WASTEFUL SINGLE ROW GARDENING

SAVING SEEDS - PART 1 described all the reasons why I think it's not worth while to grow plants in order to save their seeds.  Another thing wrong with old-fashioned, inefficient, single row gardening, which most people don't realize until it is too late, is that when you plant all those seeds at the same time in one long single row they all come to harvest at the same time.   Wonder of wonders - I wonder if anyone ever thought of that as something home gardeners don't want.  Farmers, yes, home gardeners, no.  But no one ever told us that's what we would get.  Who wants 20 heads of lettuce all within one week ? As it turns out, everything that we have been taught all our lives about single-row gardening, I began to think, was terribly wasteful and almost to the point of being really dumb. Why do we plant everything in a row and then space the row three feet apart ? Why do we plant a whole packet of seeds and then thin 95% of them out ? Why do we plant so much all at once and then it all comes to harvest all at once, when for a home garden we just want a little bit but continually through the whole garden season? Why do we roto-till and fertilize and amend the soil over the entire garden area when most of it was in 3-foot wide aisles which grew nothing but a tremendous crop of weeds, especially when we watered the entire garden area ? 
How dumb is that ?

STOP SENDING SEEDS

In our humanitarian projects and in working with other nonprofit organizations, we found the first request from both the recipients overseas and the giving organization in this country was, “We need seeds, we need lots of seeds.” Everyone wants seeds and I've seen huge boxes of seeds being sent overseas and I know they are all going to be wasted by being poured out in a single-row system.  I thought, “What a terrible waste and what a terrible disappointment.”   It stands to reason that if they use all their seeds at once, then they are going to just want more and if the donating organization can't keep shipping pounds and pounds of seeds to them, their program isn't going to be successful.

STOP TEACHING SINGLE ROW GARDENING

Now, at first, you might say, “Well, that's a very good reason then, for them to start growing their own seed.” But, I say NO , go back to reasons one and two why I think it is a waste of time. It is much better to teach them an efficient, condensed planting system like Square Foot Gardening that teaches conservation, rather than stick to an antiquated, inefficient system that merely promotes and breeds more inefficiency and waste in every single step of the way.

START USING SQUARE FOOT METHOD

Since Square Foot Gardening takes only 20% of the space of a conventional garden, it also takes less than 5% of the seeds and that is because we don't waste seeds or plant too many, only to have to thin them out. If you recall the SFG planting directions, you will remember that we just put a pinch of seeds. See Rule No. 8 of the SFG Ten Basics and that is plant only a pinch (2 or 3 seeds) in each hole or each space. Now if you start with a packet of 1,000 lettuce seeds and there are four plants per square foot and you put in 2-3 seeds in each hole, you've only planted 10 seeds for each square foot of lettuce. Divide 1,000 by 10 and you have enough seeds in that one packet for 100 people. And that is  just one slender thin packet of seeds.  Compare that with  the 100 people each planting an entire packet of seeds - 100 packets vs. 1 packet - that's efficiency. That's Square Foot Gardening !

ELIMINATE THINNING

Remember also that when the seeds do sprout, rather than conventional single-row thinning, which actually disturbs the one plant you want to save, we take a pair of scissors and snip off the extra one or two sprouts leaving one plant per space. That also reduces the risk of the gardener wanting to transplant the extras and put one here and one there and pretty soon they are too crowded. Square Foot Gardening allows every plant to be in the exact perfect spacing for that variety.

TRY CONSERVATION

In summary then, I would say in order to conserve your seeds, plant wisely and efficiently and there will be enough seeds for every garden, rather than trying to spend extra time, space, energy, water, etc., to allow the plants to go to seed and try to save those seeds for next year's garden.  It's a lot easier to store the left over packet of unused seeds, than to grow even more.

STORE FOR NEXT YEAR

The other thing that SFG teaches is to store your left over packets for the next planting, even if it's next year.  Stored cool and dry, your seeds will last for many years.  That's not easy in tropical, developing countries, but storage in a Ziploc or plastic bag in the coolest, driest spot in the house is well worthwhile. 

REPACKAGING MAKES SENSE

One of the procedures we use at the Square Foot Gardening Foundation, is to repackage seeds into small zip-lock plastic bags and put just enough for that variety in one square foot, or maybe two plantings when  using a pinch of seeds times the spacing. This may seem like a lot of work, but it allows everyone to receive and to realize that conservation of seeds is the primary first step in gardening. I again repeat - seeds are very inexpensive. Why do you think there are so many seeds in a $1.49 packet of lettuce seeds ? It is because the packaging and the marketing of those seeds cost a zillion times more than the actual seeds do. I would venture to say that in one $1.49 packet, even when you get 1,000 seeds, those actual seeds are worth probably  less than 10 cents. It is all the other things that go with running a business and getting the product out to the public that is so expensive. Just the transportation alone is probably much more costly than the seeds themselves.

RARE AND REMOTE

There may be exceptions to the above advice about not trying to grow your own seeds, but it would have to involve very rare and difficult-to-find seeds or if you are in a location that is so remote no one can get another packet of seeds to you for the next five years. Let's teach conservation and efficiency so all of our gardening aid programs can be more successful.

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