This year I’ve decided to do a few different growing trials in areas of 1 metre square with vastly reduces plant spacings to see what the results will be.
Hi, I’m Dan and I grow a huge variety of vegetables for eating and also some Giant and Exhibition Show varieties for Local and even National Competitions.
Throughout the year I will try to show how I go about growing my produce and hopefully give a few tips and tricks along the way.
Whether it be how I grow potatoes in containers, growing basic veg for the home to growing a 10 pound onion or even a 100 pound marrow I will chart all my progress.
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24 Comments
I did that in 2020 and it worked out great cheers 🍻
This is great for me because I have 2 6ft beds and 2 8ft beds so not a great amount of room to grow.
I love experiments. Great job.
I wonder if metrically grow onions will taste better 🤔
Cheers Dan🍻
I think spacings in the old books are taking from farming methods and totally irrelevant on my plot. When you see things like sow or plant 6 inches apart but in rows 18 inches apart. if it's fine 6 inches apart from its neighbour why does it have to be 18 inches apart from its other neighbor. Those 18 inch spacings are for old small tractor tires. Dunno about you but I've not seen many people using a tractor on their plots or back gardens. Some of those old spacings should be thrown in the bin.
Hi Dan nearly 100k subscribers .. trip to the pub soon!
Seaside Steve plants 200 sets to a square metre for harvesting medium sized onions and about 80 to a square metre for larger onions, he grows good stuff.
This will be very interesting. Can't wait to see the results.
I always plant close then we harvest every other one as spring onions. But I plant from seed not sets.
My zebruune shallots are doing well and my long red from Florence are doing well as babies. Probably about a month left before I can put things outside.
Great idea!
Hi Dan. This is going to be a very interesting and useful project – especially with food shortages in the air.
I'd say they will do grand as long as there aren't too many weeds around them. But then your soil is good enough that only the blow ins will show up. As long as they get plenty of water and sunlight, you should get decent useable onions.
If you go to the store, you'll see plenty of small red onions in nets. And these should get to at least that size, all being well. If people only had a one by three meter bed for all their onion for that year, and they had been working the soil for a while. So they know aggressive weeds aren't going to show up on mass. Then I would say plant two meters at 10" apart roughly, and the last meter more like you did here.
That way, you should get a fair few larger onions. And plenty of smaller ones for use in salads or pundies/champ, whatever. In fact, the last, more dense section may be better for milder red onions. If you take the odd one early, you're making a bit more room for those around it.
That will be interesting to see how it develops. Thanks for sharing your experiment with us and I wish you luck with it. I will definitely be back to see how it unfolds. Have a great day!
Can't wait to see the results. When I first started gardening, I used a 4×4 and divided it up into the square foot method. I also didn't stick to the required amount of plants per square. So I may have done 2 leaf lettuce and 2 rows of radish in one square, followed by a half dozen beets and a row of Scarlet Nantes carrots in the next. It was all about what I was going to eat most of. I also put spuds, peppers and tomatoes in containers.
Now I have far more room, and while I still look at my raised beds as a grid system, I don't follow much guidance from the square foot gardening method in regard to quantities anymore. It was great when I was learning, and a lot of younger kids enjoy the concept.
A few thoughts. The original square foot gardening method started with a 4*4 or 4*8 raised bed, with about six inches of compost/growing medium on top of cardboard laid over turf. The plot is divided into one foot sections, with a different species in every one foot section.That's why it's called Square Foot, and not Sixteen Square Feet. What you're doing here is just growing with tighter spacing. Since the square foot system typically uses a raised bed, it has to be watered more often than usual. And since it's not very deep, it's best for shallow-rooted plants. It was really just a gimmick for people with little space, to get them gardening.
Of course, at some minimum of spacing, plants start competing with each other both below and above ground. I find that peas, lettuce and scallions take crowding very well, but many veggies just grow smaller the more you squeeze in.
I've been growing using square foot gardening spacing for years and I am very happy with the size of all my crops including onions and garlic (9 to a Square foot). I find it really helps me to make the best use of my space. I even plant potatoes 1 to a square foot and get great results (no earthing up). The idea behind the closer spacing is that you are not creating paths to walk up and down between rows. You reach in from the sides of the beds and hence you do not waste 'walking' space. I feel a little intimidated by a 4'x8' bed but I find it really easy when I think of the space in square feet.
I've done this sort of thing using 0.25sqm i.e. 0.5m*0.5m is very good for spring onion clumps (25 clumps); radish (25 clumps); chard (4 plants); lettuce (4 plants) used for pick and come again (which is enough for 1 adult plus OAP 88 yrs old). I've also done 1sqm experiments trying to grow 4 crops one after the other (radish – 90 clumps; 3 rows of 10 beetroot; 90 clumps of spring onion; then 20 valdor lettuce) – this is really pushing the limits down south, so 3 successive crops is probably more realistic where you are. I got >30lb in 1sqm two seasons running without all 4 crops being perfect.
I use a similar method, but we had to increase spacing a bit for crops that grow through the heat due to our extreme heat. Soil can’t hold enough water to supply extremely close dense planting here. We get to 117 f here with no rain from Easter till Halloween.
This method is great if you prefer to harvest baby or small veg faster in smaller spacing. I use the trellis ideas in his second book. They are great. I set rebar into ground and put the electrical conduit on them. Then I can easily put trellises wherever I need one pretty quickly.
I think you should try planting some shorter harvesting crops in between the onions. The usual radish and lettuce, perhaps peas for pea shoots??
Congratulations on 100K subscribers!!!!
Really enjoyed your latest video and we are embarking on some similar intensive small area trials ourself this year just to see how much can be produced in a tiny plot, or in pots on a patio. Have subscribed and will follow your adventures this year. You might like to check out our channel – we are quite new to YouTube and your support would be appreciated. Best Wishes, Paul.
Dan, congrats to you! I see you hit 100K. With such fantastic gardening videos, I am not surprised.
Hi Dan, I think we bought the same onion sets on sale at Lidl and got the white, red, and yellow ones too! I also got the Golden Wonder seed spuds and I'm out of room already after sticking them in their planter. Moving onto carrot planter business tomorrow, used toilet roll inserts as starter biodegradable deep pots in an empty Christmas sweeties container tub. Perfect for bottom watering and easy to plant on without touching the roots 🙂
Was the plot so small you forgot where it was. Did you ever do an update or did I miss it.
Was the plot so small you forgot where it was. Did you ever do an update or did I miss it.