Plant Spacing Guide for Square Foot Gardening

Are you gardening in a small space or a beginner gardener? Then you should try square foot gardening. It makes plant spacing super simple, plus it provides a lot of produce in very little space. Check out this plant spacing guide for square foot gardening.

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Brown Thumb to Homegrown Goodies

Growing up I was notorious for my terrible cooking and my brown thumb. I had to keep a plant alive for a class in highschool, so I immediately ran it home to my mom. She kept it alive and I got an A. It wasn’t a lack of experience. My mom and Mama both have beautiful flowers and bountiful gardens. As a kid I would help them plant, water, and pick. As a teenager, I would tend to the garden when my mom wasn’t home.

Something about doing it all by myself was different though. I started some seeds and they died. The night custodian gave me an aloe plant, which died within three months. We bought a lavender plant to put on the porch. Dead. Despite my track record, my husband agreed to build me a raised bed in the backyard. I was determined to make it work this time around, so I did what any 25 year old would do and went to Pinterest.

I measured out my bed and divided it into squares. Then I drew it out on paper labeling each box with a plant. Because I am a type A person, I also colored each box according to how many plants would go in a square foot. It looked pretty on paper, but I still hadn’t successfully grown anything yet.

My husband and I went to several stores and nurseries to get the exact number and types of plants I needed to make my paper garden come to life. After that it was up to me. I wound up with a bounty. We had more tomatoes and herbs than I knew what to do with. Sweet success!

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Calculating Plant Spacing in a Square Foot Garden

Plants need space to grow and thrive. That’s why seed packets will have spacing on the back and potted plants will have it on the tag. This is great, but doesn’t exactly work in a square foot garden. The spacing on those are intended for a line of plants. Think like rows of corn. Turning that into the number of plants per square foot is quite easy.

Look at the seed spacing on the packet or tag. (Let’s say it’s 4 inches)
Divide 12 by that number. (12 ÷ 4 = 3)
Multiply that number by itself. ( 3 x 3 = 9) That’s how many plants you can put per square foot.

Tada! Now you can figure out the spacing for any plant. Keep the number of plants in mind when you are figuring out how many squares you want to plant. I, for example, don’t like tomatoes, so I’m not going to plant 4 squares of tomatoes. Last year I did exactly that, so I’m speaking from experience. We still have tomatoes frozen in the fridge. I gave away trash bags full of tomatoes. The potatoes on the other hand were gone within a week.

Plant Spacing Tips for Square Foot Gardening

When looking at the spacing you must consider a few things. For example, two cucumbers can be planted per square foot. While this is fine and they will grow, you will have way more than 1 square foot of cucumber plants. They like to spread out and climb. Use a trellis to help them climb up instead of out. I also suggest leaving a foot or two gap between them and another plant. Last year I left a two foot gap, but had no trellis. Cucumbers went everywhere. This year I had a trellis but no gap. Cucumbers are everywhere. Two of them can go in a square foot, but they aren’t friendly neighbors. My tomatoes can vouch for that. This will be the case with any vining plant, so keep that in mind when planning things out. Need help planning out your garden? Check out my How to Plan a Garden post or download this FREE Garden Planner.

With plants so close together, it can be difficult to get in there to harvest or pull weeds. I like to do a couple rows of plants then leave an empty foot row for walking. This is only a problem if you can’t reach all the way into your garden from the outside. If the bed is more than about three feet wide, consider leaving some space to walk.

While spacing is important it is not the only consideration when deciding where to plant things. You must take into account cross pollination, plant height, and sun direction. Be aware that some plants don’t do well together, while others help each other out. Some plants grow early and are gone by July, while others won’t start growing until June. If you are using the space again next year make sure to plant perennials in their forever home, but rotate the types of annuals that go in each square.