Hydroponics and Square Foot Gardening: Placement for Hydroponic Crops

Hydroponics and Square Foot Gardening: Placement for Hydroponic Crops

In the world of soil-based agriculture, an idea called square foot gardening has been making the rounds for some years – this idea helps some backyard gardeners to grow more plants in a smaller area by carefully planning the placement of different kinds of plants, rather than planting in the traditional linear rows used by almost all planners throughout many centuries. But does square foot gardening have any relevance to hydroponics?

Square Foot Gardening Basics

The idea in square foot gardening is that instead of linear rows, growers take a variety of plants and grow them together in specially designed ‘quadrants of nine’ with three plants in each row and three plants in each column. To apply this to hydroponics, growers would take a specific set of plant pots and put one plant of each kind into each adjacent pot.

A lot of growers would argue that there is no specific benefit to arranging plants this way in a hydroponic structure. Generally speaking, hydroponics systems are designed so that any kind of plant can grow in each plant pot. However, there is one benefit to using a square foot gardening approach in your hydroponics grow box or grow chamber. That is that by varying the kinds of plants in each pot, you will end up with greater diversity for the table from a smaller grow space. For instance, a six plant set up could accommodate six different types of herbs, allowing the hobbyist or other hydroponics gardener to produce a lot of different flavors with this compact system.

For more on how to design your hydroponic projects and the best ways to set up hydroponic gear and equipment, talk to your retailer about what they offer for customizing your project, and take a look through easy online catalogs to get just what you need for your next plant cycle.