Gardening is enjoyable, healthy and can certainly save you money by growing your own food. Reading garden magazines in the early spring can be frustrating with all the beautiful pictures of those large gardens as if we all have that much space. Many of us do not have a lot of room for a large garden. Here are ideas for getting the most garden from a small space.
You stand out back looking over your yard and wonder where
can you start a garden. There is not much room without tearing up the yard, but
you will be surprised how much food you can grow in a small area.
Planning a Garden for a Small Space
In an area that is 7 feet by 7 feet, you can really grow a
lot of vegetables. Get a seed and plant catalog from Burpee and look at your yard
visualizing what can go where. Start selecting which vegetables you and your
family are going to want to grow. Grow only what everyone likes to eat and make
a list of those vegetables. Get out some paper and pencil and draw up some
ideas of where you want to put the vegetables
Sometimes we don’t have a choice where in the yard to plant
the garden and other times we have the choice. When planning the garden make
sure you take note of where the trees are and where the sun will be throughout
the gardening season as the direction of the sun will change a lot from first
planting to mid fall.
The garden should get at least 8 to 10 hours of sun per day.
Peppers and tomatoes like full sun, while collard greens, lettuce and spinach
do not need as much. When you plan your garden think about the plants and how
big they will be in mid summer, you don’t want your tomato plants shadowing
your pepper or other plants.
Here is an example chart of a garden that is 7 feet by 7
feet (2.13 meters x 2.13 meters) and some example vegetable plants. When you
have limited space for a vegetable garden, you want to get as much food as you
will be using. In the following example I put in three tomato plants. If you
don’t like tomatoes, that would be a lot of room for squash or cucumbers.
There are so many varieties and uses for peppers; you might
want to devote a good amount of space for them. For example, sweet red and or
green bell pepper for stuffed peppers, in chili, Poblano peppers for chili
rellenos and many others. The pole beans can be supported on a fence or
trellis.
The spacing is pretty tight in this garden, but this should
leave enough room for walking between plants. Each year can be different, one
year the tomatoes grow very thick and not so tall and others they are tall and
slender, the same with the pepper plants. You will learn about your garden and
spacing after the first year and make adjustments for the next season.
Spacing around tomatoes is important, as they need airflow
and the breeze to blow through them for pollination. You can use tomato cages
for the tomatoes or you can make your own tomato cages with bamboo poles and
green garden tape stretched around the poles.
If you put herbs in your garden, remember that some are
perennials and come back year after year. Herbs can also spread out and their
seeds can start plants all over the garden, dill is especially good at this, so
pick or cut the flowers before they go to seed on the herbs.
18”
Tomato
24” spacing
Tomato
24” spacing
Tomato
18” in
←
46 “→
|
12 “
Pepper
18 “ spacing
Pepper
18” spacing
Pepper
18” spacing
Pepper
18 “ in
←
24” →
|
Pole beans
24” spacing
Row of carrots
12” spacing
Row of radishes
16” spacing
Row of onions
16” spacing
Herbs or garlic
←
14” →
|
↑
84”
(7’)
↓
|
← 84” (7’)
→
|
|||
Too Many Vegetables
If you have a good season, you should get plenty of tomatoes
out of a garden this size. You can cook them into tomato paste and freeze it
until you want to make sauce or tomato soup with the recipe listed below. You
can freeze the peppers, zucchini and other plants for use during the winter.
Grow Upwards
You can expand your small area garden even more by using
trellises made out of netting. For more information, you can read How to Double the Size of Your Garden with Vertical Gardening.
Garden with Little Space
If you have no yard space for a garden, you can still grow
plenty of vegetables in a container garden. For more information, please read Tips for Growing a Container Garden.
Copyright © 2009 Sam Montana
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