Getting more from a small garden

Getting more from a small garden- some tips

If space is limited in your garden don’t despair.  There are many tricks to help the space challenged gardener attain good yields of garden vegetables, herbs and even small fruit.  Even a gardener with lots of space may want to make the most out of every inch devoted to the garden, saving water, fertilizer and time.  Here are some ideas to help you utilize every inch of garden space and even find that space.

Use raised beds intensively planted

Potatoes in raised bed

If you want to grow more in a small space, forget the conventional rows in the ground garden.  Instead use raised beds that are intensively planted.  Yes, raised beds need rows between them, but with intensively planted raised beds there will be far less space devoted to pathways. Raised beds improve drainage, warm up faster in spring and it’s easier and less expensive to amend the soil in them.

Raised beds can be built to fit almost any space.  They should be a minimum of 8 inches deep but they could be as high as 3 feet with an edge you could sit on to garden.  Make raised beds only as wide as your arms can reach across to weed and harvest.   That’s about 2 feet if accessible from one side, 4 feet if you can access both sides.  Raised beds can be used for all types of plants.

Inside the raised beds should be soil that’s loose, light and enriched with compost and other organic material.  Instead of making rows within raised beds you plant your seeds or transplants as far apart as suggested on the seed packet or tag instructions throughout the whole bed.  For example, if the seed packet says plants should be 6 inches apart in the row, plant the bed with all plants 6 inches away from each other, solidly throughout the bed.

If you had 4 feet of conventional, in the ground row and you planted transplants 6 inches apart you would have room for 8 plants.   Then you would leave at least a 2 foot access path and plant the second row of 8 plants for a total of 16 plants.   (Each row of plants spans about a foot).  If you had a raised bed that was 4 feet by 4 feet, (taking up the same amount of space as the sample above) and you planted the plants throughout the bed at 6 inches apart  you could plant about 32 plants, doubling your production.

Even if you insist on more conventional in the ground planting, use intensively planted wide beds with fewer paths and you will gain space.

Grow up

Many, many crops can be trained to grow up instead of sprawling on the ground.  That saves space and may help with some plant diseases and make harvest easier.  Instead of bush type beans use pole beans trained on poles or trellis.  They are more productive than bush beans to begin with.  Cucumbers are easy to trellis.  Tomatoes definitely need to be staked or trellised to help keep fungal disease at bay. Squash like zucchini are great for trellises.  Even pumpkins and melons can be trellised.  They need strong supports and large fruit may need slings to keep them from pulling off the vine.  In the spring peas can grow up trellises inter-planted with leaf lettuce.

Livestock  panels bent to form arbors

Livestock panels, found at farm stores make excellent, strong trellises for the garden.  They are 16 feet long but can be cut with bolt cutters or a hack saw.   They can also be bowed to form an arbor, with plants trained up the outside of them.  Heavy fence wire can be used for some crops, securely held up by posts. 

Metal or wood posts can be spaced through a garden with thick wire stapled at several levels along them.  Plants are woven through the wires as they grow.  And plants like beans just need a pole jammed into the ground to climb. 

Any plant you can get growing up instead of sprawling over the ground will leave you room to plant something else at its feet, like lettuce, chard, radishes or onions.

Try companion planting

Native Americans knew the trick of combining different crops to get the most yields from an area.  You can use this trick too.  Beans can be planted so that they climb up cornstalks for support.  Beans put nitrogen in the soil, which corn needs a lot of, and the corn helps get the beans into the sunlight.  Sunflowers could also be used for bean support.

Small fast growing crops like lettuce, green onions, beets, and radishes can be planted around slower growing crops like tomatoes and peppers and harvested before the larger crops get big enough to shade them.

Plants can be tucked into borders around other crops.  A border of green and purple basil around the tomatoes is tasty and pretty.  Leaf lettuce of assorted colors will make a nice border early in the year.  It can also be planted in the fall to replace tender annuals killed by early frosts and will give you a late crop.

Onions with tomatoes

If you have mostly flowerbeds many vegetables and herbs are quite pretty and can be tucked into flower beds instead of occupying space of their own.  Dill, basil, oregano, (perennial) and thyme, (perennial) are quite ornamental.   Some sages are ornamental but make sure to get culinary varieties as all sages are not equally good in cooking.

Some peppers are quite pretty, even having variegated foliage but if you want edible peppers make sure to use a variety that furnishes them.  Some ornamental peppers have fruit too hot for most tastes.  Chard often has beautiful colored stalks.  Some other edibles that can share space with ornamentals are eggplant- use a small fruited variety and okra which has pretty flowers and interesting seed pods.  Beans like scarlet runner and American beauty have colorful flowers that turn into tasty green beans.

Practice Succession planting

Never let good space sit idle in the growing season.  Before its warm enough to plant tomatoes or peppers plant a crop of spring greens, peas, green onions or radishes in their intended bed.    While the squash or melons are getting big enough to sprawl over a large area use some of the space for the crops above.  Brussels sprouts and cabbage often have space early in the season for radishes or green onions to be planted between them.

As you harvest a crop, have something to tuck into its place.  When a row of green beans have finished in mid-summer, sow carrots there or onion sets, lettuce, rutabagas, turnips, Chinese cabbage or even fast maturing potatoes, all crops that can survive light frost in the fall.  Remove a head of early cabbage and stick in some onion sets.  When spring lettuce has been used or has to be pulled because hot weather has made it bolt to seed, replace it with carrots or beets.

Planting quick growing crops in several small batches throughout the season or using early mid and late maturing varieties of one type of crop can help get you more crop from the same space.  Season extenders like tunnels and row covers can help.  For example start your beans before the last frost under a plastic tunnel.  They will be finished in mid summer.  Plant a second crop of beans and use the tunnel near maturity if frost threatens to be early.

Be creative

If you only have a small sunny spot in the back yard use the sunny front yard for herbs, vegetables or a small fruit planting.  Maybe a cucumber plant can climb up the deck railing or the clothesline pole. Can you put up trellis in the small space beside the garage wall and grow beans, peas, cucumbers, or zucchini?

Don’t have room at home for a garden?  Maybe there’s a spot where you work you can garden on your lunch hour.  Maybe the church you go to has unused space you could borrow.  A neighbor may let you use land in return for a share of the goodies.  Older gardeners in the neighborhood may already have a nice garden spot that they can no longer tend and would be happy to let you use it.

If the children have outgrown the sandbox fill it with good soil and plant an intensive garden.  If the trampoline is no longer in use, use the frame to support beans or tie tomato plants to it.  Old swing sets make admirable bean teepees with just some twine, or by throwing strong rope or wires over the top frame and anchoring them on the ground on either side, even squash and pumpkins could be grown on them.

Only have cement slab, deck or patio stone space?  Grow a garden in containers on the hard surface.  Raise the container bottoms with little wood blocks or brick pieces under them to leave a small gap between surface and pot bottom.  This keeps the roots a little cooler and aids drainage.  You can purchase containers or recycle any number of items, including sturdy woven bags for containers.

A person who wants to grow some of their own food can always find a way.  The creative gardener who thinks outside the box can take a small area and make it very productive.  Be sure to keep your intensively planted gardens fed and watered and use lots of organic soil amendments.  You’ll be rewarded with big harvests from a small space.