Vegetables for small spaces

Whether gardening for fun or necessity, gardening in urban areas is all about making the most of small spaces. As someone who often gardens for the sheer joy of it, I don’t always think about what varieties are the best fit for my small urban garden, and sometimes that gets me into trouble. This year I’m being more mindful of my planting, and at the end of the season I’ll be letting you know the winners and losers from my test garden. For this spring, however, choosing small, productive varieties and mixing crops are good places to start for the beginning gardener.

Vegetable varieties

Thanks to generations of breeding, there are multiple varieties available for most crops. You aren’t limited to the 20 lb watermelon with the 15 ft vines or the tomato that grows 4’ tall and takes over your beans. Growing bush or dwarf varieties (plants with a smaller, stockier growth habit) instead of indeterminate (continuously growing) and vine varieties can increase the number of plants that can fit in any given space. When growing squash, cucumbers, watermelons, tomatoes, eggplants or the like, if the description in the seed catalog doesn’t use words like “bush”, “determinate” or “space-saver” you may want to pick a different variety.

Size difference between a "space-saver" or "patio" variety and an "indeterminate" variety of pepper

I found a great bulletin from Iowa State University that listed varieties that performed well in small garden plots in their area. This doesn't mean they will all do well here, but they are a good starting point. Here are a few they suggested:

Cucumbers – Patio pickle, pickle bush and Spacemaster

Lettuce – Buttercrunch, Black Seeded Simpson

Muskmelon – Honey Bun

Pepper – Lady Bell, Mariachi (hot)

Tomatoes – Standard: Bush Early, Celebrity

                   Patio: Patio hybrid, Patio Princess

                   Grape: Red Candy, Sweet Zen

Spinach – Bolting resistant varieties: Indian summer, Medania, Tyee (from a bulletin from Colorado State University)

Additionally, these are a few small-space-appropriate varieties that I’ve grown and found did really well here:

Winter squash – Table Ace

Watermelon – Golden Midget

Zucchini – Greyzini, Green Summer Latino Hybrid

Pumpkin – Lil Pump kemon

Eggplant – Black Beauty

Multiple harvests

 Gardens are dynamic. A well-planned garden is always in season from early spring to late fall. It takes experience and a lot of trial and error to get to that point, but this post should help you get started.
Step 1: Stagger your planting dates. For some crops you can get multiple harvests per season. Broccoli can be started indoors and transplanted early in the season, and it can also be direct seeded into the ground once the weather is warmer. The direct seeding ensures a second crop in the fall.  Another option is to direct seed mid season crops like beans for a second harvest after a spring crop such as lettuce or peas has been harvested.
Step 2: Planting slow maturing crops along with fast maturing crops. Somewhere on the seed packets is a number printed called days to maturity. This is your guide. Choose plants with fast maturing times (lettuce, radishes, peas) to plant in rows between your slower maturing plants (tomatoes, eggplants, carrots, and corn). As the faster maturing plants are harvested, they’ll be making room for those slower maturing plants that will require more space. Another alternative is mixing seeds of slow maturing with fast maturing seeds. This really only works for a few crops though, like mixing radishes with carrots.
Step 3: Fall plantings. As you harvest mid season crops don’t be afraid to plant another round of some of your early season vegetables. Those cooler nights and shorter days sound just lovely to lettuce, spinach, mustard greens and peas.

Sources contributing to some of the information in this post:

http://licking.osu.edu/top-stories/vegetable-gardening-in-a-small-space

umaine.edu/publications/2761e/

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/publications/pm870a.pdf http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/CoopExt/4DMG/Plants/smlspace.htm