Moxie Gardener

Cabbage, beans, petunias and peppers planted intensively.

Intensive gardening has its roots in 16th century France. Market gardeners used the tons of manure, left on the city’s streets by the vast number of workhorses, to improve and fertilize the soil in their garden beds.

The high fertility of their soil enabled them to grow ultra-high-yielding crops, planted close together to maximize the yield even more.

They also buried fresh manure 2 feet beneath the surface, with rich garden soil on top of it. The fresh manure heated up as it decomposed, heating up the soil in the bed above it. This enabled them to extend the gardening year and grow crops out of their normal growing season.

The beds were just a few feet wide so they could be worked from the edges without walking on the soil. Soil that is walked upon becomes compacted and the roots of plants have a harder time growing.

Intensive gardening as practiced by the French market gardeners also used plant protectors to protect young seedlings during early spring, in order to get a jump on the season and harvest an earlier crop.

The most widely used plant protector was a glass, bell-shaped jar, called a “cloche.” They were individually placed over tender young seedlings when freezing weather was expected.

The cloches were removed during the day, as the sun is magnified by the glass and can burn the tender young plants. On cold, sunny days, a small rock is placed under the bottom rim of the cloche to allow air to circulate. It keeps the hot air from building up, but keeps the cold air from damaging the plants. On hotter days, the cloches must be removed completely.

French market gardeners recognized that in order to grow healthy plants that produced a large quantity of vegetables, they needed loose, rich, friable, garden soil. They took advantage of the fertility of their soil by growing plants very close together and extending their gardening year with plant protectors.

We may not have access to tons of manure to make our soil as rich as theirs, but we can amend and improve it using compost, peat moss, perlite and vermiculite. And a wide variety of plant protectors currently on the market has replaced the expensive, cumbersome bell cloches.

One or another of the various methods of intensive gardening can be used successfully by most urban gardeners, especially those with little garden space.

A red pepper growing in my modified square foot garden. If you look closely, you can see the "clothesline" dividers on the soil on either side of the pepper.

Square Foot gardening uses a square foot space as the centerpiece of its methods.  Four-foot-square beds are subdivided into one-foot-square sections and individually planted.  French Intensive gardening uses a bed five to six feet wide and twelve or more feet long.  Using either method, the actual growing area for crops is never walked upon.  Both methods recommend enclosing the bed with wood or masonry, raising the level of the soil, which creates a raised bed.

Square Foot gardening advises digging your soil to six inches below the surface, while French Intensive gardening double digs garden beds to a depth of two feet below the surface.  The perimeter boards or masonry increase the depth of the crops’ root zone and create a raised bed.

In my modified version, I create a bed four to five feet wide with the length determined by the geography of the site.  In the past I’ve used found or scrounged lumber for the perimeter, usually 2 x 4′s.

Next, I dig the soil down one spade depth and remove all the weeds, including the roots, by hand.  I then put down a two inch layer of compost and peat moss, along with a granular organic fertilizer.  I then turn the soil over a second time to incorporate the amendments, then rake the soil smooth.

To divide the bed into square foot sections, I use clothesline and three inch galvanized nails.  Here’s how:

• Measure the width of your bed, adding two to three inches to that width, then cut enough lengths of clothesline to separate the entire length of the bed into one foot wide strips.
• Tie a simple knot in both ends of each rope.
• Thread a galvanized nail through each knot and use the nail to anchor the rope into the soil on either side of the row.
• Do the same thing with ropes along the length of the bed, creating a grid, so that the entire bed is broken up into one-foot squares.

The squares are then planted using spacing advocated by the Square Foot method for some vegetables, and the French Intensive method for others.

The bed is planted, weeded, cultivated, and harvested without walking on the growing area.  Since I can only reach half of the bed from either side, I get a lot of exercise walking around to the other side of the bed.

The past two years have shown me that soil truly is the foundation of intensive gardening.  Build a strong foundation and your garden will produce outstanding yields for you.

Whichever method you use.

One method of intensive gardening utilizes a square foot grid with individual crops planted in each square.

Intensive gardening makes sense if you live in the city.  Small yards and urban forests can limit the size of your vegetable plot.  While you can grow a respectable amount of produce in a small garden, using an intensive gardening method can dramatically increase your yields.

Prior to 2007, for a variety of health reasons, I hadn’t grown vegetables for two years (it was agony!).   In 2007, I inherited a ready-made garden plot that had not been planted for several years.

Rather than take the time to amend the soil and plan my garden, all I did was pull the weeds.  I enthusiastically dove in and planted rows of vegetables and popped in a couple of herb plants.  At the last minute I scattered some green onion seeds in one corner of the bed.

The yields from that garden were respectable, but nothing to brag about.  Still, it gave us fresh veges grown by me.  I was back in gardening heaven.

When spring of 2008 came along, I did the same thing (at the time, my job was taking up twelve hours or more a day of my time).  I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even rotate my crops.  I just wanted to get the garden planted.  I was overcome with exhaustion due to too many things on my plate.

Midway through summer of 2008 I broke my arm, limiting my ability to do many gardening chores.

I have to report that my 2008 garden had the lowest yields of any garden I’ve ever grown.  In all fairness, we did have a cold, wet spring followed by a small drought at the beginning of summer.  Nothing can take the place of garden soil rich in organic matter.  It was the lack of rich, fertile soil that caused the decrease in crop yields.

For 2009, I’m resolving to amend the soil in all of my garden beds, old and new.  I also resolve to rotate my vegetable crops.  Finally, I resolve to plan my garden carefully.  The basic philosophy of intensive gardening is to grow as much as possible in a small space.  Planning companion and succession cropping is an integral part of putting this philosophy to work in the real world.

My goal in 2009 is to produce more vegetables from my small plot than I have in the past from much larger plots.

This should be interesting.