One of my favourite things to do in the Spring is to visit some of my local garden centres. It is a time in between the seasons when you aren’t quite ready to put flowers outside but it is a great source of inspiration. I find that it gets me thinking of great colour combinations and gives me the opportunity to see those pops of colour that we have all been missing during the winter months.
Visiting a garden centre is also a great activity for a rainy day. Garden centers are not only a great resource for inspiration, but they also sell pots, seeds of all kinds, gardening tools, and lots of garden accessories. If you love plants there are also a great selection of tropicals and house plants that can add a fresh pop of green to your home.
I began researching the idea of square foot gardening a few years ago. The concept is using a small amount of space to yield a large harvest. This is a great option for people living in urban areas. Or even for individuals with a small foot print available for gardening.
A few years ago my son helped me build a 5 by 5 foot raised garden bed in our backyard. We used string to mark out the twenty five, one foot plots. After setting up the area, I was able to plant. From experience, I would recommend scaling down to a 4 foot by 4 foot plot. The 5 by 5 does sometimes present some difficultly in reaching into the very middle. Over the years, I have questioned how many of each plant or seed I could fit into each one foot plot and just kind of winged it.
Often in the spring I like looking for new ideas to use in the garden from companies that sell garden supplies. As I was looking through the pages of the Lee Valley catalogue, I found an innovative tool that I needed to have. This would for sure be able to enhance my square foot gardening. Behold the seeding square. This is a genius tool that helps to maximize your harvest in a limited space.
The seeding square comes with a great template. The guide is colour coded and comes with suggestions for many seed types and their placement. Ultimately this allows the gardener to plant a wide variety of seeds and maximize space within each square foot. This tool eliminates the guess work out of optimum placement for each plant, and lets you know the exact number of each plant to plant in the square from the guide’s instructions.
I am looking forward to seeing if this new gardening tool will increase my yield from the garden and make my square foot garden more productive. Happy gardening!
