Square-foot gardening has been around so long that it needs no explanation. But in the new book, “One Magic Square: The Easy, Organic Way to Grow Your Own Food on a 3-Foot Square,” by Lolo Houbein, readers get 29 plans for garden squares, plus a big bushel of useful advice from Houbein, who developed her systematic wisdom over 30 years of organic gardening. Here’s just one of those 29 plots — a salad square accompanied by a mini-squash in a tub. This plot divides the square diagonally with a row of onions, then works toward the corners with rows of carrots, then lettuces interspersed with mustards; and finally, pak choy and perennial spinach.
Salad Plot Spring and Summer
VEGETABLES• Onions in a diagonal row
• Carrots in two rows along onions
• 2 lettuce varieties (butterhead, red Lollo)
• Mustard between lettuces
• 2-3 pak choy on one corner
• 1 perennial spinach on other corner
• 1 miniature squash (such as patty pan) in a tub
DIRECTIONS
• In late winter, rake in B&B (blood and bone meal) and mix two pinches of in a cup (butterhead, red Lollo). No need to keep these separate. Sow as shown. If the weather is vile, or you want to protect seedlings from wildlife, sow in a deep box — e.g. a wine casket with a few drainage holes — that can be kept in a protected place until plants are large enough to be planted out.
• In early spring, dig the square with well-rotted manure and compost and set up a tub or large pot for patty pan squash. Sow 1-2 arugula seeds in one corner of the square. Sow a few pak choy seeds and a few perennial spinach seeds in two opposite corners. Make three diagonal drills (lines) connecting the other two corners, sowing the middle one with onion seeds 2 inches apart, and the other two with carrot seeds every ½ inch. Don’t get the ruler out, just sprinkle between finger and thumb.
• Cover with ½ inch of soil; tamp down with a flat hand. Sow two patty pan seeds in a pot and raise in a protected position-the kitchen sill is fine — until all danger of frost is over and plants can go into the tub or large pots.
• When seedlings are 2 inches high, transplant lettuces 4 inches apart in three short rows 6 inches apart. Plug in compost as mulch between plants. Plug in a dozen mustard seeds between plants. Pick outer leaves of lettuces, pak choy leaves and flowers, and spinach. Pick mustard leaves from the bottom up; also use in soups and stir-fries. Pick some onion greens and the biggest-tufted carrots.
• Mustard can be picked young for adding to salads, or used in stir-fries when bigger, dug in for green manure before flowering, or grown on for mustard seed production.
From by (The Experiment, 2008, 2010)
