- Arguments for Rows: Back in the good old days, when I was a kid, there were two ways to seed: either one used a press drill that seeded in rows with 7 inch spacing, or one used a discer; it spewed the seeds out randomly without any apparent rows. What’s the best? Well, you would want to give each individual plant the best chance at going after the resources of water and nutrients, so it should be as far away from its neighbors as possible. It should be evenly spaced. So one would think the discer would be best. But there is more to it than that. One also wants the seeds to be properly positioned at the appropriate depth and also be packed in nicely; that’s where the press drill is superior. Also being able to deal with trash is important for continuous cropping, and here the discer wins. However, with the advent of the air seeder, with one foot row spacing and more ranks, it would be able to control the depth, do the packing and still be able to deal with considerable trash.
Gardens are planted in rows, why? Why not just scatter the seeds about randomly, and this would give each plant a better chance at access to the resources of water, nutrients and sunlight. Well, there are many good reasons to have rows in a garden:
- A gardener needs some place to walk that would not result in trampling the good plants.
- A row of good plants is much easier to distinguish. If plants were just placed randomly, it would be an onerous task to identify and discriminate between good plants and weeds. If there is something green, between the rows, it is by default a weed because it is in the wrong place.
- When seeded in a row, it is easy to pack the seeds in tightly in the row. And I would like to make the case for one foot rows and then for equal spacing of the seeds in the row.