Small Vegetable Garden Plans

Small Vegetable Garden Plans are what you may be considering if you have a small place to plant things or if you just want to grow food for one person.

I have drawn up some suggested plans. You can find these at: vegetable garden planning. The other day I was watching "War of the Worlds". It was an older version I had not seen. I was watching it because it had a part two. It was okay for the first hour, then it got stupid.

Anyway, it showed the main character walking around, starving when he happens upon someone's garden. He begins eating the carrots from the garden, without even washing them.

It kind of made me think that everyone should try to grow a small garden so that in a catastrophe, they can take care of themselves or if they do not survive then the survivors will have something to eat.

Being able to grow food is something everyone should know how to do. This ability would also require the knowledge for seed propagation. Without seeds we cannot have a garden.

The pictures below show grape tomatoes from my garden. I am growing them in both containers and in the ground. If space is limited, and for only one person, then three 18" wide container pots would provide enough grape tomatoes.

Also shown is lettuce in a container pot. Probably two of these 18" apart would work. Plant one container and then a month later plant the next. You should have a good supply of lettuce. If you have a nice sunny place in your home, you can move your lettuce indoors when it gets to be cold.

I also show my green beans. The bush beans are looking bad for some reason. They should have a nice dark green color but they do not.

Looking at my pole beans, these are doing well. Basically, you can put a garden anywhere you want where you have or can put soil with some sort of retainer or raised garden bed.

I have learned that in my small vegetable garden plans, I have made a slight mistake. I put my garden up against the fence and the house. In some areas I did not do a full check to see how long the sun shone on a certain spot.

What I have found out is my fence is providing shade on some spots all day long, so the items I planted in that area are not doing well. I could have avoided this by moving my raised bed a foot or two off the fence.

What I could have done was make my raised bed four feet wide and planted a shady plant of flowers in the two feet by the fence. Or I could have moved it out three feet and just made a four foot wide bed instead of two. I have the room for this.

In planning your small vegetable garden plan make sure you know how long the sun shines on a certain spot.

The flowers would have been good for they would have attracted bees and other pollinators that would help my garden.

In making your small vegetable garden plans, take a sheet of paper and draw where you want your vegetable garden. See how much space you have.

Once you know how much space you have, you will want to figure out want you want and can grow. If you are new at gardening, start with a spring/summer garden first.

Then figure out what it is you want to grow. Just start with a few things first of all.

I would suggest green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers. These are usually easy to grow in small vegetable garden plans.

If you are growing for one or two people then I would suggest three to four cucumber plants plus a couple in case something happens to one of the others. Once they start growing, you can expect three to four cucumbers every couple of days. Probably more.

For tomato plants I would plant three cherry tomato plants and three plants of the beefy type. Here you can grow a determinate variety which is mostly a bush type plant. Or you can grow an indeterminate which is a vine type tomato.

Green beans for one person to eat some every couple of days will require a space of about 24 square foot. Green beans come in bush type and pole type.

The pole type will require a pole of some sort to grow up. They can get as high as 12 feet.

Lettuce can be grown in an 18" container and will keep you supplied for many months.

With the tomato, lettuce and cucumber, you have enough ingredients for a salad.

Once you have made your choices for your small vegetable garden plans, all you have to do is pick your space and plant, keeping in mind that you will be planting a Fall garden and you have to rotate your stock.

In other words a pole bean will produce longer than a bush bean so you would not want to plant pole beans where you plan on putting in a Fall crop--unless you want to chop it down before it stops producing. Generally it will produce until the first frost. Same with the tomatoes.

Also, you do not want to plant the same crop in the same spot each year. Rotate them each year.

What do you do with all the fresh food from your garden that you cannot eat? You can give it to friends or "can it" for future eating like the pioneers used to.

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