My thumb isn’t even remotely green. The only plants I have any
success with are those that can sustain a tremendous amount of
neglect — like hydrangea, hostas and lariope. So I asked fellow
write and founder of Outlaw Garden, Cristina Santiestevan to
step in with some gardening math. She does not under-deliver!
Check out the mad geometry skills she has. Then put her tips to
work in your own garden. In the garden, math is everywhere.
There’s arithmetic and subtraction, which gardeners use to
estimate how long it will take for a tomato to ripen or a seed
to sprout. There’s multiplication, which helps gardeners
calculate expected yields. And, there’s higher math too. Lots
and lots of higher math. Yesterday, for example, I used a
measuring tape and a bit of high school geometry to confirm that
my tomato trellis would be a nice (right-angled) rectangle,
rather than a slightly askew parallelogram. I also used an
online calculator, because figuring out the square root of
10,116 isn’t especially easy to do by hand. I