Plant Spacing Made Easy: How to Plant Intensively in a Raised Bed

4 Comments

1. What a terrific chart for planting. I’m going to give it a try this year! Thank you very much!

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2. Hi there, I’m a beginner raised bed gardener. Just wondering if the plant spacing means no other plant can be planted within that space requirement. Eg. If I plant cauliflower 30cm apart, can I plant a celery in between or only 30cm away?

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   1. Thanks for the article on composting in place and plant spacing. I have been a fan of composting in place since I had my first vegetable gardens in the early 1970’s. My reasoning was that you would get the leachate in your garden where you wanted it and you wouldn’t have to lug the compost to the garden when it was finished. Of course, one has to have room to spare or, as I did, only make compost piles in the fall. We had two feeder pigs every year and had a beef going–took two growing seasons–rabbits, sometimes geese and once only, ducks. I estimate that we bought about 5% of our food–coffee, sugar, pie crust mix (I hate fiddly tasks), and a bushel (60 lb.) of organic wheat, sometimes milk. I bartered eggs for milk with the dairy farmer up the road sometimes–once in a while someone (not me!) would leave a mess in his milk room and he would ban everyone for a while. On a summer afternoon when the thunder clouds were building and I heard his bailer running I drive to the pertinent mowing and pitch in. He responded with a front-end loader with too much straw for his spreader and huge amounts of milk when he had a milker on antibiotics (poor animals were so overbred that they’d step on their on teats once in a while and get infected.) I fermented it by lettig the big trash barrels full sit in the sun for a while. I don’t know if pigs are lactose intolerant and I didn’t want to find out. Poultry and dogs got a share too.
      Regarding spacing: I looked at the two-inch spaceing recommendations for carrots and saw that, the way my father grew them, in a row, most of the room would paths on each side, not carrots so started growing them in wide beds. I planted them closely and we thinned them all summer. (You can’t get away with this unless you have fertile soil, I suspect.) My preschool daughters caught on about thinning them for outdoor snacks and helped get the yield up. I’ve come to believe that people are hard wired to learn foraging as soon as they can walk. Their foraging in the garden was always an asset…I can’t recall one time when they did something that would reduce yield. (I could write a book on this–there’s much more–but I’ve started at least a dozen books and find I don’t have the temperament for that sort of project. The carrots were ‘Royal Chantenay’ which just keep growing and by the time they need to be moved to the root cellar they are huge, but never tough or stringy. One was enough for four of us. I decided that they would be as good as pumpkins for pies but, being sweeter, I used half the sugar, which I had to buy. I made about 15 gal of maple syrup every year on a jury rig setup involving a fire in an old washing machine sheet metal exterior. We always used it on pancakes. It took about 15 minutes to hand grind the flour with home grown corn as the base, a bit of the purchased wheat to hold them together, and black walnuts or butternuts foraged for the oil as well as taste. I didn’t always have nuts, so I substituted home grown soybeans…not as tasty but we didn’t have to buy cooking oil. I’m just remembering, I also grew onions in beds. I noticed white Dutch clover germinating with the onions, and I left it, figuring that it was tap rooted while the onions were shallow rooted, would fix N and would keep the soil cool, which onions like. This was in Western Massachusetts where, in those days, there was almost always enough rain. In dry areas, you have to use wider spacing for everything unless you irrigate, which isn’t always responsible if you can possibly avoid it. Regarding the question about interplanting, celery is a hevy feeder and likes to grow all season. Fast growing crops like radishes, pac choi (I like Joi Choi hands down), lettuce and most leafy Asian brassicas (not European ones like collards), and of course spring radishes can be interplanted. Some of these don’t like heat and the shade from the main crop can be be beneficial. Adjust your fertility regime if your soil is not naturally rich.

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3. This is so helpful! I’m a raised bed gardener, and always start way more plants than I have room for. My brain always says “no start goes unplanted!” The result is very crowded beds. I’ve vowed this year to do a more reasonable job of plant spacing, but still want to push it to the limit. I’m printing out this guide to help me plan, and to take with me as a reminder when I’m out there planting and losing my mind!

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