In a Postage Stamp garden, a garden that uses a barest possible amount of space, the placement of your plants is critical. You need to utilize every square inch of space but leave room for the plants to breath and receive enough nutrients to grow healthy and produce large crops.
photo credit: The Marmot

Below are a few suggestions for plant placement

Its best if you had time in the winter to plan a garden but you may have decided to plant at the last moment or you have just created a space for a garden. If you haven’t planned a garden it is helpful to lay a design out on paper.  You will have a better plant placement plus you won’t forget a plant or two.

One important part of a postage stamp garden is to use as much of the air space as possible. Some call this layering the plants. Train tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and vining plants up trellises, arbors, fences, poles, walls or what ever is available. This keeps the plants off the ground, saves space and promotes healthier plants. Sprawling plants will also choke out over smaller plants and makes weeding more difficult.

I have also found I have less insect problems growing certain plants vertical. One more additional plus is that it is pretty. Mix a flowering vine in with the vertical vegetables and it’s stunning. The flowering vine will also help pollination.

For your small backyard design postage stamp garden it’s not necessary to use rows. As a matter of fact rows use more space. I divide the garden into rectangular, square or circular spaces and plant a certain vegetable in that space. The same applies to seedling that you buy. Plant them randomly leaving enough space between the plants. Plants need enough space to grow and like to touch when mature. Spacing will depend on the plant.

For example tomatoes need one foot on both sides when trellised, lettuce like six inches and you can space beans four inches apart. . The Square Foot Garden book by Mel Bartholomew has a great section on plant spacing.

Its best to leave pathways in your garden if you have to reach more than a couple of feet. This way you can get to all the plants easily. This layout will also give you garden an artistic look. And if you have room on the garden place a small bench to rest. I also place a rain barrel in the center of my garden that I fill with water for quick watering or plants.

I also mix flower, herbs and vegetable all in the same plot. They benefit each other, many flowers have natural insect repelling characteristics and it just makes the garden prettier. I am a firm believer in a garden should be fun.

One other important consideration in your small backyard postage stamp garden design is to make sure you plant tall vegetable on the north end of you garden. Taller plants will shade the smaller plants that need sun. Plant the other vegetables in a descending order according to their size down to the south section of the garden. I do occasionally break this rule during the hot summer months with spinach and lettuce plants to give them a little shade in the afternoon hours.

With intensive gardening and the Postage Stamp Gardening method for using space you should be able to design a small backyard garden for any area, even balconies and patios. Gardens add to the development of a backyard oasis paradise.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 11:12 am and is filed under backyard design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.