You Can Have a Vegetable Garden Even if You Don't Have Much Space (2024)

Growing a garden is a great way to produce healthy vegetables, herbs, and fruits to enjoy your favorite fresh foods at home. While spacious outdoor gardens produce larger harvests, you don't need a sizable garden bed to grow healthy vegetables in a small space. With the right containers, soil, watering schedule, and sun exposure, it's possible to yield your favorite tasty vegetables in a small footprint.

You Can Have a Vegetable Garden Even if You Don't Have Much Space (1)

Ways to Utilize a Small Space

You don't need a large area to have a vegetable garden. Small sunny spots in your yard, patio, or balcony can all be successful locations. Heirloom seeds and the development of new hybrid varieties also offer great options like colorful novelty vegetables, varieties from around the world, and compact plants. Choosing the right location and ideal varieties of your favorite plants will help you maximize your harvest.

Along with providing the proper growing conditions, it's also helpful to consider using a fence. If you think the deer love your hostas, you may be surprised at how your vegetables increase attraction from the other animals in your community. If you plant it, they will come—so utilize a method of protection for your small vegetable garden for the best results.

Layout Considerations

Vegetable gardens of various shapes and sizes can have successful yields, but most importantly, your garden's layout should ensure your plants can receive the proper nutrients. When you're deciding where to place your garden beds or containers, consider several basic components. To maximize a small vegetable garden, choose a location that can provide adequate sunlight, access to a water​ source,and rich, fertile soil to grow healthy vegetables.

  • Sun: Vegetables need at least six to eight hours of direct sun each day. Without sun, the fruits will not ripen, and the plants will be stressed. Even if the site is sun-challenged, there are a few vegetables that grow in light shade, such as lettuce and other leafy greens, root vegetables, broccoli, and cole crops.
  • Water: Vegetables require regular watering. Otherwise, they will not fill out. Some, like tomatoes, can crack open if suddenly plumped up with water after struggling without it for a while. If you have the means, a drip irrigation system is simple to install and saves water by directly watering the plant's roots (losing less water to evaporation). Even a simple soaker hose is better than a sprinkler system that wets the foliage, which can make plants prone to blights and mildews.
  • Soil: Vegetables need a soil rich in organic matter. Fertile soil is important to the growth of all plants, but even more so with vegetables because the taste is affected by the quality of the soil. Soil health is the reason why wine from the same grape variety can vary from region to region and why some areas grow hotter peppers than others.

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Types of Small Gardens

Granted, a small vegetable garden might not be sufficient for subsistence farming, but it can provide a few of your favorite options to enjoy at home. Choose vegetables that grow well together in small gardens like great-tasting tomatoes, some beautiful heirloom eggplants and peppers, or a steady supply of leafy greens. If you have limited space, consider which vegetables you can easily purchase fresh in your area and those that you truly love but can't purchase locally.

  • Gardens with compact varieties allow you to grow a variety of plants in the same space. If you plant a giant beefsteak tomato or a row of sweet corn, the space for growing other vegetables in your small vegetable garden will be limited. Even then, you can choose varieties that are bred to grow in small spaces. Anything with the words patio, pixie, tiny, compact, baby, or dwarf in the name is a good bet. Just because a plant is bred to be small doesn't mean the fruits will be small or the yield will be less. The labeling for most seeds and seedlings will indicate the mature size of the plant varieties you are selecting, helping you space things out and see just how many plants you can fit.
  • Interplanting with flowers is a great way to find space for vegetables with limited room. Many gardeners squeeze in as many seedlings they can, then deal with crowding as the garden grows. Instead, interplant your vegetables with your flowers. There's no rule that says you can't mix the two. It can be a bit harder to harvest, but many vegetables even look ornamental. As a bonus, flowers also attract pollinators to your vegetable crops.
  • Grow vegetables vertically to save space in your garden beds. If you opt to grow a variety of vegetables, look for compact varieties and vining crops that can be trained to grow vertically on support structures. For example, pole beans take up less space than bush beans. Vining cucumbers and squash, as aggressive as they can be, actually take up less space than their bush-like relatives.
  • Companion planting is often touted for the benefit of reducing pest infestations, but it also serves to conserve space. Shade-tolerant plants benefit from being planted next to taller crops.Basillikes a respite fromthe hotafternoon sun and does well next to tomatoes. Lettuce will keep producing all summer if shaded by almost any taller plant. Early harvested vegetables, such asspinach,radishes, andpeas, can be planted with slower-growing crops such asbroccoliorpeppers that will not take overthe spaceuntil the spring-harvested vegetables have been harvested.
  • Succession plantingis a useful technique for any vegetable garden, large or small, but it is all the more valuable when space is limited. Succession planting means reseeding quick-growing crops every two to three weeks during the growing season. It is especially useful with crops such asbeans, zucchini,andlettuce that tend to exhaust themselves when producing too much. By planting in succession, you will produce enough food for your family's appetite (and you'll have it all summer instead of all at once).

Warning

Since small vegetable gardens don't leave room for rotating crops, you'll need to utilize other methods to prevent fungal diseases and garden pests that overwinter in the soil. Be vigilant to avoid pests and diseases from becoming rampant. If a large-scale problem should occur (such as an infestation of squash beetles orseptoria leaf spoton tomatoes), it's best to stop growing that crop and others in its family for at least a year.

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Growing Fruits and Vegetables in Containers

As with ornamental container gardening, vegetable container gardening is a way to control the soil, sun, and growing conditions of youredible plants. It also allows you to fit edible gardening into the smallest spaces by placing the containers on your patio, balcony, front steps, and along the house foundation and driveway. Virtually any fruit, vegetable, or herb can begrown in acontainerif the container is large enough to accommodate the mature size of the plant.

The ideal depth of your planter box or container will vary depending on which vegetables you choose to grow. Herbs and leafy greens can grow in small containers or hanging baskets. Fruiting plants such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cucumbers work best when planted in 5-gallon containers—or larger, of course. The larger the container, the more soil it contains, and the less often you'll have to water (daily or every other day instead of twice a day). The material used to manufacture the container and the container color also affect how quickly a container dries out. Clay and terracotta containers lose moisture faster, and black containers retain more heat.

You can purchase soil specifically balanced for vegetable container gardening with slow-release fertilizer already mixed in for the most absolute no-fuss garden.

You Can Have a Vegetable Garden Even if You Don't Have Much Space (5)

You Can Have a Vegetable Garden Even if You Don't Have Much Space (6)

Windowsill Gardens

Growing edible plants indoors on awindowsillis an easy, low-space option for plants that are frequently harvested, such as herbs and lettuce. But windowsill gardening isn't just for gardeners with limited space: Any gardener can extend the growing season by potting up someherbs and growing them indoors provided there is sufficient sunlight and water. If an area inside your home receives enough sunlight, you can evengrow vegetables indoors.

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You Can Have a Vegetable Garden Even if You Don't Have Much Space (2024)

FAQs

How much space do you need for a vegetable garden? ›

As a rule of thumb, you should start small then add if needed. A good starting size for a garden would be between 75 and 100 square feet.

How do you grow a garden with no space? ›

Grow With Hydroponics

Hydroponic gardening systems are really great if you have the counterspace. You can grow so many cool plants and even food to add to your meals. It's one of the best things to use if you love gardening but don't have any outside space to do it.

How do you space a vegetable garden? ›

These are the basic, most frequently used spacing's in the square foot garden: The 3-inch spacing accommodates beets, carrots, onions and radishes. The 4-inch spacing is for bush beans and spinach. A 6-inch spacing is needed for Swiss chard, leaf lettuce and parsley.

How do you grow a lot of vegetables in a small space? ›

You can grow two or more vegetables in one area by planting slower-maturing and faster-maturing crops together. The quick-to-mature vegetables will be ready for harvest before the two crops begin to crowd each other. Once the fast crop is picked, the slower crop will have more room to grow to maturity.

What is the easiest vegetable to grow? ›

Root vegetables: Radishes, turnips and carrots

Nothing grows faster than radishes or turnips! Want a quick success and to feel like a master gardener? Then just plop a few radish or turnips seeds in a pot and within weeks you can see the little roots start to swell.

What vegetables produce the most? ›

If you're looking for high-yield veggies, you can't go wrong with cucumbers, pole beans, radishes, squash, zucchini, peas, and tomatoes. These vegetables are easy to grow and have been known to produce a large amount of produce per plant, providing you with a bountiful harvest that lasts for weeks.

How much space between garden beds? ›

This width works if the space is tight and there won?t be a lot of gardeners working at the same time, but to allow more comfortable access, 18- to 24-inch paths are ideal. For paths to provide enough room for carts, wheelbarrows and wheelchairs, allow 4 feet between beds.

What is a good layout for a vegetable garden? ›

As a general rule, put tall veggies toward the back of the bed, mid-sized ones in the middle, and smaller plants in the front or as a border. Consider adding pollinator plants to attract beneficial insects that can not only help you get a better harvest, but will also prey on garden pests.

How much can you plant in a 10x10 garden? ›

How much can you grow in a 10 x 10 garden? Well… anywhere from two pumpkin plants to 300 carrots. If you're planting medium-sized plants like basil, you could theoretically plant 100 of them (one per square foot).

What is a good size garden for a beginner? ›

Start with a Small Space

You'll get a feeling for how much time gardening takes. You'll find out if you like spending time outside planting, watering, and weeding. You'll also learn how much produce you and your family can eat over the course of a summer. A good size for a beginner's vegetable garden is 6x6 feet.

How many vegetables can you plant in a 4x4 raised bed? ›

A 4ft. x 4ft. raised garden bed gives you 16 square feet of growing space (more if you add some trellises for vertical space). That means you can grow around 10 to 11 indeterminate, or vining, tomato plants in one raised bed—if you really love cherry tomatoes, that is.

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