HowTo Make Small Garden Plans
Instead of pining for the perfect small garden plans half-acre that you want for your garden, take a look at what you do have. Do you have a small strip of sunny ground along your driveway? That may be the perfect place to plant zinnias or marigolds or a hardy ground cover like "Snow on the Mountain". Do you have a front yard? Even if it's tiny, a front yard can grow far more than grass. Perhaps you live in a townhouse or condo. Does the homeowner's association allow you to plant along your foundation or walkway? No? Think about pots and containers.
Small garden plans can take advantage of vertical spaces, such as fences or walls. Clematis, honeysuckle, wisteria, and other vines need little or no assistance to grow up trellises, or other vertical surfaces. Other small gardening ideas include taking advantage of unusual places, such as fire escapes; or using hanging baskets or stacking containers for strawberries, flowers or herbs.
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How do your urban gardening ideas
Apartment dwellers sometimes feel that they have no room for such a luxury. However, a small vegetable garden consisting of a few varieties of peppers can be planted in a window box and placed on a sunny windowsill.
An herb garden, with a mixture of basil, parsley, sage, and thyme, can also thrive in a window box. If you have a patio, deck, or balcony; containers for small gardens abound in size, shape, and color.
Depending on the amount of sunlight, you can grow various greens such as lettuce, spinach, collard greens, and kale, along with herbs, strawberries and, if you stake them, you can even grow tomatoes. You can also grow dwarf varieties of plants such as cucumbers, and blueberries.
When planting a deck or patio garden, use sterile potting soil. It's much lighter in weight than topsoil or garden soil. If your plants are in full sun and begin wilting, place the entire container into a larger pot. Pack peat moss between the two pots and water the peat moss thoroughly. This will help keep the roots cool.
See our recent article on the O'Hare Airport Urban Farm for some ideas on small space food gardening.
How do you fire escape gardens
garden pots on a fire escape often-overlooked space for growing vegetables and flowers are fire escape? However, before starting a fire escape garden, check with your landlord about regulations and access, and get permission in writing.
Your landlord, or the local fire code, may not allow gardening directly on the steps or landings. However, you may be allowed to attach window boxes to some of the handrails or use hanging planters attached to the outside supports of the structure.
Small Shade Gardens
Sometimes you just don't have a sunny windowsill or patio. What then? Many flowers and vegetables actually prefer the shade. Lettuce, spinach, oregano, and parsley all do well in partially shady areas. Virginia bluebells, impatiens, astilbe, hostas, coral bells, and many other flowering plants are perfectly happy in the shade.
Clematis is a combination plant. While it prefers its flowers and leaves in the sun, it actually does best when its roots are in the shade. Sometimes, you just want to create a retreat. With the addition of seating, small shade gardens can provide the perfect place to relax and forget about the world for a while. A swing hanging from a tree; or patio furniture covered with comfortable cushions under a shady arbor can be far more inviting than a hot, sunny location.
These are just a few of the small garden ideas that you can incorporate into your space.
How do you vegetable garden ideas
Some people grow vegetables in order to enjoy the satisfaction of fresh-picked produce that they grew themselves. Others enjoy gardening as a delightful hobby that includes healthy exercise. Some vegetable gardeners do so out of necessity because their income won't cover fresh veggies from farmers' markets. Whatever your reason for growing vegetables, ideas for your vegetable garden abound.
How do you planning a garden
The first step to any garden is planning. This is especially true for a vegetable garden where squash, melons, and other plants can grow huge in a short amount of time. You'll need to provide enough space for them to mature. In addition, small garden plans peppers, tomatoes, melons, and some other plants need extra space for air circulation to prevent their fruit from rotting.
Take a good look at your gardening space. Is it all sun, or is part of it shady? Beets, carrots, and lettuce fair much better in the shade than peppers or tomatoes. Also, take a look at how long each plant takes to mature. Succession planting, where you plant a spring crop of spinach, followed by a summer crop of peppers, can give you more vegetables in the same space.
This may seem obvious, but grow what your family enjoys eating. If your family absolutely hates kale, why plant rows of something they're not going to eat? My own son hates spaghetti squash, but I love it - so I don't bother planting it and buy a couple at farmers' markets during the season. If you have children, allow them to take part in planning the garden.
One child may love peas, and growing them from seed could be a rewarding experience. Another child may not like vegetables but may be tempted to try carrots once they've grown their own. My son would never have tried Brussel sprouts if he hadn't watched them grow all summer before they came to our table.
Another rule of small garden plans vegetable garden is to not grow too much. Unless you're selling off the excess or exchanging with a neighbor, you likely won't need 20 zucchini plants for a family of four. Plant however much you will use. If your small garden plans on turning cucumbers into pickles, by all means, grow more cucumbers than you'll use fresh. However, if you have no way of preserving a vegetable, or no space to keep it, plant what you can eat while it's fresh, not every seed in the package.
How do you raise vegetable gardens?
Raised gardens provide a number of benefits. The soil is generally looser, providing better drainage. Gardeners are less likely to walk inside raised gardens, which compact the soil. The soil in raised gardens can heat up faster in the spring, allowing for an earlier planting time.
Walls for raised gardens can be made with a number of materials. Wooden boards, rocks or large stones, a dry-stacked wall of flagstone, or even simple logs can be used to surround the area. Any raised garden should be small enough so that you can weed, cultivate, and harvest your vegetables without stepping onto the soil.
If you don't have materials for walls, you can still build a raised garden using the lasagna gardening technique. Simply place several layers of newspaper on the ground and water well. This is the first layer to help keep weeds from coming up in your garden.
Then build a mulch pile on top of the newspapers. Use fresh grass clippings, well-rotted manure, chopped dead leaves, vegetable scraps from your kitchen, and a bit of wood ash. You can either let this raised area sit through winter, and then plant the following spring, or add good loamy topsoil on top and begin planting right away. Either way, you won't need to worry about edging (but, tight fencing is probably a good idea when rabbits abound).
How do you vertical vegetable gardening
If you don't have much gardening space, or even if you do, vertical gardening may be for your small garden plans. Peas, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash will all grow on trellises. Vertical gardening takes up less square footage, so you can plant more. Incidentally, using less square footage means less weeding, less fertilizing, and less work. In addition, vertical gardening exposes the plants and their vegetables to more light and air, increasing their yield, and decreasing waste due to rot or mold.
Whether your small garden plans use vertical gardening techniques, raised beds, or other ideas, vegetable gardening can bring many rewards. If you've never raised your own vegetables, why not start with one you like eating? You may enjoy it, even more, knowing that you grew it yourself.
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