How Big a Garden to Make?

[trion]

How big should an average veggie garden be? Is there any way to calculate how much room we may need?

I am a total newbie and my newbie friend who has no room for a garden plan on planting a garden in my backyard. While we want to do a lot of experimenting this year and see how it goes, we do not want to go overboard with the space. We plan on fencing it in. Thank you!

 

[blue skys]

The size really depends on what you want to plant. I am not a good planner, I just kinda change things as I go along. Y'all decide what you want to plant and then look at the suggested spacing for them and go from there.

 

[warmfuzzies]

It really depends on whether you are going to be planting in the old row style, or the newer intensive style beds.

It is really easy to go overboard with the intensive panting, as you fit so much in a small space.

It also depends on what you will be growing. The first thing you need to do is decide what plants you want and then you can do some research on each one to find out how much you will need.

Some plants are way bigger then others. Tomatoes, peppers and the like are medium plants. Almost all of the squash, melons, and the like will be HUGE. The small veggies, carrots, beets, lettuce, are mostly spring veggies. Onions are small and they grow all summer.

When you are picking out what plants to grow, you need to also consider your area. Is it hot and dry? (Mine is) Hot and Humid? Long cool springs, or short hot ones? Long summers, or hardly any hot weather? This will all halp you decide what you can grow easily in a frist garden.

 

[patandchickens]

I would suggest starting with nothing bigger than about 12x12 (*possibly* twice that, one for your friend and one for you), but doing intensive planting such as in Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening (or any other similar approach).

Reason being, the two biggest causes of garden failures are inability to keep up with weeding (which is an especially fierce task the first few years in a new garden bed), and inability to attend to each plant's particular watering needs (which happens when you have too many of them to deal with or notice on a daily basis).

You can really grow *quite a lot* in a 12x12 (ish) space, intensively planted, and it makes the work manageable. Then NEXT year you will have a pretty good idea how much, if any, you want to expand.

Better to get some good crop from a modest workload in a modest garden, than near-zero crop from an overwhelming workload in a big garden.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[jlmann]

Tough question. I have 7 veggie plots that range from @16'x16' to 8'x24' and even one "row" that is 2'x20' . I like to keep them fairly small so I can walk around them to look at stuff rather than having to stomp through rows and compact the soil( which means I have to till it) I always make a plan , but never stick to it. I just plunk stuff in the ground and let it grow. If it's in the way later I till it in and plant tomatoes. My sis really overthinks her garden and worries too much about it , so try not to do that! She gets so mad when she does all this careful planning then comes over here and says stuff like "why is there a six foot tomatoe climbing your carport?"
and I say " because I ran out of space so I just put it there" but but"it's prettier than all of my tomatoes"

 

[vfem]

I just did a few raised beds to feed a family of 3. I guess I would have gone bigger then the 100 sq ft I am doing now to factor in more people who want to eat from it. I do have little raised beds for flowers I am mixing in heads of lettuce and spinach to get some shade through the summer... so I guess I am using over 100 sq ft. None-the-less, decide on a good number according to the types of veggie and fruit you want to try, figure out how many people need to eat from it...

Then always come here and take Pat's advice!!!

 

[vfem]

Tough question. I have 7 veggie plots that range from @16'x16' to 8'x24' and even one "row" that is 2'x20' . I like to keep them fairly small so I can walk around them to look at stuff rather than having to stomp through rows and compact the soil( which means I have to till it) I always make a plan , but never stick to it. I just plunk stuff in the ground and let it grow. If it's in the way later I till it in and plant tomatoes. My sis really overthinks her garden and worries too much about it , so try not to do that! She gets so mad when she does all this careful planning then comes over here and says stuff like "why is there a six foot tomatoe climbing your carport?"
and I say " because I ran out of space so I just put it there" but but"it's prettier than all of my tomatoes"

 

[Greenthumb18]

Maybe you should start out small and work your up to a bigger garden when your more experienced.

 

[Catalina]

I would suggest starting with nothing bigger than about 12x12 (*possibly* twice that, one for your friend and one for you), but doing intensive planting such as in Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening (or any other similar approach).

Reason being, the two biggest causes of garden failures are inability to keep up with weeding (which is an especially fierce task the first few years in a new garden bed), and inability to attend to each plant's particular watering needs (which happens when you have too many of them to deal with or notice on a daily basis).

You can really grow *quite a lot* in a 12x12 (ish) space, intensively planted, and it makes the work manageable. Then NEXT year you will have a pretty good idea how much, if any, you want to expand.

Better to get some good crop from a modest workload in a modest garden, than near-zero crop from an overwhelming workload in a big garden.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

Great advice! I agree 100%.

Mel's book is a great place for a newbie to start. It's a wonderful book!

 

[smom1976]

I started out with two 4x8 raised beds... they did pretty good.. this year I added another 4 x8 bed and 10, 19 foot rows..

I am going to see which one I like better...

if it is raised beds then I will make more where the rows were..