Nicole Johnsey BurkeFounder of Gardenary

STOP following the instructions on your seed packet if you aren’t a farmer🧑‍🌾#garden #seeds #fall

20 Sept 2024 · 1 min

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0:48

Nicole Johnsey Burke says seed packets are written for farmers, not home gardeners. Gardenary's packets recommend denser spacing: 1-4 basil plants per square foot instead of 15 inches apart, peppers closer than 3 feet, kale at 6 inches instead of 1.5-2 feet. You can grow way more in a small garden if you ignore the standard instructions.

Questions this video answers

15 inches

1–4 plants per square foot

3 feet

less than one (per square foot) — phrasing in transcript: 'we say less than one.'

1.5–2 feet

Chapters

You're wasting a ton of space in your garden, and that's because you're following these instructions. All the instructions on the seed packages out there, they're written for farmers or gardeners who are growing on loads of acres in big rows. And I don't know about you, but I'm not that kind of gardener. And that's why this year at Gardenary, we created seed packages with instructions that are made for gardeners like us. Let's take, for example, this basil. These instructions say to give it 15 inches, but the gardenary instructions say to plant one to four per square foot. And you can see why. For peppers, they say three feet. At Gardenary, we say less than one. And look at the results. For kale, they say one and a half to two feet. We say six inches. So if you want to stop wasting all that space in your garden, you should start following some different instructions.

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