Small Garden Tips

Stake plants so they take up less room in a small garden bed.

A small garden doesn't have to limit the amount of plants and produce you grow. Make the most of what space you do have by implementing intensive gardening practices on the bed. Intensive gardening uses a variety of approaches to fit more plants into a small garden bed without reducing the overall yield. You may not be able to grow giant pumpkins in a small bed, but you can grow most garden vegetables.

Maximize Your Layout

Plan your garden on paper before you plant to make the most use of a small garden. Square foot gardening methods divide the bed into a grid of square foot gardening blocks. Instead of following standard plant spacing for rows, you use the minimum recommended spacing between plants. For example, tomatoes sit one foot apart instead of three feet, and four lettuce plants fit in a square foot instead of only two plants in the same space for a row. If you plant in raised beds using traditional or square foot methods, use cinder blocks instead of thick wood planks or bricks to build the planting box. Plant herbs or flowers in the holes on top the cinder blocks, taking advantage of the otherwise wasted space of the box.

Go Vertical

Use up all the space you have available using trellises and other plant supports. Squash, cucumbers and small melons take up less room when trained to grow up a trellis frame. Stake tomatoes instead of leaving them to sprawl or using space-consuming cages. Pole beans and peas take up less space in the garden than the bush varieties. Plant leaf lettuce instead of head varieties and choose dwarf types of other vegetables to use less room. Many dwarf vegetables grow well in hanging baskets on a patio or hanging from shepherd's hooks in the yard.

Use Containers

If your bed is small or nonexistent, garden in containers instead. Place containers on patios, framing a walkway or hang them overhead. Use containers on their own or grow smaller crops in the pots and larger plants in the garden bed. Window and railing boxes work well for herbs, leaf crops and other small plants. Plant vine plants, such as pole beans and peas, in hanging baskets and let the vines trail over the edges. Upside down planters can hold a tomato plant on the bottom while herbs grow from the top.

Successive Planting

Time your crops to make the optimum use of succession methods. Grow spinach, peas and lettuce in the spring garden then replace these plants with tomatoes, peppers and beans in summer. Once temperatures begin to cool in fall, pull out the summer vegetables and plant carrots and other cool-season crops. Don't let the small bed lay fallow, but instead replace plants quickly as soon as they stop producing well.

References

• Colorado State Extension; Space-Saving Ideas for the Small Garden; James R. Feucht; January 2010
• University of Kentucky; Gardening in Small Spaces; R.E. Durham, et al.; April 2010