During spring planting we were in a bit of a rush.  Our decision to farm was a little last minute and our plans were, at best,  rough sketches. We were talking about trying to grow many types of vegetables that we had never eaten, much less grown, and we were going to experiment with a few new growing methods.

I wanted to try even more new things but I was reigned in, partly by Breanna, and partly from my lack of time.  But one thing I new I wanted to try was block planting.  In short,  it is growing certain vegetables in a very close group.

Spacing is something we gave a lot of consideration to. Most people have seen plant spacing directions on seed packets or in books, but they aren’t written in stone.  There is some play there.  If you plant things closer together, you will reduce the yield per plant, but since you have more plants,  you will increase the yield per row.

It also turns out that some plants do well if you grow them in bunches of 4 or 5, but space the bunches out further.  We tried that this year with beets and onions, and so far its been very successful.

The advantages of this system are many.  We transplant our onions and beets, so by putting 4 seeds in every cell, we can for 4 times the number of seedlings in a tray. Likewise,  we transplant 4 plants instead of one per cell, so it’s a space and time saver.

It is also quicker and easier to weed a bed that has wider spaced bunches than it would be to weed individual onions placed closer together

Next year I would like to grow some side by side with conventionally planted beets to check the yields, but who knows if I’ll get to it. I already have a lot of plans for next year.