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Growing Vegetables in Small Gardens – Space Saving Techniques
Jane Thomas asked:
You don’t need a large area to have a vegetable garden. All you do need is good soil, plenty of sunshine, a water source and probably a fence. Limited gardening space doesn’t necessary need to be an obstacle for growing vegetables. A well-planned and organized garden can make planting go quickly and efficiently for maximum yields in minimum space. If space is limited use the land twice, or try these intensive cropping techniques.
Space Saving Techniques in Small Vegetable Gardens
Companion crops – This can be accomplished by sowing the seeds of a fast and slow growing vegetable together in the same row. For example, radishes (fast maturing) and carrots (slow maturing) can be sown together. Mix radish and carrot seeds and plant together. Radishes are a short-season crop so will be harvested before the carrots need room to grow. This is also a good method of thinning the carrots. Another method is to alternate rows of fast and slow maturing vegetables. An example would be a row of leaf lettuce between two rows of tomatoes.
Succession planting – As soon as one crop is finished, plant another. After short-season crops such as lettuce, spinach, radishes and peas have stopped bearing, they can be removed. Plant carrots, beets, Swiss chard, turnips or green beans for a later crop.
Bush varieties – Plant “bush” varieties of cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peppers and squash that produce fruit on much shorter vines. “Bush” refers to growing habit. These plants take up less space in the garden than standard varieties.
Use vertical space by staking and trellising – Some crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and pole beans may be supported by stakes, poles, trellises, or fences and grown upright rather than on the ground. Use a trellis or fence to support pole beans, cucumbers, and squash; cage or stake tomatoes, they will take much less room this way.
Square foot gardening – This is a form of intensive gardening in which the garden is marked off into squares of space for crops rather than planting in straight rows. The name comes from partitioning blocks of garden space that are 1 ft. x 1 ft. A common arrangement is to mark off squares that are 4 ft. x 4 ft. (16 sq. ft.). This area is then divided into four parts that are 2 ft. x 2 ft. One tomato plant or equally spaced seeds are then planted in these square areas, depending on the space needs of the plant.
You don’t need a large area to have a vegetable garden. All you do need is good soil, plenty of sunshine, a water source and probably a fence. Limited gardening space doesn’t necessary need to be an obstacle for growing vegetables. A well-planned and organized garden can make planting go quickly and efficiently for maximum yields in minimum space. If space is limited use the land twice, or try these intensive cropping techniques.
Space Saving Techniques in Small Vegetable Gardens
Companion crops – This can be accomplished by sowing the seeds of a fast and slow growing vegetable together in the same row. For example, radishes (fast maturing) and carrots (slow maturing) can be sown together. Mix radish and carrot seeds and plant together. Radishes are a short-season crop so will be harvested before the carrots need room to grow. This is also a good method of thinning the carrots. Another method is to alternate rows of fast and slow maturing vegetables. An example would be a row of leaf lettuce between two rows of tomatoes.
Succession planting – As soon as one crop is finished, plant another. After short-season crops such as lettuce, spinach, radishes and peas have stopped bearing, they can be removed. Plant carrots, beets, Swiss chard, turnips or green beans for a later crop.
Bush varieties – Plant “bush” varieties of cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peppers and squash that produce fruit on much shorter vines. “Bush” refers to growing habit. These plants take up less space in the garden than standard varieties.
Use vertical space by staking and trellising – Some crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and pole beans may be supported by stakes, poles, trellises, or fences and grown upright rather than on the ground. Use a trellis or fence to support pole beans, cucumbers, and squash; cage or stake tomatoes, they will take much less room this way.
Square foot gardening – This is a form of intensive gardening in which the garden is marked off into squares of space for crops rather than planting in straight rows. The name comes from partitioning blocks of garden space that are 1 ft. x 1 ft. A common arrangement is to mark off squares that are 4 ft. x 4 ft. (16 sq. ft.). This area is then divided into four parts that are 2 ft. x 2 ft. One tomato plant or equally spaced seeds are then planted in these square areas, depending on the space needs of the plant.
Growing Vegetables In A Small Area
Dave Truman asked:
For anyone accustomed to the notion that a vegetable garden must be a fairly large affair – its rows stretching fifteen or twenty feet at a minimum, the concept of crops pushing up from a small container or appearing to burst the bonds of a tiny patch of ground only a few feet square – it is almost unsettling. Yet growing vegetables in cramped spaces is not only possible but highly rewarding. One can grow tomatoes in tubs at the edge of a patio, strawberries in empty milk cartons on a windowsill, lettuce in a modest window box, watermelons along a strip beside a driveway or beans on a trellis on a small apartment balcony.
A year-long harvest of several kinds of vegetables can be gained from a single area no wider than a card table. To achieve this kind of bounty in lap-sized spaces it is necessary merely to provide the right growing conditions and to purchase seed varieties that are appropriate for small-scale circumstances. Luckily a number of seed companies have responded to the newly recognized demand for miniature or compact plants, and more new strains are being offered to the public every year, often grouped together under such headings as “space savers,” “space misers” or “midgets.”
Producing vegetables on a reduced scale, however, is basically a different proposition from other kinds of gardening. Small gardens devoted to woody ornamentals like dwarf conifers, rhododendrons or heathers or to miniature bulbs or alpines are arranged and managed largely for appearance: they exist to be decorative, to please the eye. Vegetables are most often grown to reward not the eye but the palate. So while corn stalks and bean bushes can make the mouth water they rarely make the eye pop, and they are not likely to be found gracing a well designed border, although creative horticulturists have combined a few of the handsomest vegetables with flowering plants to good effect.
The greatest difficulties are practical ones. Although the leafy greens, like lettuce, can do fairly well on only four hours of direct sunlight a day, any vegetable that produces a fruit (tomatoes, beans, corn and so on) must have a solid eight hours of warming sun or its yields will be disappointing or virtually nonexistent; but that bright light does not benefit dwarf azaleas. Similarly, a friable soil mix, amply fertilized, is desirable in vegetable growing but too heady for many dwarf plants that are expected to stay small. The major problem, however, is presented by the need to turn over the vegetable garden’s soil every year, in effect reconstituting it; such heavy tilling cannot be done in a bed of rock garden plants and perennials. In most cases, a vegetable patch must be sited differently and separated from the conventional small-scale garden.
This said, there is no doubting the fact that the smaller vegetables are worth trying, especially if space for the larger kind is at a premium. It is important to choose, however, the kind of smallness desired, whether it is the fruit or produce itself that will be miniature, or the plant that yields it. Miniature vegetables as such are amusing and eye-catching, a novelty that many restaurants and imaginative cooks offer with great success. Some miniatures, for example, cherry tomatoes, are accepted for their own sake, while a number of vegetables are of course just naturally small – radishes, for example.
For anyone accustomed to the notion that a vegetable garden must be a fairly large affair – its rows stretching fifteen or twenty feet at a minimum, the concept of crops pushing up from a small container or appearing to burst the bonds of a tiny patch of ground only a few feet square – it is almost unsettling. Yet growing vegetables in cramped spaces is not only possible but highly rewarding. One can grow tomatoes in tubs at the edge of a patio, strawberries in empty milk cartons on a windowsill, lettuce in a modest window box, watermelons along a strip beside a driveway or beans on a trellis on a small apartment balcony.
A year-long harvest of several kinds of vegetables can be gained from a single area no wider than a card table. To achieve this kind of bounty in lap-sized spaces it is necessary merely to provide the right growing conditions and to purchase seed varieties that are appropriate for small-scale circumstances. Luckily a number of seed companies have responded to the newly recognized demand for miniature or compact plants, and more new strains are being offered to the public every year, often grouped together under such headings as “space savers,” “space misers” or “midgets.”
Producing vegetables on a reduced scale, however, is basically a different proposition from other kinds of gardening. Small gardens devoted to woody ornamentals like dwarf conifers, rhododendrons or heathers or to miniature bulbs or alpines are arranged and managed largely for appearance: they exist to be decorative, to please the eye. Vegetables are most often grown to reward not the eye but the palate. So while corn stalks and bean bushes can make the mouth water they rarely make the eye pop, and they are not likely to be found gracing a well designed border, although creative horticulturists have combined a few of the handsomest vegetables with flowering plants to good effect.
The greatest difficulties are practical ones. Although the leafy greens, like lettuce, can do fairly well on only four hours of direct sunlight a day, any vegetable that produces a fruit (tomatoes, beans, corn and so on) must have a solid eight hours of warming sun or its yields will be disappointing or virtually nonexistent; but that bright light does not benefit dwarf azaleas. Similarly, a friable soil mix, amply fertilized, is desirable in vegetable growing but too heady for many dwarf plants that are expected to stay small. The major problem, however, is presented by the need to turn over the vegetable garden’s soil every year, in effect reconstituting it; such heavy tilling cannot be done in a bed of rock garden plants and perennials. In most cases, a vegetable patch must be sited differently and separated from the conventional small-scale garden.
This said, there is no doubting the fact that the smaller vegetables are worth trying, especially if space for the larger kind is at a premium. It is important to choose, however, the kind of smallness desired, whether it is the fruit or produce itself that will be miniature, or the plant that yields it. Miniature vegetables as such are amusing and eye-catching, a novelty that many restaurants and imaginative cooks offer with great success. Some miniatures, for example, cherry tomatoes, are accepted for their own sake, while a number of vegetables are of course just naturally small – radishes, for example.
