How to Create a Perfectly Planned Garden
There is no perfect way to plant a garden. Gardeners can choose a chaotic garden where everything grows together, or a companion garden where different types of vegetables and flowers are interspersed. However, some people want a perfectly planned, symmetrical garden with straight rows of vegetables, perfectly arranged in rows. For those people, here are two ways to achieve this.
Sowing using a sowing square
Starting from seed is the most efficient way to grow many vegetables, such as radishes, beets, kohlrabi, and turnips, but the seeds are difficult to place perfectly. Enter the seed square . A plastic mesh with holes perfectly spaced in various patterns, the square is placed in your garden bed and you insert the seeds into the holes in the pattern you want. They should match the recommended spacing on the seed packet, but most of the vegetables I just named have the same recommended spacing: two to three inches between seeds. Make sure you place two to three seeds in each hole, in the hopes that at least one will sprout. You can always trim the seedlings back to one later.
Seed squares are inexpensive, but you can make your own using a piece of cardboard. Draw a grid on a one-foot by one-foot piece of cardboard. Use a hole punch or awl to make holes in symmetrical patterns on the cardboard. You can color the square to make it easier to spot the patterns as you plant in your garden.
If you are gardening by the foot , you can use a seed square to plant several different vegetables in each square foot of space in your garden. When laid out in a seed square, even different vegetables will grow in a structured pattern.
You don’t have to repeat the same pattern throughout the entire bed. You can dedicate a portion of the entire bed to planting the pattern, or mix up the pattern from square foot to square foot.
Planting in a net using seedlings
If you buy seeds or grow your own, you’ll find it easier to keep your plants in a tight grid. All you have to do is plant the seeds in the soil where you want them – you can see the pattern as you plant. With seedlings, a seed square won’t help – the holes aren’t big enough – so it’s best to use a tool like a piece of PVC or a ruler to mark out where the plants will grow. Use the PVC or ruler to draw lines in the topsoil to divide the bed into a grid.
As with the seed square, you can sketch out a layout ahead of time, but generally you want to keep blocks of rows—a block for each vegetable. The blocks don’t have to be spaced evenly or even go in the same direction. Keeping a grid will help your garden look clean and professional once everything is grown.