I read about the metre square garden idea in a book by the RHS called "Grow your own crops in pots". I got some more stuff from the internet and thought we'll give it a go. The idea is that you cram crops into foot square sections quite densely in anything from,. Ideally you'd have a four x four foot box but I'd not got the space to commit to it so I've gone with more of a metre square approach - it's three x three foot! The disadvantage over the 4ft x 4ft version is I have 7 squares less to play with.
In terms of planting they go in either singly, in fours, nines or 16s per square foot so you could have one tomato plant, four lettuces, 9 raddishes or 16 onions (no joking it apparently works). I'm almost tempted not to waste a whole square on one plant but I think I'm going to have one tomato plant just to check out the companion planting theories below.
The idea is that as soon as something crops, you harvest, bang in some fresh compost/soil then reseed the square with something new so you're continually refreshing/ renewing the soil.
Along with all this there's companion planting whereby you plant some things next to each other as they co-exist really well - for example Tomatoes love onions for example. You plant marigolds as the scent of them attacts insects that feed on Aphids and beans take nitrogen out of the air and put it back into the soil. Lots of clever stuff like that to learn.
As a green way of doing stuff really I should be composting stuff as well but as I don't do that yet I'm going to have to rely on shop bought compost for the time being.
My intention is to blog it all so I can save the details for next year -what worked, what didn't etc.etc.
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