Big Plans for Small Spaces

One of the main problems I’ve had to solve, as a suburban gardener with limited space, time, and energy, is where to put all the plants I want to grow. Fortunately, I do have a flowerbed about 30 feet long and 3 feet wide, and I’m able to relegate some of the more decorative or hard-to-place plants to a spot among the perennials. But my main vegetable garden is small, and I want to get as much edible growth as possible out of my 100-foot-square raised bed.

So I’ve embraced the notions of interplanting and succession planting with the fervor of a religious revivalist. To begin the season, I’ve planted the entire middle portion of the garden with green, leafy vegetables—spinach and butterhead lettuce—and radishes. In between the rows, I’ve placed eight good-sized rocks to indicate where the tomatoes will be planted later in the season. This is a new thing for me, and there’s no telling how well it will work.

The radish seedlings came up first, just a few days ago. These were meant to be a decoy plant, so that any insect that had an interest in spinach or lettuce would instead eat the radish plants, which marauding bugs are said to prefer. Nothing has eaten any of the seedlings yet, and I have been thinning out some of the extras. The spinach and lettuce have since made their appearance between the radish rows. The seedlings appear robust. I am anxiously awaiting the appearance of the first pair of true leaves on each of them. Only then will I feel confident that some of these plants will make it to harvest.

On the southeastern edge of the garden, I have planted a narrower bed of Swiss chard and Walla Walla onions. I love the idea of growing big, sweet onions, but so far, there’s been no onion action. The Swiss chard, meanwhile, has emerged vigorously, as one would expect from a planting of big, strong-looking, cube-shaped seeds. I have high hopes for the Swiss chard. It’s supposed to do quite well in the summer heat. In Virginia, that’s a big plus. If it grows to the height I’ve seen in the grocery stores—some two and a half feet of strong-ribbed, tightly bunched vertical leaves—I will feel that I have brought something worthwhile to the world.

On the opposite edge, I’ve raised the trellis I mentioned before. To one side of my bamboo frame, I attached a length of plastic netting with twist ties. It was the same netting that I used last year in a not entirely successful attempt to keep the birds off my blueberry bushes. Beneath this netting, I’ve planted a row of closely-spaced snow peas, an early crop that should be out of the way by midsummer. On the other side of the trellis, the first pole bean seedling is poking its curved, yellow-green stem out of the mud.

In between, I’ve hilled up the dirt to accommodate one buttercup squash plant at each end of the row, with three cucumber hills taking up the middle. I poked a nasturtium seed into the base of each hill, because nasturtiums are supposed to repel squash bugs, which were the bane of my existence last year. The squash, cucumbers, and nasturtiums have not yet germinated, though I’ve kept a close watch on the hills.

Indoors, my peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants are still quite small, and the eggplants have only now put out their third leaves. These I will have to transplant into larger containers—Dixie cups, most likely, since I have nothing better, and since one must use these paper cups for something, after stumbling over them in the pantry closet for so many years. Between the tomato plants, I may plant a few peppers, but I think most of the peppers and eggplants will go into the flowerbed, just as they did last year. Peppers, in particular, are attractive plants, with their gleaming, pointed leaves, white flowers, and pendulous fruit.

Between the tomatoes, after the greens are done, I will plant two kinds of basil: plain basil and cinnamon basil. Although I’ve read that planting basil near tomatoes will improve their flavor, I’m not sure I believe those assertions. After all, any homegrown tomato is a huge improvement over the supermarket variety, and further enhancements in flavor would be extremely hard to measure. Still, I’ll give it a try. I like basil and I like tomatoes. The gardener’s foremost directive should be to plant what she likes. The only trouble is figuring out where to put it and making the plan work out.