Why make rows in a garden

And this is a great time to take companion planting into consideration as well. Similar to square-foot gardening, hexagonal spacing maximizes space even further. Suppose someone challenged you to fit as many round dinner plates on a kitchen table as possible. Lining up all those round plates in a grid pattern produces a lot of wasted space. You can get more plates on the table if you shift every second row over just a bit so that rows are staggered.

Now envision this same scenario with plants like cabbages, tomatoes or eggplants. Planting densely helps minimize evaporation and conserve water. It also keeps the ground shaded and cooler, and discourages weed growth. Vertical gardening is again exactly what it sounds like: making use of vertical growing space by using trellising systems. Plants with vines that sprawl and take up a lot of space are ideal for vertical gardening.

Cucumbers, melons, squash, peas and pole beans all can be grown vertically. Some plants are natural climbers and will grab onto any support system they can find. The toe ends of old pantyhose work perfectly for this purpose. Of course, plants grown in this way will cast shade. Regardless of which intensive gardening method you use, remember to fertilize!

All those plants will be sucking up every nutrient they can find in your soil. Do you use any intensive gardening systems? This type of bed confines the plants to a certain area and is good for retaining moisture and preventing pests and weeds. It can be a good option for yards with nutrient-poor soil or very clay-based soils, or for those who have little room to garden in the ground.

Raised beds and raised garden rows are more beneficial for plants because they have better soil structures than traditional flat-earth gardens. To prepare a raised row garden bed, you need to build up the soil with mulch, straw or compost until it resembles a hill. That enriched soil will keep breaking down, providing nutrients to the plants. Keep each row of this kind about 24 to 30 inches apart from the next.

Use the space in between as a walking row, and do not build it up with soil or mulch of any kind, explains the team at Old World Garden Farms. You can follow the above approach for creating rows in raised beds, as well, though you won't be walking in between rows of plants in that case. Traditional vegetable rows look clean and organized, and they provide room for gardeners to move between the plants.

The space separating the rows also acts as a water channel. There are different ways to plant vegetables in rows, and your decision will depend on the types of vegetables you wish to grow and the amount of space you have.

University of Illinois Extension offers a guide for planting straight garden rows, along with a chart defining planting distances for different vegetables. It includes the distance between the plants as well as the rows. Here's how it breaks down:. A third option, often called plant-dictated or random placement, is becoming more popular.

Here are the pros and cons of each approach and advice on which method is best for your needs. You can even incorporate all the gardening techniques into one garden, depending on the space and the vegetables.

Traditional row gardening is a direct descendant of pre-industrial agriculture. Back in the horse and plow or human-operated plow days, rows gave clear lines separating the crops from the machinery. They allowed for straight furrows to channel water and left the center soil row loose for the plants to grow in. When tractors and other farm machinery were introduced, they usually kept with this traditional style of growing, perpetuating it to the present.

For home gardeners, no matter the scale, traditional rows offer a clean, aesthetic appeal that also allows for easy access. In areas where sunlight is as a premium and with plants that grow to varied heights, this method allows for more light penetration between rows, allowing for a more varied planting schedule with less planning for height and shade creation needed.