I plant in piles

Rows, square foot gardening? No, I plant in piles.

My beds are four feet wide with varying lengths, some are ten feet long, others are thirty. This season instead of planting the whole bed of one vegetable, usually tomatoes, I mixed them up. So a sample bed would contain a block of tomatoes next to a block of peppers, then block of marigolds, then some herbs and some beans. A block is a grouping of vegetables as small as four plants to as large as a four by four feet square.

I had practically no tomato worm problem this year, and I don't pesticide. Pile planting imitates nature where species thrive together and help each other by fighting bugs and disease. Plus, it looks wild and pretty. Next season, in Florida, it will be fall season, I will plant more flowers, medicinal and aesthetic to make the garden look like a meadow and behave like one.

Here's some of my piles: