wants 20 heads of lettuce all within one week ? As it turns out, everything that we have been taught all our lives about single-row gardening, I began to think, was terribly wasteful and almost to the point of being really dumb. Why do we plant everything in a row and then space the row three feet apart ? Why do we plant a whole packet of seeds and then thin 95% of them out ?
Why do we plant so much all at once and then it all comes to harvest all at once, when for a home garden we just want a little bit but continually through the whole garden season? Why do we roto-till and fertilize and amend the soil over the entire garden area when most of it was in 3-foot wide aisles which grew nothing but a tremendous crop of weeds, especially when we watered the entire garden area ?
How dumb is that ?
STOP SENDING SEEDS
In our humanitarian projects and in working with other nonprofit organizations, we found the first request from both the recipients overseas and the giving organization in this country was, We need seeds, we need lots of seeds. Everyone wants seeds and I've seen huge boxes of seeds being sent overseas and I know they are all going to be wasted by being poured out in a single-row system. I thought, What a terrible waste and what a terrible disappointment. It stands to reason that if they use all their seeds at once, then they are going to just want more and if the donating organization can't keep shipping pounds and pounds of seeds to them, their program isn't going to be successful.
STOP TEACHING SINGLE ROW GARDENING
Now, at first, you might say, Well, that's a very good reason then, for them to start growing their own seed. But, I say NO , go back to reasons one and two why I think it is a waste of time. It is much better to teach them an efficient, condensed planting system like Square Foot Gardening that teaches conservation, rather than stick to an antiquated, inefficient system that merely promotes and breeds more inefficiency and waste in every single step of the way.
START USING SQUARE FOOT METHOD
Since Square Foot Gardening takes only 20% of the space of a conventional garden, it also takes less than 5% of the seeds and that is because we don't waste seeds or plant too many, only to have to thin them out. If you recall the SFG planting directions, you will remember that we just put a pinch of seeds. See Rule No. 8 of the SFG Ten Basics and that is plant only a pinch (2 or 3 seeds) in each hole or each space. Now if you start with a packet of 1,000 lettuce seeds and there are four plants per square foot and you put in 2-3 seeds in each hole, you've only planted 10 seeds for each square foot of lettuce. Divide 1,000 by 10 and you have enough seeds in that one packet for 100 people. And that is just one slender thin packet of seeds. Compare that with the 100 people each planting an entire packet of seeds - 100 packets vs. 1 packet - that's efficiency. That's Square Foot Gardening !
ELIMINATE THINNING
Remember also that when the seeds do sprout, rather than conventional single-row thinning, which actually disturbs the one plant you want to save, we take a pair of scissors and snip off the extra one or two sprouts leaving one plant per space. That also reduces the risk of the gardener wanting to transplant the extras and put one here and one there and pretty soon they are too crowded. Square Foot Gardening allows every plant to be in the exact perfect spacing for that variety.
TRY CONSERVATION
In summary then, I would say in order to conserve your seeds, plant wisely and efficiently and there will be enough seeds for every garden, rather than trying to spend extra time, space, energy, water, etc., to allow the plants to go to seed and try to save those seeds for next year's garden. It's a lot easier to store the left over packet of unused seeds, than to grow even more.
STORE FOR NEXT YEAR
The other thing that SFG teaches is to store your left over packets for the next planting, even if it's next year. Stored cool and dry, your seeds will last for many years. That's not easy in tropical, developing countries, but storage in a Ziploc or plastic bag in the coolest, driest spot in the house is well worthwhile.
REPACKAGING MAKES SENSE
One of the procedures we use at the Square Foot Gardening Foundation, is to repackage seeds into small zip-lock plastic bags and put just enough for that variety in one square foot, or maybe two plantings when using a pinch of seeds times the spacing. This may seem like a lot of work, but it allows everyone to receive and to realize that conservation of seeds is the primary first step in gardening. I again repeat - seeds are very inexpensive. Why do you think there are so many seeds in a $1.49 packet of lettuce seeds ? It is because the packaging and the marketing of those seeds cost a zillion times more than the actual seeds do. I would venture to say that in one $1.49 packet, even when you get 1,000 seeds, those actual seeds are worth probably less than 10 cents. It is all the other things that go with running a business and getting the product out to the public that is so expensive. Just the transportation alone is probably much more costly than the seeds themselves.
RARE AND REMOTE
There may be exceptions to the above advice about not trying to grow your own seeds, but it would have to involve very rare and difficult-to-find seeds or if you are in a location that is so remote no one can get another packet of seeds to you for the next five years. Let's teach conservation and efficiency so all of our gardening aid programs can be more successful.
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