> Next: Container Vegetable Gardens
Vegetable Gardens in Small Spaces
Many opportunities to grow vegetables exist even if you have a modest or small-size garden. Learn about:
-
- Where to begin?
- Growing vegetables as an alternative for landscape plants.
- Fitting a space-saving vegetable garden into your home or yard.
- Exploring the option of container gardening with vegetables.
- Growing vegetables in a space-saving layered garden.
- Finding extra space by growing a vertical vegetable garden.
- Growing herbs and vegetables indoors, on balconies, or landings.
- Making opportunities for vegetables by providing the light and soils they require.
Gardening in small spaces is an increasingly popular activity. Those who want to garden in downscaled plots can enjoy a large yield of flavorful, nutritious, vine-fresh produce.
Many of us live in city dwellings with limited green space or in homes with smaller yards. Use the space you have to grow fruit, berries and vegetables for you and your family.
Experience the joy of soil in your fingers in gardens that fit your home and lifestyle.
Structure Your Small Space
Plan compact vegetable gardens as an alternative to traditional landscaping around decks and patios.
Often, small-space gardens combine container plantings and small-scale, in-ground beds. They reap the rewards of the benefits of both popular vegetable-growing methods [see Container Vegetable Gardens].
While pots are movable, beds allow deeper roots to form and require less care. Beds increase the yield from each plant and the flavor of the vegetables.
Nearly any space can be right for a vegetable garden, even rooftops or balconies [see Sites and Soils].
Use Intensive Growing Methods
The two elements that truly are important—full sun and fertile soil—are found in gardens of every dimension and scale.
By using French intensive methods—spacing plantings closely together in enriched beds—gardeners can produce large harvests from a few plants.
Plan your garden 1 sq. ft. (836 sq. cm.) at a time, choosing those vegetables that you most enjoy growing and eating [see Raised Beds and French-Intensive Gardens].
Mix It Up With Companion Plants
Consider planting a mixture of vegetables and flowering plants. You’ll increase the appeal of your vegetable garden.
Some companion plantings attractively mix plants such as green beans and scarlet runner beans, sweetpeas and English peas, and marigolds and red lettuce.
Stop The Spread: Grow Vertically
Go up as well as out. Add volume to your garden by using walls and hanging containers to fill otherwise lost space.
Trailing plants—herbs such as mint, nasturtium, and rosemary, along with some vining vegetables like peas and beans—happily grow while cascading down from overhead.
Choose Layers
Layer your garden using plants at your feet, others that grow on an arbor or are hung overhead, with still more that climb on supporting trellises.
A small-space vegetable garden is a treasure to both the eye and the soul. Soil, sunshine, and a strip of land will bring fulfillment to your life.