Square-Foot Gardening Planting Guide

Take up a square-foot garden by creating an organized garden plan that ensures proper spaces and you’ll have a thriving veggie garden in no time.

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by Adobestock/michaelcourtney

Create an organized garden plan that ensures proper spaces by following this square-foot gardening planting guide, and you’ll have a thriving veggie garden in no time.

In square-foot gardening, begin by visualizing what you want to harvest. This simple step prevents you from planting too much. Picture a large plant like a head of cabbage. That single cabbage will take up a whole square foot so you can only plant one per square foot. It’s the same with broccoli and cauliflower. Let’s go to the opposite end of the spectrum and think of the small plants like radishes. Sixteen can fit into a single square foot. It’s the same for onions and carrots — 16 per square foot. (Yet that’s a 3-inch spacing between plants, which is exactly the same spacing the seed packet recommends as it says “thin to 3 inches apart.”)

Consider Plant Size

Think of your plants as if they were shirt sizes. Shirts come in all four sizes: small, medium, large and extra large, and so do our plants. It’s that simple.

The extra large, of course, are those that take up the entire square foot — plants like cabbages, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and geraniums. Next are the large plants — those that can be planted four to a square foot, which equals 6 inches apart. Large plants include leaf lettuce, dwarf marigolds, Swiss chard and parsley.

  • Updated on Aug 15, 2023
  • Originally Published on Nov 22, 2011
Tagged with: Garden Grid, garden planning, square foot garden
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