Seven Strategies to Make the Most of Your Small Garden
As food prices continue to rise, many people may be thinking about growing a vegetable garden for the first time. This can be a great idea not only because groceries are expensive, but also because a trip to the store involves small expenses like gas, grocery bags, and time—not to mention how incredibly empowering it is to simply walk into your backyard and pick up food you grew yourself.
The key to your success here is to make the most of the space you have, as gardening also requires little investment. Fertilizers, water and, of course, your time. You also have limited space to work with, so it is important to choose the right crops to get the maximum amount of food.
Maximize space by growing up and down
You might look at a raised bed and see a simple 4′ x 8′ space, but I see all the vertical space. Below the tomatoes is space for radishes, turnips and carrots. Peas, beans and cucumbers grow straight up when supported on a trellis, using almost no square footage of the bed itself. If tomatoes are allowed to spread out in a garden bed, they will take up a lot of space, but if they are properly trimmed and trellised, they will grow, leaving room for the crop around them. Almost all zucchini can be supported with a trellis to encourage it to grow upward.
Cut-and-come again cultures make the most of space
Grow lettuce, celery, chard and kale because these crops allow you to remove their leaves or stems without killing the plant – they will simply grow back. Eventually the plant will produce seeds (it will produce a shoot that will bloom and then the flower will produce seeds, a process that will make the vegetable bitter), these crops take little time to grow so they can be replaced quickly.
Avoid crops that take up a lot of space with little return.
I grow cabbage only in winter; in summer there is not enough space. Each cabbage plant requires 3 square feet or more and only produces one head of cabbage, which is cheap to buy at the market. The same goes for broccoli and cauliflower. One squash plant will take up an entire garden bed, and while it will produce an endless supply of squash, it’s usually too much of a hassle. Corn doesn’t seem to require much space, but you need to grow it in 4-by-4-foot blocks so it can pollinate. Corn is also such a strong source of nitrogen that it will rob all nearby vegetables of the nitrogen they need to grow.
Grow mini vegetables instead of full size ones.
I recently wrote about growing mini bell peppers instead of full-size ones, since each full-size plant can only produce a few bell peppers, but a mini pepper plant can produce 50. The same goes for eggplants and tomatoes. Planting a single cherry or plum tomato plant (I recommend Juliet) will give you the opportunity to play with summer tomatoes rather than waiting for several full-size tomatoes to ripen. Small eggplants will also ripen throughout the season, allowing you to harvest more frequently.
Choose crops that are easy to grow
Some crops are more finicky than others. It’s hard to screw up lettuce, radishes, or peas, but a lot can go wrong before you successfully grow a watermelon or artichoke. Carrots are very difficult to germinate, but beets grow for everyone.
Choose vegetables that grow quickly
Some vegetables are short crops, meaning they grow quickly, and some are long crops, taking five or six months to grow. For example, Brussels sprouts and parsnips grow within six months, while turnips can be harvested in 60 days. Lettuce, radishes, beets, green onions, spinach, chard, cucumber, green beans and peas are all examples of low-growing crops. The back of any seed packet (or the plant label on the package) will tell you how long it will take to harvest.
Place plantings in a checkerboard pattern
Gardens are not a “set it and forget it” project. You need to constantly bring in (plant) and take out (harvest). To keep a small space constantly functioning, you need to use consistent planting. Instead of planting peas once, plant them every two weeks so you always have something to harvest. The same can be said for almost every crop mentioned above: lettuce, green onions, radishes, beets, turnips, etc. Plant some in the first week, and then again in the third, fifth, and seventh weeks. When you pull out old plants, new plants are already growing. If a plant is struggling, pull it out and try something else—you don’t have room for anything to stay.