Small space gardening can be mighty when it comes to growing your own food. Read on to find out how to turn your tiny yard into a food growing powerhouse!
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Small Space Vegetable Gardening
Listen to the podcast or read on to learn more!
Many of us live in towns and cities and don’t have the luxury of acres of land to grow food on. In small spaces, growing your own food is possible and every square inch matters!
Containers
Most plants can grow happily in containers, even small patio fruit trees if you can get a container big enough so even if you have concrete or gravel outside, there is still a lot of opportunities to grow a garden in a small space.
You can use anything to grow in that will hold a good quality potting soil
There are lots of containers available, more which are like small elevated garden beds
Tips For Containers
Container grown plants need more water than plants growing in the ground and they have a tendency to dry out quickly. Adding sponges to the bottom of the container can help retain water but you need to water more regularly. The plants also need to be fed during the growing season, use fish emulsion or kelp
You need to choose the right plants to get the best from growing in containers. Mediterranean herbs like bay, rosemary, thyme grow very well in containers as do peppers, tomatoes, zucchini (courgette) and bush beans. When looking for plants, look on the seed packet or in the plant description in the catalog or online for:
- Bush variety
- Compact variety
- Container variety
These indicate that the plant will grow in a smaller space.
How Do You Maximize A Small Garden Space?
To really get the most out of the space you have available, you might need to get creative. Here are some ways you can get more in a small garden space.
Grow Up
Going vertical helps you to pack more in. Vining plants like squash, cucumber, and pole beans are possible in a small space if you provide bamboo stakes, fencing or a trellis to grow up. You can also grow more tomatoes by training them to a string and pruning!
Growing vertical also means garden towers
Vertical plants add interest to a small garden space as well as producing food for you to enjoy!
Lighten Up
Urban areas and especially in the city, shade can be an issue for budding gardeners. Try some of these tips to help grow more in your space!
White and light colors reflect more light around the area. Use light-colored or white self-watering planters
Grow shade-tolerant vegetables that thrive in shady conditions. Plants like lettuce, beets, cilantro, parsley, kale, spinach, and potatoes can all tolerate partial shade meaning they can grow underneath bigger plants making use of the space.
Succession Planting
Succession planting is planting vegetables over a long period of time. This provides a longer harvest season over a number of weeks. You can do this by sowing seeds every 2-3 weeks like carrots, radishes, and lettuce. You can also use successional planting to use space after a harvest. For example, grow cabbage or leeks for a fall harvest in the space that was growing potatoes after you have harvested the potatoes.
Intercropping
Make use of all available space by growing fast-growing and quick maturing crops between plants which take longer to grow. For example sow radishes in the same row as parsnips, the radishes will be ready to harvest just as the parsnips begin to sprout. Try sowing lettuces between peas or zucchini between slow-growing Brussel Sprouts.
Avoid Rows
Growing in rows will cripple a small garden, try to grow in a diamond or zigzag to get more plants in the space available. Reduce the size of pathways if growing in the ground to maximize the growing area.
Grow Plants With Longer Harvesting
To really get the best bang for your buck, grow plants that will produce a harvest throughout the season. Indeterminate tomatoes, pole beans, summer squashes, Swiss chard, kale, cucumbers, and loose-leaf lettuces are all examples of plants that keep on producing if you keep harvesting throughout the growing season.
Encourage Bees
Bees and other pollinators help your harvests! They pollinate flowers that are formed which produce fruit (or seeds). Attract pollinators into your garden by growing some of these flowering herbs amongst your veggies:
- basil
- calendula
- lavender
- marjoram
- oregano
- dill
- fennel
Plus these plants can double up in the kitchen too! Add a small water source to attract pollinators. A dish with water and stones in it is perfect for a small garden.
Square Foot Gardening
If you can grow in the ground or in a raised bed, a square foot garden can help you grow a number of different plants in the space you have available. A 4 ft x 4 ft garden bed can give you a decent crop. And it can be really fun for kids to do as well! Square foot gardening is great for beginners to try and works best in deep raised beds.
Plants are grown in each square foot grid according to their spacing. So one grid square could grow 1 staked tomato plant or 1 okra plant or 1 pepper plant or 1 celery plant. Other plants need less room to grow so you could frow 9 bush beans in 1 square foot grid or 16 radishes for example.
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