Straight rows of plants are never going to be the norm in my “cottage garden” style yard. For one thing, it’s hard to make all the plants uniform and march in formation as if they were soldiers on parade. I certainly don’t have that much control of the plant life under my command. For another thing, I don’t usually like the look of plants in rows.
The real reason I stopped planting in rows is the lack of efficiency and conservation it entails. Does a row of radishes really need two wide paths on either side of it to access a single line of the spicy root vegetable? No! Not even large tomato plants need a walkway on both sides. Last time I measured it, my harvesting “tool” was exactly one cubit long. The extension of that tool (my upper arm) is another cubit, for the really hard-to-reach tomatoes. Continue reading “Zigs and zags and tomatoes”