OK, so I’ve read about recommended plant spacing for various vegetable plants. If you go by those, you need a lot of space to grow a decent veggie garden. Does anybody completely ignore these “recommended” spacing and pack them tight and still get great results? Or the two don’t go hand in hand? I mean packing them tight and great results. Please share your experience
I find that yield is often a factor of space, not number of plants. Crowding them, each plant will yield less, but the space will yield about the same.
For some plants
3 Likes
It depends. I always give garlic and shallots and such plenty of space because the thinnings aren’t transplantable and have limited utility. But I over plant lettuce and spinach type things, transplanting some of the thinnings and eating some. Tomatoes and peppers get their final spacing, but toms can be put fairly close to each other if you train them to grow up. Beans go in with good spacing. Some people thin carrots fairly closely at first and then eat thinnings later. Vine crops are going to take all the space you let them take, but can be trained up, too.
Part of the rational behind spacing is soil fertility and such, but light and air play into it too. I can probably place things closer than someone in the southeast as it’s pretty arid here, so disease pressures are not as high here as in other areas.
I hope this helps.
1 Like
These answers are consistent with what I’ve seen, although I’d add it is easy to have more yield less as well. With root vegetables, it seems as if they sense they are too close and just don’t seem to get the same size (or even any size). With tomatoes, unless you are ready to be super vigilant with pinching suckers, etc. to keep them single or double stem, it is easy for the plants to compromise each others, spread blight or just shade and compete with each other and ultimately give you less than if you had planted fewer plants to begin with.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t plant things too close even when I realize it might yield less. Sometimes I hate the idea of wasting those extra seedlings, or often I want to grow more varieties so squeeze a few more in to fit one of each. For me it can be worth it to get less quantity in favor of variety, but that isn’t ideal. I just need more space…
1 Like
garlicks，I give enough space between them，but plant pea in between rolls. Spinach, and other greens, I usually crowd them, I can always thin and eat thinnings if space is the issue
2 Likes
I suppose you could get more product if you could get them to grow vertical, however I know I get more tomatoes by having fewer large plants. I have to plant my Big Boy tomatoes spaced further apart than my Bud9s. 
1 Like
I’m guessing you have a longer season than I do! My main crop tomato is Early Cascade, and then I’ll put in a Celebrity or an Early Girl in hope of getting a few good-sized slicers. I do prune them to one stem and they’ll grow several feet high. Doesn’t take very many to keep us supplied through the season, but I don’t put them up.
What I learned so far, all of the veggies doing better with more space. But I do push the limits and still get good crop. It works like this: let’s say you have 5 feet row. You can put 3 tomatoes there and get X lb tomatoes from each =3Xlb. Or you can plant 2 and get 1.5X lb tomatoes from each. so you still get 3Xlb of tomatoes. But in first case you can have three different tomatoes, not two.
I started with 1.5’X1.5’ per tomato plant, ended up with 2’X2’. If summer is dry. there is no much difference,but if summer is wet and muggy, 1.5X1.5 will not have enough sun and also create favorite condition for fungus.
What I really plant closer is onions. I do not like big onions, I always have half left, so they grow a bit smaller, but take less space. Peppers can be planted pretty close - like 1’ between plants in a row. Cucumbers, zucchinis need their space, so for cucumbers I go up on trellis.
If you tell what exact plants are in question, I can give more info.
2 Likes
Did you try 4th of July? They are good. In a good year if you start them early enough, you can get first tomatoes … well, by 4th of July 
. I actually remember a year when I have first on June 29. They good producers of golf-ball or a bit bigger size tomatoes, with good taste and fruiting til first frost. They are my “working horse” tomatoes.
1 Like
Sounds like they’d be worth a try- I’ll look around this week and see if there’s any out there. Thanks for the tip.
It’s a good point about squeezing them in and get more varieties though the yield is still the same.
Galinas: Can’t believe your problem is having too big onions. I’ll take a picture of my onions tomorrow . They are almost two months in and the size of peanuts 
Mine do not have any size yet 
, though I started them from seeds in mid Jan. But around start of July they will start to bulb out, and they do it pretty fast. Previous years I planted Redwing, but started them in mid December. Even with 4’‘X8’’ planting they were ready by end of July-start of August, with smallest bigger than an egg and largest (most of them) as big as big apple. But you need to feed them well - they are heavy feeders and like blood meal. This year I planted Copra - and planted later as well. So I expect them to be ready at the mid or end of August. And they should be smaller in sizes.
One more thing I want to add.
You can actually have full size garden and even small orchard on 6000 sq ft lot, that includes house, 3 car parking and two sheds. But what you can’t have on that size yard is luxury of trying things out. Because one plant you can fit in that only spot left can give you enough crop for your family, but if you want to try different kind each year, you may get nothing if you got a wrong one. So as soon as you nail it - what grows well and produces in your condition - you stick to it. So you loose the excitement, but gain produce .
2 Likes
Research “square foot gardening” for tips on how to crowd things.