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Small gardens have seen big growth in recent years. From rooftop gardens to urban homesteads, people are taking back the control of their food supply by planting gardens. Through creative gardening techniques, people are growing enough food to sustain their families and have enough left over to sell and generate an income on less than 1/10 of an acre, producing high yields in small spaces.
If you are like me, you don’t have the luxury of living on a farm or owning acreage, but that shouldn’t stop you from growing your own food.
Here are ten tips to help you grow more food in less space.
Small Garden Tip #1: Plant an Edible Yard – Landscape Gardening
Have you ever heard the saying “Grow food not grass?” It’s a good motto to adopt; grass depletes lawns of their nutrients, requires a lot of water to maintain, and serves very little purpose other than being eye candy, not to mention the constant mowing. You can take a 10×10 patch of grass and turn it into a beautiful edible garden, which can feed your family and be aesthetically pleasing.
Look at your yard and see what is in your landscape that doesn’t serve a greater purpose. Can you replace that juniper bush with a blueberry bush? What about the ornamental grass with lemon grass, kale, or other edible greens? Do you have a small tree that you can replace with a dwarf fruiting tree? Once you start to look at your landscape as a means to serve you nutritionally instead of aesthetically, you open up a whole new world of gardening opportunities.
Some edible plants that look amazing in landscape are: Rhubarb, Swiss Chard, Peppers, Artichokes, Amaranth, Beets, Lettuce, Sunflowers, Cabbage, Nasturtiums, Banana Plants, Sweet Potatoes, Strawberries, Dwarf Fig Tree, and any herbs.
Small Garden Tip #2 – Invite Pollinators
Planting to invite pollinators on purpose is something we often overlook. If you are planting on a patio, balcony, or are creating a garden for the first time in your yard, it is crucial to create a habitat that invites pollinators. Mix flowers in with your vegetables or herbs to attract pollinators and add a pop of color. Never underestimate the value of pollinators; they are one of the key elements to your gardens success. See Vegetable Companion Planting in the Garden for more companion plant ideas.
Some edible herbs that welcome pollinators into your garden are:
- Anise Hyssop: Agastache Foreniculum
- Basil: Ocimum Basilicum
- Bee Balm: Monarada
- Borage: Borago Officinalis
- Dill: Anethum Graveolens
- Fennel: Ferula Communis
- Rosemary: Rosmarinus Offcinalis
- Yarrow: Achillea Millefolium
Small Garden Tip #3 – Create Depth
If you have a flat landscape, you can create more soil surface to grow a garden by creating dimension and adding soil (* See Hugelkultur). Think three dimensional gardening, instead of two dimensional. Say you have a 5 sqft area of flat growing space; you can only plant a garden that is 5 sqft. But if you add a 2 ft mound in the middle of that 5 sqft and taper it down, now you’ve created almost double the square footage of gardening space on that same piece of land, simply by creating gardening dimension.
You can grow more on a mound than you can on flat land, so build hills to create more planting surface to increase your yield.
Hugelkultur (HOO-gul-culture) meaning hill culture or hill mound: Instead of putting those branches, leaves and grass clippings in bags by the curbside…build a hugel bed. Simply mound logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost or whatever other biomass you have available, top with soil and plant your veggies.
Small Garden Tip #4 – Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize
If you are gardening in small spaces like container gardening, garden boxes and raised beds, you have pay attention to your soils nutritional needs. Plants deplete the nutrients at a quicker rate with small gardening than large-scale gardening. Add organic compost, top-dress soil and spray with compost tea regularly. Rotate crops by not planting the same type of plant in the same spots each year. Healthy soil promotes healthy plants, and healthy plants provide better nutrition and can resist pest and disease.
I use: Neptune’s Harvest fish and seaweed fertilizer for everything, compost, worm compost,compost tea (from worm castings, molasses & neptunes) Epsom salt, egg shells, coffee grounds and goat and chicken poop.
Biointensive Gardening: Biointensive agriculture is an organic agricultural system that focuses on achieving maximum yields from a minimum area of land, while simultaneously increasing biodiversity and sustaining the fertility of the soil. The goal of the method is long term sustainability on a closed system basis. It is particularly effective for backyard gardeners and smallholder farmers in developing countries, and also has been used successfully on small-scale commercial farms
Small Garden Tip #5 – Maximize Your Harvest
Pick plant varieties that maximize your available space. For example if you only have 1sq ft of gardening space available, don’t plant cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. in that space. You will only receive one harvest from these plants, and they take 1sq ft space per plant.
Instead, opt for plants with high yields for small spaces, like:
Grow anything that vines (tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, grapes, and other vining fruits) on a trellis and utilize the available soil real-estate once the vines have grown vertically.
Small Garden Tip #6 – Plant in the space you have
Look at every space that you have as an opportunity to grow food; porch, balcony, roof, landscape, windowsill, fence, mailbox, driveway, walkway, decks, or by swings; explore the opportunities right outside your door.
Mailbox – You can grow grapes or another vining plant around a mailbox post
Walkway – Line your walkway with cabbage, kale, mustards or other eye pleasing edibles.
Fence – Hang garden boxes from your fence or plant vining produce.
Small Garden Tip #7 – Vertical Gardening, when you can’t grow out— grow up
One of the best ways to maximize your space is growing vertically. There are several benefits to growing vertically including; increased yield, better pest management, visual interest, create privacy, and ease of harvesting.
By growing plants vertically you help reduce gardening problems like leaf fungus and fruit rot because air is circulating through the plant reducing moisture buildup and the fruit is off the ground.
You can save on water usage by watering at the root of the plant where it is needed instead of wasting water by runoff from watering the plant from above. Harvesting is easier because you’re not bending over breaking your back. You can see the produce easier
There are many different trellis mediums you can use to garden vertically. Pretty much anything the plant tendrils can latch onto, the plant can grow up; lattice, wire, bamboo, pallet, netting, rope, I’ve even seen the springs from a baby crib. The possibilities are only limited by the imagination.
To learn more about vertical gardening read, “Transform Your Landscape with Vertical Gardening: 10 Reasons to Grow Up Instead of Out“.
Small Garden Tip #8 – Dwarf Fruiting Trees
Almost any fruit tree you can imagine is now available in a dwarf variety allowing people with small yards to grow fresh fruit.
On our small little slice of heaven (1/4 acre) we have; 2 lemon trees, 2 lime trees, 1 keylime tree, 2 tangerine trees, 3 fig trees, multiple plum trees (one planted and several volunteers), 1 blood orange tree, 1 grapefruit tree, 2 pear trees, and a fruit cocktail tree that produces; plums, peaches, apricots, and nectarines.
When growing fruit trees, keep in mind that many varieties need to cross pollinate, so you may have to buy two. Even if a fruit tree is advertised as ‘self-pollinating’ they will produce better if they have another tree to cross pollinate with.
Small Garden Tip #9 – Take Advantage of Soil Real-Estate
Use the soil real-estate (otherwise known as companion planting) under other plants or trees to grow additional crops and increasing your yield. Plant carrots under tomatoes, radishes or beets under cucumbers, pole beans with potatoes or radishes, grow garlic, onions, and herbs under trees to maximize your harvest and space.
A perfect example of this gardening style is known as the Three Sisters. The three sisters is a Native American method of gardening and consist of planting corn, squash, and beans together. The three crops benefit from each other, the corn provides a trellis for the beans to climb, the beans provide nitrogen for the corn and squash, and the squash helps prevent weeds from growing by blocking sunlight to the soil and creates a microclimate which aids at retaining water.
Small Garden Tip #10 – Plant indoors
Do you have a sunny window? Turn it into a mini garden. You can grow many herbs indoors successfully like basil, chives, parsley, cilantro, thyme, and ginger. Try your hand at micro greens or sprouts – both have a high nutritional content.
Micro Gardening: “Micro-gardening” is the intensive cultivation of a wide range of vegetables, roots and tubers, and herbs in small spaces, such as balconies, patios and rooftops. While urban residents have long grown vegetables in backyard plots, modern micro-gardening makes use of containers such as plastic-lined wooden crates, custom-built tables and even old car tires. It integrates horticulture production techniques with environmentally friendly technologies suited to cities, such as rainwater harvesting and household waste management.
Mushrooms (a tasty source for vitamin D) grow great indoors and many grocery stores sell starter kits. Grow a dwarf lemon or mandarin orange tree indoors to add beauty, color and fruit. Lettuce pots grow well indoors providing you with fresh salad ingredients all year.
Never let a lack of space prevent you from growing your own food; you will be amazed with what you can do with a little. We’d love to read your comments about how you make the most out of your gardening space!
“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.” ― Abraham Lincoln
Small Scale Gardening Books You May Enjoy
- Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy
- Square Food Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
- Straw Bale Gardening by Joel Karsten
- Organic Micro Gardening Hacks Vol. 2 – Maximize Your Garden Efficiency with Limited Amount of Space by Barbara Glidewell
- Vertical Gardening by Derek Fell
Other posts by Amber Bradshaw:
- Goats for Sale: 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying Goats
- 9 Tips Everyone Should Know for Keeping Your House Cool
- Natural Mosquito Repellents That Work
When not out in the garden you can find her sharing her latest homestead tips at The Coastal Homestead, on Facebook, on Pinterest or Instagram.
Originally published in 2015, updated in 2017.
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