Planting a small vegetable garden using square foot gardening is exciting, as you imagine the bountiful harvest. You can almost taste the sweet, juicy, plump tomatoes and the fresh, healthful salads you’ll be making. Don’t let your enthusiasm get ahead of your capabilities though. If you’re short on space and time, we have some really good small garden plans for you.
Square Foot Gardening–Saving You Space
Intensive planting designs use every bit of garden space available. square foot gardening (4 ft. by 4 ft.) plots are surprisingly productive. The number of plants you can plant in those areas is decided by the amount of room necessary for the specific crop planted to successfully produce a harvest.
For example, each single square in an square foot gardening plan can contain 1-staked tomato, 4 bean plants, 1 pepper plant, or 50 radishes. When you place a single plant in a square, set the seed or transplant in the middle to allow room to grow in all directions. Always try to plant so that what you have in the 4X4 area has room to grow and is not crowded.
Multiple plants may be planted in rows, smaller squares, or at random in small vegetable garden plans. For example, fill a square with four bean plants, then divide the remaining area into smaller squares and plant one seed in the middle of each. A square can hold fifty radishes or twenty onions. The seeds can be scattered across the square (”broadcasting”) or sown in small rows.
Small seeds, like radish seeds, are often broadcast onto a square and then the plants are thinned out as they emerge.
Harvest early by thinning out young plants for use as tender greens, making room for the rest to grow. Trellises are a great addition to small vegetable garden plans. Rather than allowing vine crops to sprawl across the garden, send plants such as cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers growing upward on the trellis. If you plant watermelons, be very sure the trellises can support heavy weight.
Cages also can be utilized to increase vertical space in the garden, and keep crops from sprawling over the ground. Many plants can be successfully grown in cages, including tomatoes, watermelons, and eggplants. You should also consider other space-saving techniques, like dwarf varieties and bush forms of plants that originally grew only as vines. Green beans, for example, have both pole bean (climbing) and bush bean varieties. I haven’t noticed any difference in taste between the varieties.
On the other hand, the dwarf varieties may take up less garden room, but the harvests are somewhat smaller than their full size relatives. Try to use geometric planting patterns to make maximum use of space in small vegetable garden plans. Gardeners should use use simple designs to fill beds with vegetables. An elaborate planting pattern may look impressive, but it probably will not yield as much food.
Vegetable tips for small plots
Beans are prolific producers and should be spaced four plants per square foot in small vegetable garden plans. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peppers, and eggplant may need staking and space 1 plant each square ft. Cabbage and cauliflower produces a single head planted at one to a foot. Trellis or stake tomatoes at one plant per sq. ft. Make successive plantings of endive, kohlrabi, and lettuce, at four plants per square foot. Harvest individual leaves of kale and parsley spacing four plants per sq. feet.
A single stake will support floppy, low growing plants that might otherwise be injured by winds, storms or abundant growth. A wire cage gives the best support for tall growing plants.
Just because you have a square foot gardening project doesn’t mean that you won’t have much of a harvest. If you take your time and do it right, you can have a bumper crop at harvest time. Remember that if you can’t move out with your garden, moving up is always available!
Cooking freshly harvested vegetables from the garden.
In order to build a raised garden bed, it’s important to clear all of the weeds and to use a rototiller. Avoid walking on a raised bed so that roots remain undisturbed by following the advice of an organic farmer in this free video on gardening and horticulture.