How to Grow More Food in Less Space: Intensive Planting Tips
Do you love growing your food but lack space for a garden? With a few tricks, you can grow plenty of food wherever you live. In this article, horticulture expert Matt Dursum shows you intensive planting tips to grow more food with minimal space.
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Gardening is about having fun, being self-sufficient, and making the most out of your space. Even if you don’t have a lot of space to garden, you’ll be surprised at what you can grow with these intensive planting tips!
Epic Gardening founder Kevin Espiritu started his first epic garden on a north-facing balcony with very little room. Some gardeners even create gardens on their roofs. Where I live in Michigan, gardeners sometimes build floating garden beds on small lakes.
If you lack the space for a massive landscape garden, don’t worry. Let’s explore the intensive planting tips below so you, too, can grow more with less space.
Step 1: Practice Cramming
Cramming may sound like a bad idea, but this isn’t college-level trigonometry or Japanese we’re talking about. For us gardeners, cramming our design is all about maximizing our gardening space.
If you don’t have much space, it’s ok to move your garden beds closer together. As long as you can get through and have space to work, your garden will function perfectly.
You can also practice cramming inside your beds by planting some crops such as lettuce a little closer to each other. Make sure you harvest regularly so your plants don’t compete for space or resources. It might take a little more maintenance, but it’s a great way to grow more food with less space.
Step 2: Square Foot Gardening
Square foot gardening is an easy and effective intensive planting method to turn your garden into a highly productive food zone. It starts by dividing your beds into a series of square-foot sections instead of rows.
If you’re growing larger plants like zucchini, you’ll plant them in the center square and leave the peripheral squares empty. Smaller plants like arugula can thrive in bunches inside one square.
The entire system uses the minimum amount of space to cultivate the maximum amount of food. If you want to know more, there are plenty of easy-to-follow resources like this one to check out.
Step 3: Succession Planting
Imagine harvesting crop after crop of your favorite tomatoes or enjoying bountiful lettuce from spring to fall. You can do this with succession planting. It’s a very useful gardening technique where you plant the same crops at different intervals throughout the year.
Start by sowing your seeds indoors in spring. Once your first batch of seedlings is ready for planting, start the next batch indoors. Wait a few weeks, plant that batch, and repeat. Just as you harvest one crop, the next one is ready for transplanting.
Think of succession planting as an assembly line for maximum garden efficiency. Instead of getting one harvest, you’ll have multiple harvests throughout the year.
Step 4: Vertical Gardening
Whether you’re using vertical planters like this one or trellises, vertical gardening is the most important tip for intensive planting in a small area. With only a few easy-to-find materials, you can build almost anything for a vertical garden.
Use bamboo or poles to make a teepee structure for your climbers, such as pole beans and nasturtiums. You can also try using mixed bags or even a chicken wire potted garden.
If you have HDPE 2 plastic bottles lying around, you can go ahead and use them. This plastic is safe to use for gardening and makes an easy container for stacking vertically. No matter which style of vertical garden you use, you’ll save a ton of space.
Step 5: Inoculate Mushrooms
Inoculate mushrooms in areas of your garden or home where plants can’t thrive. If you have a shady and damp corner of your garden, you can cultivate delicious varieties like wine caps.
You can place logs outdoors to harvest shiitakes or cultivate fantastic oyster mushrooms in indoor kits. These easy-to-grow varieties take up little space and produce lots of delicious mushrooms.
Step 6: Start Your Seeds Indoors
If you’re limited on space and have a sunny window, patio, or greenhouse, get your seeds started ahead of time indoors. Most vegetables and flowers grow well when you start them indoors first and transplant them once they’re large enough.
As soon as spring arrives, your seedlings will be ready for planting. If you live in a place with a longer growing season, you can sometimes get multiple crops in the same year.
Step 7: Use Your Indoor Spaces
As long as you have light, you can cultivate most vegetables and herbs indoors. Use an area with direct sunlight, like a south-facing window or skylight. Plant your crops in containers and grow them in your kitchen, patio, or living room.
If you’re lacking light, install grow lights anywhere in your home. These efficient lighting setups produce enough light to grow any plant indoors.
Step 8: Plant Edible Groundcover
There’s nothing like having edible ground cover in your garden. These plants are easy to maintain and act as a living mulch. They protect your soil from drying out and shield beneficial insects below the surface.
These plants usually require very little attention and produce tons of food in small spaces. They can also grow in spaces that other edible plants can’t reach. Below are a few wonderful plants to use as edible groundcover in your garden. Prioritize those that won’t crowd out native plants in your local ecosystem.
- Creeping thyme
- Nasturtium
- Oregano
- Strawberries
- French sorrel
- Dandelion
- Rosemary
- Purslane
Step 9: Practice Companion Planting
Companion planting is growing compatible crops together for intensive production. Some species have complementary needs, while others are mutually beneficial. Growing these species together boosts yields and improves your soil’s health.
The best space-saving example of companion planting is the ‘three sisters’ technique. Native Americans developed this technique and it’s been a staple of US gardens ever since. To create a three-sister garden, plant beans, corn, and squash together. The beans infuse nitrogen into the soil and climb the corn, while the squash provides ground cover for the soil and its microbes.
There are plenty of other companion crops to look for. Many herbs, like the Mediterranean medley of sage, oregano, thyme, and rosemary, grow incredibly well together.
Step 10: Grow Productive Varieties
This underrated intensive planting tip can significantly improve yields in small areas. Not all crops are the same when it comes to productivity. If you lack space, plant productive varieties. These crops will give you more food for less space and resources.
Crops like beans, nasturtiums, and collard greens produce tons of harvests throughout the growing season. Some tomato varieties are both compact and indeterminate, meaning they take up little space and produce multiple harvests.
Skip the novelty crops and grow what produces more food for longer. You’ll save money at the grocery store and have a productive garden in your small area.
Step 11: Use Grow Bags
Grow bags like these offer endless possibilities when you’re talking about saving space in your garden. These products come in many sizes and can be folded, moved, and carried away easily.
They are eco-friendly and easy to move into tight areas. Pick them up by their handles and move them where you need them.
If you have a barren yard or empty patio near your home, arrange grow bags to make your ideal garden setup. You can even place them on your roof, as long as it’s sturdy. I’ve even seen people turn their tiny dock into a massive garden—Michigan gardeners for you!
Step 12: Harvest Frequently
Harvesting frequently is an easy trick to getting the most out of your plants. Harvesting leaves, spears, and fruit is like pruning. Plants usually respond to it by sending energy to new parts. This creates more even and healthy growth throughout the plant.
By harvesting your crops frequently, you’re telling the plant to keep producing its seeds and new growth. As long as you leave enough plant material for photosynthesis, many plants will respond by giving you multiple harvests.
Step 13: Create a Healthy Ecosystem
One of the best intensive planting tips you can put into action is creating a healthy ecosystem in your garden. This involves many steps. The first is cultivating a healthy biome of microbes, insects, fungi, and worms in your soil.
The second is inviting as many helpful pollinators and beneficial insects to your garden as you can. To do this, plant plenty of flowers around your fruiting plants like fruit trees and tomatoes.
For the ultimate tool for your garden, grow comfrey. This multi-use perennial herb loosens the soil with its long taproot and takes in tons of nutrients. When you compost its leaves, it produces absorbable nitrogen for your plants. Best of all, its flowers attract plenty of beneficial pollinators. It can be invasive, but in areas where it’s not it’s a boon.
Step 14: Choose Compact Varieties
Compact varieties usually have words like “patio” or “compact” in their name. These plants are short in stature and usually quite productive.
If you’re tight on space and want to plant a particular crop, finding miniature varieties is the way to go. These crops will usually taste the same or even better than their larger counterparts.
Step 15: Grow Native Edibles
No matter where you live, your region has native edibles. These plants are usually the easiest plants to take care of. They also take up very little space and don’t require many nutrients.
If you live in California, try planting prickly pears or golden currants. If you’re a midwestern gardener, try growing pawpaws.
Key Takeaways
No matter how small your space is, you’ll create a healthy garden by following these intensive planting tips. With very little effort, you can turn even the smallest space into a bountiful food garden.
