I am fortunate to garden in two vastly different USDA Gardening Zones. During Spring and Summer, I garden at our New Jersey home (6a). While in Fall and Winter, I garden in a community garden in Florida (9b). In New Jersey, I have a large 800 square foot vegetable garden with fourteen beds. At our local community garden in Florida, I have one 4’x8’ garden bed. In addition to the climate differences, growing in a smaller garden is also quite different. After one season, I realized I had to adapt my approach to gardening in a smaller bed. What follows are two key lessons I learned to create a productive small vegetable garden.
What defines small you may ask? Well, I guess that depends upon your perspective. For me, a 4’x8’ bed is small because of the comparison to the large garden I manage in New Jersey. A small vegetable garden could also be gardening in containers or gardening in a 4’x4’ raised bed.
First: Start with good soil
Soil is the most important aspect of a productive garden of any size. Initially, I wrongly assumed the soil in our town community garden would be sufficient. However, that assumption proved wrong. Most of my crops failed the first year due to poor soil. When it comes to soil, I encourage you to think about two things. First, establishing the soil. Second, maintaining (amending) the soil year after year. When I was a beginner gardener, I would never have thought about ‘maintaining soil’. However, maintaining soil is important to continue a productive small vegetable garden.
Let’s take a look at establishing soil. To understand how to establish soil in a raised bed or for an in-ground bed, please read my article titled “How to prepare raised and in-ground garden beds”. In this article, I provide the ‘recipe’ for establishing soil in your garden. For container gardening, I recommend that you start each season with new soil that is specifically formulated for container gardens.
Maintaining soil year after year
After establishing your initial soil, it’s also important to amend the soil each season. Here are a couple of examples of how I maintain the soil in my gardens.
- In our 9b community garden bed, we amend the soil at the start of the season. We mix approximately equal parts composted cow manure, peat moss, and vermiculite to the soil. Next, I mix a balanced granular organic garden fertilizer with an N-P-K of 3-4-4 into the soil. These items should be available at your local home goods store.
- In our 6a garden, we amend the soil at the end of the season. Soil amendment takes the form of compost and cover crops. We make our own compost and at the end of the season apply a 1-2-inch layer of compost on the top of each bed. Next, we plant cover crops. Together these practices keep the soil healthy through the winter. If you don’t make compost, composted cow manure will work.
Whatever the size of your garden (except container gardening), I recommend getting a soil test at the end of your first garden season. The soil test will provide the pH of the soil and indicate any amendments needed. Contact your County Extension Office for help in obtaining a soil test. The USDA’s interactive extension map will help you locate your state’s main extension office with a simple click on your state.
Second: Utilize space to it’s fullest
With a small garden, it’s important to closely manage the space for high yields. When I first got under-way with my small garden, I didn’t have such a plan. I randomly planted my seedlings and quickly realized I was not making the most effective use of the small space.
I started observing how other gardeners in the community garden were managing their space. The most productive beds had implemented a practice similar to square foot gardening. Using this method, your garden is mapped out into squares or rectangles. The size of these areas is not as important as simply having defined areas. This is the method I now use.
For my bed, I mapped out eight areas. Each area is 2’x2’. Thus, instead of managing one 4’x8’ bed, I manage eight 2’x2’ squares. I either plant the same vegetable in an area or plant a variety of vegetables. You will also see that I left one of the squares empty and some space in other squares. The plants you see came from seedlings I grew. In the empty spaces, I will direct sow radishes, arugula, and marigolds seeds.
Here are four benefits of managing multiple smaller areas:
- A higher yield of vegetables due to a more intensive approach to space utilization.
- Succession planting is easier to manage. You can plan for what to replace in an area after harvesting the current crop. Tip: Amend the soil with additional composted cow manure before planting the next crop.
- Less weeding because every square foot is dedicated to vegetables (or flowers).
- Visually appealing and organized garden.
How to create and plant these squares
To create these 8 areas, I used twine and nails. Every two feet (length and width), hammer a nail in the wood frame. Next, connect the twine to the nails going across the beds and down the center of the bed.
Then you must determine how many plants to grow in an area. Square foot gardening uses the plant spacing recommendations on the back of a seed packet to guide the number of plants in a square foot. However, these are just guidelines and with experience, you will better understand how much can be planted. Here are some examples:
- Plants requiring 24-inch spacing: plant one plant per 2 square feet (tomato, eggplant)
- 12-inch spacing: plant one plant per square foot (pepper, kohlrabi)
- 6-inch spacing; 4 per square foot (lettuce, spinach)
- 4-inch spacing; 9 per square foot (carrot)
- 2-inch spacing; 16 per square foot (radish)
That’s it, pretty simple. Those are the two most important lessons I learned to create a productive small vegetable garden. Here are a few additional posts you might find helpful:
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