6 min readGardening can seem like a daunting hobby, especially if you’re just beginning. No one understands this more than author and entrepreneur Nicole Burke, who founded Gardenary in 2017, an online educational platform that helps anyone plan, design, and plant their very own kitchen garden.
“I started Gardenary because I learned pretty early from working with clients on their gardens that the thing most people were missing was just simple training. When I was starting out, a lot of gardening books and garden education out there were using words I didn't understand, and you kind of felt like you needed a horticulture degree to start planting,” Burke recalls. “So really our mission is to simplify gardening. It’s this unique mix of science, art, and magic because you're playing with nature.”
Having written three books, taught hundreds of classes, and trained thousands of other gardeners, Burke and her message—that anyone can start and master growing their own food—hits home with any novice green thumb. And if you want to kick off your journey into this world, we suggest trying Burke’s “5-4-3-2-1 Method.” It’s just that easy.
What Is the 5-4-3-2-1 Gardening Method?
Coined by Burke, the “5-4-3-2-1 Method” was developed as a way for her to not only help her clients grow what they want in a smaller space (she notes that clients often wanted to plant everything in their one box), but also to produce a healthy garden.
“A lot of farming these days is monocropping, and that is terrible for plants as they’re not protected. It’s like a buffet for pests. What I found is that if I did the 5-4-3-2-1 method, the plants would work together to protect one another,” she says. “You have herbs and flowers protecting from pests and welcoming in butterflies, you have the fruiting crops up the middle, so they'll grow tall and kind of shade the lower plants. Then you have the root crops along the side with leafy greens, and everything fits together like a puzzle.”
Additionally, since plants grow at different rates, this ratio makes watching the fruits of your labor more fun, thereby gamifying the process of gardening. It doesn’t hurt that the catchy name and countdown make planting seem less intimidating, either.
Breaking It Down:
- Plant 5 Herbs (e.g., chives, thyme, rosemary, sage, cilantro)
- Plant 4 Leaves (e.g., spring mix, butterhead, romaine, arugula)
- Plant 3 Roots (e.g., carrots, beets, radishes)
- Plant 2 Flowers (e.g., marigold and dianthus)
- Plant 1 Fruiting crop (e.g., tomato)
How Do You Arrange the Seeds?
It’s like piecing together a puzzle. “So first would be building out the frame of the puzzle, the edge pieces. This is going to be your five herbs of any variety,” Burke says. “Next is the four leafy greens that could be anything you would consider a salad, so red lettuce, arugula, spinach, leaves like that. Those are going to go right inside your herb wall, and you can sub out certain seeds if you don’t like that specific produce. If you just want a ton of spinach, you could just do a ton of spinach and not do the other kinds of leafy greens.
Then inside this, you're going to do basically a circle or a square of root crop, and this is where you can grow carrots, radishes, beets, anything that's going to dig down low. It won’t take up much space, and it'll get some nice shade from the taller plants growing in the middle. You can put the flowers along the edge, with the herbs, so they protect your garden from pests and welcome in the good guys. And then the fruiting plant in the center.”
Burke says in the cool season, when you have frost, you can plant peas or fava beans. In the warmer season, she suggests planting tomatoes, cucumbers, or pole beans. “What happens is those grow really tall, and they're going to give this nice structure to the garden,” she says. “They shade out the things that need a little bit [of sun relief] like leafy greens and root crops. They can kind of scorch as the weather warms up. So you get this nice shade from the tall plant, and then you'll have this beautiful rotation of harvest.”
Do You Have to Grow Exact Types of Produce?
No. The amazing thing about the “5-4-3-2-1 Method” is that as long as you follow the broad categories (herbs, leaves, roots, flowers, and fruit) while planting, you’re good.
“Some people will be like, ‘I love basil. I just want a ton of basil.’ So you could do all of [the herbs] as basil. You could do all of them as chives if you want a lot of chives. And let's be honest, we're kind of dealing with limited availability, depending on where you live, so it may just be what you can find at the store or online to plant with. The beauty of this method is that it lets you be the artist,” says Burke.
Do You Need a Big Garden?
It’s possible to adapt this method to a smaller garden bed. A smaller container may mean you plant two or three things versus doing the full range of herbs, leaves, roots, flowers, and fruit. For those with more space, Burke recommends a starter garden of 16 square feet, “so that would be a four by four or an eight by two,” she says.
How Often Do You Need to Water and Prune?
Burke says she waters everything at once and often notes that people who see the setup will think oh, that’s going to need so much water.
“What people don't realize is that the worst garden to water is a garden that doesn't have enough plants. Because anytime you have exposed soil, it just slowly erodes as it's getting scorched by the sun,” she notes. “I like using a drip system or just getting my spray head under the plants rather than on top of them. And then you're really looking at about an inch to two inches of water a week. But it really depends on the evaporation rate in your area, and that’s unfortunately different for everyone.”
To see if the plants need water, Burke herself uses the knuckle test: you stick your index finger into the soil down to the first or second knuckle, so about one to two inches deep. If the soil feels dry and does not stick to your finger, the plants need water.
In addition to watering, don’t forget to prune when using the “5-4-3-2-1 Method”! “Pruning is kind of the magic where you're giving every plant the amount of space they need, but nothing more. So this method is counting on you using the garden. If you don't use it and don't go out there a lot, when you walk out, the garden will be really full and look wild,” Burke says. “You just want to prune back a bit, maybe once a weekend, especially those leafy greens, herbs, and flowers, just to make sure they don’t take up all the growing space.”
What Kind of Soil Blend Works Best?
Leave it to Burke to also create the perfect soil blend for this.
“I talk about this in my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival. It’s called one of three, and it’s a mix of topsoil compost, coarse sand, and earthworm castings,” she says. “If you're just doing ornamentals, you don't need nearly this nutritious a soil blend, but this is for growing vegetables, root crops, all those things. So it's basically an even mix. So a third compost, a third topsoil, and a third sand. If you have a top topsoil that you're using from your yard and it has a lot of sand already in it, then you'd want to cut back on the sand and just use more compost.”
You can buy all these products separately and blend them, which Burke says usually ends up cheaper than buying a premix.
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