How to Plant More Vegetable Plants in a Smaller Garden Area

A vegetable garden provides one of the best ways to cut down on grocery costs and have fresh produce available when it's needed. If you live in an apartment or have limited garden space in your yard you may find it hard to produce enough to make the hard work worthwhile. However, you can increase the yield of a small garden's crop by using the square foot gardening technique.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Shovel
• 4 wood beams
• 4 butt joints
• Compost
• Vermiculite
• Peat moss
• 6 wood strips
• 12 bolts
• Vegetable seeds

1. Select an area of your yard that gets full sun to place your garden. Choose an area close to your house so that your plants will be protected from the wind.

2. Use your shovel to dig 1 foot into the soil. Break up clods with your shovel. Rake over the soil until it become fine and the surface is even.

3. Measure out the area you would like your plot to be in so that it equals 4-by-4 feet. The size can be doubled or cut in half for a larger or smaller garden. Use four wood beams to mark this area. Press your beams into the soil, and secure the corners where they meet with butt joints.

4. Mix equal parts compost, vermiculite and peat moss into the box until it is filled to about an inch from the rim.

5. Use your smaller wood strips to evenly divide your plot into square foot sections. If you are planting a 4-by-4 foot garden you will evenly space three strips horizontally and three strips vertically over the box to make 16 square foot sections. Secure the strips to the top of the frame with bolts to form your grid.

6. Choose the types of vegetables you would like to grow. You are going to plant a different vegetable into each square foot section, although you may plant the same vegetable into more than one section if you want.

7. Read the back of each of your vegetable seed packets to determine how much space each of your plants will need. Put one seed in the sections of your square foot garden where the vegetable needs 1 foot of spacing. You can plant four seeds into sections where the plant requires 6 inches of spacing. Add nine seeds to a square foot if the vegetables need 4 inches of spacing, or 16 seeds for 3 inches of spacing. Space your seeds out evenly in each square foot section of your garden, and plant the seeds at the required depth listed on the seed packet. Water your seeds immediately.

8. Harvest each square foot of your garden as the particular vegetable crops are ready. You can then add new compost to the section harvested and begin a new crop of whatever vegetable you would like to add next.

References

• Square Foot Gardening
• Tim's Square Foot Gardening Page