Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Most vegetables are annuals, which means that they complete their
life cycle in one season and require
replanting every year from seeds or seedlings. However, a few vegetables, and many herbs and fruits,
are perennials. The plants die back in the fall, sprouting up again in the spring on their own, depending
on where you live and the cold hardiness of the plant. Edible perennials are a worthwhile investment.
Favorites such as rhubarb and asparagus take a couple of seasons to establish themselves, but can pro-
duce for many years. Perennials will need a permanent location, or maybe even a bed of their own. Your
gardeners should be aware of the year-to-year benefits of perennials. When there is space and interest,
a shared bed of favorites like rhubarb or blueberries can be installed as a community project.
ROW OR INTENSIVE PLANT SPACING
There are a number of planting schemes and methods out there. For
the sake of simplicity, we're
going to focus on two methods: row gardening (or, as I like to call it, farm gardening) and intensive
gardening (which utilizes elements of the square-foot gardening method pioneered by Mel Bartho-
lomew in the 1970s).
Row gardening is the method most beginners think of when they think of gardening. Picture an old-
school farm with long, straight rows of assorted crops: a row of corn, a row of turnips, a row of cucum-
bers, and so on. Row gardening will work really well if your community garden is set up with, well,
long rows—and lots of them. Many food-pantry gardens are set up this way for maximum yield. For
row gardening, you can pretty much follow seed-package instructions (in terms of planting, spacing,
and thinning) and go to town.
Row gardening gets a little tricky in smaller spaces, raised beds, and allotment gardens. With limited
real estate, gardeners generally want a variety of crops in their limited space, and this is where intensive
gardening can be helpful. Intensive gardening segments off the growing space into square-foot sections;
each section is sown with a different crop. Some expertise is required to determine where plants are best
placed (so as to not shadow other crops or make it impossible to reach the middle of the bed). But, gen-
erally speaking, intensive gardening is an excellent, easy method for most new gardeners to embrace.
From a planting standpoint, row gardening is pretty simple: pick a crop and plant it in a straight
row. Things can be slightly more complicated in a raised-bed environment; but once gardeners become
familiar with plant sizes, they'll be able to plan a raised-bed layout. The intensive gardening technique
divides the bed into a grid, with each square measuring a square foot. Plantings are organized per square
foot. So if you have 12 square feet, you'll have 12 squares in which to plant.
But your gardeners won't necessarily have 12 plants—in fact, they will have many more. Plant spa-
cing is determined by mature plant size, which varies widely. Cabbage and tomato plants, for example,
are large and should be allotted one square foot each, at minimum. On the other hand, beets and spinach
are small and can be planted up to 9 per square foot.
When situating plants, visualize them in three dimensions as they grow up and out. A cabbage plant
might grow 1 to 2 feet wide, but stay compact and low lying, measuring only 6 to 18 inches tall. In
contrast, a tomato plant could grow many feet in height and sprawl outward, potentially shading nearby
plants (spinach might benefit from this shade, but your beets will need full sun). Consider the growth
habit and sun requirements of each plant, and plan accordingly.
Here's a table that shows how to convert row spacing from a seed package to intensive spacing. The
primary difference between row and intensive gardening is in the spacing and configuration of plant-
