Small Space Vegetable Gardens: Top Ten Tips

Everyone desires to use their home small space for a perfect small space gardening. That is absolutely true! In this post, I'm going to give you 10 tips to make the most of your small space garden.

Tip 1: Grow Only As Much As You Can Eat

This can be a tricky math problem to figure out. It might take you a couple of seasons to get it right. It's not something anyone can tell you because it depends on who’s a picky eater in your house, how many people you’re feeding, what you like to eat, how much your vegetables produce, and your local weather conditions. You'll need to make notes and adjust on a seasonal basis.

Tip 2: Grow Only What You Like

Don't grow things you don’t enjoy eating just because they’re popular. In a small space garden, focus on what you love. Try maybe one new thing per season to see if you like it, but avoid growing trendy vegetables just for the sake of it. If you only had space for one crop, what would it be? For me, it would be Kellogg’s Breakfast Tomatoes. Let me know in the comments what yours would be.

Tip 3: Grow Smaller Varieties

You can grow smaller varieties of your favorite vegetables. For example, there’s a cucumber called Space Master that grows quite a few cucumbers on a very small bushy plant, and a tomato called Tiny Tim that grows tiny tomatoes on a tiny plant. You don’t have to go that small, but choosing determinate types that have a bushy growth can be a good compromise. I’ll put a link in the blog description to various small varieties of all your favorite vegetables.

Tip 4: Grow in Raised Beds

With raised beds, you can grow more intensively and more things per square foot than you can in the ground. The soil is lighter and less compact, allowing roots to grow better. If you’ve heard of square foot gardening, give it a try. Raised beds are excellent for small space gardening, fitting a lot of crops into a little space.

Tip 5: Use Containers

Containers are great because they can be tucked in anywhere you wouldn't be able to put a full raised bed or grow in the ground. Even on concrete or gravel paths, one container can grow a crop in a small space. Containers are perfect for balcony and patio gardens. This year, I’m dedicating a 15x6 or 7-foot space to small space container gardening to see how many crops I can grow. In two weeks, I’ll be posting a full weekend of container gardening videos, so make sure to subscribe and click the bell for notifications.

Tip 6: Grow Vertically

Vertical gardening is a great way to maximize space. Use trellises, teepees, tomato cages, wooden stakes, or cattle panels to grow your plants vertically. This weekend, I’ll be building my famous tomato trellises in our new garden. Vertical gardening is perfect for cucumbers, squashes, and other plants that take up a lot of horizontal space. By growing them vertically, you can save a lot of space.

Tip 7: Espalier Fruit Trees

The French method of growing fruit trees, espalier, is perfect for small spaces. You can train trees to grow flat against a wall or fence, taking up very little space while producing a lot of fruit. I had apples and a lemon tree growing in a one-foot deep bed along our garage wall at our last house, and we got a ton of fruit. I’m planning to espalier apples, pears, peaches, plums, and nectarines in our new garden.

Tip 8: Interplanting

Big plants like broccoli and cabbages take up a lot of space for a long time, but you can plant fast-growing root crops between them, like carrots, radishes, and beets. You could have several successions of these crops in the spaces between larger plants. Lettuce is another great option as it will appreciate the shade provided by the big plants. You can also plant pumpkins or trailing squash under your corn.

Tip 9: Get Rid of the Lawn

Consider converting your lawn into productive garden space. Lawns require a lot of maintenance and water, and they don’t provide food. Use the space for raised beds, containers, or other gardening methods to grow your own vegetables.

Tip 10: Hanging Gardens

Hanging gardens are often overlooked but can be very effective in small spaces. You can grow things like squash and tomatoes in hanging baskets. Window boxes are great for lettuce and small root crops like baby carrots and radishes. Get creative with hanging gardens to utilize vertical space effectively. In two weeks, I’ll have a full weekend of container growing videos, so stay tuned for more ideas.

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