Foot Grid Planting Guide

Earlier this year Matt made us a foot grid tool for planting our garden.  I have to say that is really has made things just easy-peasy when it comes to planting.  We've already gotten a lot of use out of it.  It was also a quick and cheap project so I thought I'd share.  

He took some thin wooden trim and nailed it together into a grid with teeny-tiny little nails.  Each square on the grid is one foot by one foot making the whole thing four feet by four feet.  This match perfectly our four foot wide beds.  This way we can throw it down and easily space things as needed without have to mess with a tape measure...or having to eyeball things....which I am terrible at. 

For some plants, especially those like onions and greens which we plan to thin we planted several (4-5) in each foot square.  For larger things, like the tomatoes, we wanted each plant to have four feet so we laid the grid down and marked (using our fabulous miniblind plant markers) the center of each quadrant on the grid, leaving them a nice four foot square area to grow in.  Then all you have to do is plant each tomato where you have a marker

I thought it was a simple yet genius little tool.  It was even better because I just woke up one day and it was there.  Matt had woken extra early and had been quite busy while I slept in!  He's always so busy when I sleep in....

Perfectly spaced plants...or at least spaced exactly where we wanted them whether that was the prefect place or not always remains to be seen.   Part of that great garden mystery....especially in a new garden.