What Is Gardenary Planting?

Picture an empty 4ft. x 4ft. raised garden bed. What most gardeners would do is fill that raised bed with nine cabbage plants or maybe hundreds of carrots or dozens of garlic or onion bulbs, like the traditionally planted bed pictured below.

That's not how I personally would fill those 16 square feet of growing space. I look at the bed below and see a lot of missed planting opportunities.

I'd put an obelisk trellis in the center of the bed and plant it with peas. Then I'd plant garlic, cilantro, dill, kale, Swiss chard, and parsley around the trellis. I'd add rows of carrots next to the large leafy greens and more rows of spinach alongside the carrots. Lastly, I'd plant chives, more herbs, and flowers around the very edge of the raised bed, and if I still had some open spots, I'd add some fast-growing French breakfast radishes.

Yes, all in a 4ft. x 4ft. raised bed!

The Gardenary Way Utilizes Intensive Planting

This is a style of planting in the garden called intensive planting. It may feel really strange to those of you who are used to a more traditional way of planting. It'll probably look like we've thrown the plant spacing rulebook out the window. In reality, we're still giving plants the space they need to grow, just nothing more. And instead of focusing on a single plant type or a couple of our favorites, we'll branch out to lots of different plants that like the same weather.

Packing in a wide variety of plants keeps the garden interesting. It's not just the same spaced-out peppers and beans every day for months. An intensively planted garden filled with in-season plants is constantly growing and changing. Every day, there's something new and something else ready to harvest.

Let's look at a Gardenary planting plan so we can explore intensive planting a bit more before we compare it to traditional planting methods.

Intensive Planting the Gardenary Way

The goal of a Gardenary planting plan is basically to leave no space between plants. Every square inch of the garden is covered in a delicious edible plant that will produce leaves, roots, or eventually, fruits for you to harvest and enjoy.

Pictured below is a planting plan for a 4ft. x 4ft. raised bed during the cool growing season (when the temps are typically above freezing and below 65 degrees Fahrenheit).

I like to fill the center of a raised bed with a large plant. In this plan, I chose peas for my large plant. Even though each pea plant isn't really that large, you need to grow a lot of them in order to harvest enough pods to feed your family. There's an obelisk trellis in the middle that could support dozens of pea plants growing vertically.

Around the trellis, I'd plant lots of tall leafy greens like kale and Swiss chard. I'd interplant those with garlic or onions to help repel pests. I'd add some fast-growing greens like lettuce so that I could begin harvesting leaves as soon as possible.

Around the outside of the bed, I'd do flowers and herbs. I added some strawberries, as well, though these will take a while before they'll produce.

As soon as the weather begins warming up, I'd add in pepper plants and cherry tomatoes around the trellis so that these large plants could be ready to take over as soon as the peas are finishing up.

Now, let's look at some of the key differences between Gardenary planting and more traditional methods. I've included some planting plans throughout to give you a better idea of how you can pack in those plants.

Plant Spacing

Ordinary Way:

Follow the plant spacing rules on the back of seed packs.

Gardenary Way:

Consider the mature size of the plant when planting. Give each plant just enough room to grow to full size but no more.

The spacing recommendations on the backs of seed packets apply to plants you're growing in the ground in long, wide rows, the kind you'd see on a farm or in a large vegetable patch. Instructions that say to plant 3 to 4 feet apart in rows 3 feet apart are for growers with 20 or more plants in a large area.

Growing like that just isn't realistic for most of us due to space constraints. I don't know about you, but I don't have acres and acres of planting space. I want to make the most of the room I have available, while still ensuring that each plant has the sunlight, airflow, and water it needs.

This is where the garden setup comes into play. Growing in a raised bed filled with great soil and utilizing strong trellises for vertical space allows us to pack in the plants. The raised garden bed provides room for roots to dig down deep, the soil provides the nutrients they need to thrive, and the trellises encourage larger plants to grow up instead of out.

Plant Size

Ordinary Way:

Plant a couple large plants in one raised bed or numerous small plants.

Gardenary Way:

Plant a variety of different-sized plants in the same raised bed.

At Gardenary, our goal is to create a tightly planted mix of small, medium, and large plants that all prefer the same growing season. These plants can work together in harmony, sharing the space, sharing nutrients, and conserving resources in the soil, without losing any of them to the atmosphere. This mix of plants will fill the kitchen garden with life and interest.

Using plants of all different sizes allows us to interplant so that as much soil is covered as possible. We typically arrange large plants in the middle or back of the garden, then surround these large plants with medium-size and small plants.

Plant Diversity

Ordinary Way:

Plant an entire raised bed with one to two different crops.

Gardenary Way:

Plant a variety of different plants in the same raised bed.

If you only have one type of plant in a raised bed, there's nothing to stop a pest or disease from coming in and destroying every single one of those plants. Even without pests or disease, there's not a high likelihood that the single plant type will contribute a whole lot to your garden space.

Having a variety of different plants increases the likelihood of certain plants performing functions that will maintain the overall health of the garden. This includes things like attracting pollinators and other beneficial insects, fixing nitrogen in the soil, repelling pests, shading smaller plants, suppressing weeds, and pulling nutrients from deep within the soil closer to the surface to benefit plants with more shallow roots.

Plants perform best when working together with other plants. They don't like growing alone in perfectly spaced rows. When you interplant with a number of different plants, you're essentially creating a little ecosystem inside of your garden bed. Ecosystems are meant to maintain balance and support all the life within.

Crop Rotation

Ordinary Way:

Plant different crops in sequential seasons to avoid depleting soil nutrients, deter pests, and disrupt disease cycles.

Gardenary Way:

Plant a revolving door of plants in different families each season.

The Gardenary way means to change out many of the plants in the garden every 90 days or so as we move through the growing seasons. This constantly revolving door of plants means we don't really need to worry about formal crop rotation.

To illustrate, picture one square foot in a raised bed planted the Gardenary way. That square foot might support sugar snap peas in the cool season, tomatoes in the warm season, okra in the hot season, and cucumbers in the second warm season. These fruiting plants all come from different plant families and have their own benefits and drawbacks in the garden space.

To learn more about your different growing seasons, check out my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival, or our online garden course, Kitchen Garden Academy.

Garden Tending

Ordinary Way:

Weed and perform large-scale tending tasks a couple of times throughout growing season. (Labor is clustered.)

Gardenary Way:

Prune and support plants weekly throughout growing season. (Labor is more spread out.)

If I only planted a row of Napa cabbages, my only tending tasks would be making sure there are no pests on the greens, watering, and returning to harvest after a couple of weeks. Plants growing close together in a raised bed the Gardenary way need much more regular tending and harvesting than row gardens.

I'll be honest and say that tending the Gardenary way requires you to spend some time in the garden each and every week. (How much time, of course, will depend on the size of the garden.) The main tending task will be pruning to maintain space between plants.

There are two upsides to planting intensively when it comes to tending tasks. The first is that you don't have to weed as often. The bare soil left between plants in a traditional garden is an open invitation to weeds. When I had an entire raised bed growing just four tomato plants, I realized that weeds could pop up between the tomatoes and have as much access to sunlight, water, and other resources as they needed. Gardenary-style planting doesn't leave room for weeds.

The second upside is that you don't have to water nearly as often. Bare soil dries out quickly, which means it also loses nutrients faster than an intensively planted bed. Planting the Gardenary way means all that plant mass shields the soil and helps it retain moisture and nutrients. If you feel like you're constantly watering, especially in the summer months, try adding more plants to the space.

Aesthetics

Ordinary Way:

Create visually appealing straight rows.

Gardenary Way:

Create more wild-looking spaces with lots of different colors, textures, and heights.

Don't get me wrong—traditional planting can be beautiful. I used to be a regular visitor to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's kitchen garden in Charlottesville, and I always admired the way all the plants grew in those long, attractive rows. Much of the beauty is in the repetitiveness of the plants’ forms, one right after the other. 

That being said, I also love the different colors, textures, and heights that create so much visual interest in an intensively planted garden. To me, it's beautiful abundance bordering on wildness. Everywhere you look, there's something to admire and explore.

It's rare to see a raised bed planted the Gardenary way that's not just absolutely stunning.

Production

Ordinary Way:

Harvest produce from single plant type after its full time to maturity.

Gardenary Way:

Harvest from variety of fast-growing plants while larger plants reach maturity.

The Gardenary way of planting maximizes the production you can get from your kitchen garden space because you’re growing as much as possible in however much space you have. Packing in the plants and growing a wide variety of plants means you have something to harvest almost every single day of your growing season.

Think of a large plant like eggplant or melons, something that takes anywhere from 60 to 90 days in the garden before you can harvest it. During that time, the plant needs to be watered and tended while it's doing its thing. If a big plant is all you’ve planted, those months are going to be long and boring ones. You've got all this raised bed space that's not producing for you for weeks, and meanwhile, your harvest basket is collecting dust.

Now, compare that scenario to a raised bed planted the Gardenary way with medium-size and small plants around that large plant. You can harvest from those other plants on a continuous basis while you’re waiting for the large plant to mature. In one of my raised beds, for example, I can harvest chives, clip leaves from my lettuce plants, and start to pull some carrots while I’m waiting on my cabbage to form a full head over its long lifespan in the garden.

This keeps the garden interesting and exciting. If you're just growing tomatoes, you might not love going out to tend the garden because it's like, “Well, there's the same ol' tomato plants again, looking exactly like they did yesterday.” The best way to feel motivated to go out to the garden is to know that there will be some leaves and maybe some roots for you to harvest while you wait on all those delicious fruits to grow.

Major bonus: If something should happen to those fruits (like squirrels coming in and doing a little garden raid), you'll still have other plants to harvest.

Plant in Overlapping Rows

We still use rows in intensive planting to make plants easier to find. The idea is just that these rows will be overlapping by the time plants reach their full size.

Be sure you’re laying out your plants and planting seeds straight. I recommend using stakes and twine to create a straight planting line. Place stakes at either end of the garden, and run your twine to either side. More than a few times I’ve come out to plant without stakes, only to take a step back and see a whole bunch of crooked plants.

In a raised bed just 2.5 feet wide, you could have anywhere from three to five rows of different kinds of plants. This setup has a lovely overall effect.

Taper Your Plants by Height

Place smaller plants closer to the border of the garden and taller plants closer to the interior of the bed (or the very back if the bed is up against a tall structure like a fence or your house). Not only does this ensure that taller plants don't cast too much shade on shorter ones, it also makes tending and harvesting easier. The small plants will need the most frequent tending and harvesting—and they're right on the edge, within easy access.

Start by filling the border of the garden with herbs, flowers, and small plants. Then, add small and medium-size plants to the middle row. This can be plants like leafy greens, bush beans and peas, or root crops like beets, radishes, and carrots. Add the biggest plants to the very center of the bed; some will need to be planted along a trellis. 

Consider the Mature Size of Each Plant

Small plants like carrots and spinach only need about 1/16 to 1/9 of a square foot each. Most medium-size plants like kale need about 1/4 of a square foot each. Large plants need at least one square foot to themselves.

Instead of thinking of these plants as squares on a grid, like you might if you were using the Square Foot Gardening method, picture each plant as a small, medium, or large circle within that square foot. Since plants are roughly round in shape when viewed from overhead, this will better help you picture the mature size of each plant and how much room it will need in the garden.

Ready to Plant the Gardenary Way?

Planting the Gardenary way means looking at an empty raised bed, even a small one, and seeing nothing but planting possibilities!

I highly recommend that you watch our online video lessons in Kitchen Garden Academy or read Kitchen Garden Revival before you dig into intensive planting, if you haven't already. Both go over kitchen garden setup and will help you create just the right kind of growing space to pack those plants in but maintain overall garden health. They also both go over planting seasonally so that you grow the right plants during the right time in your climate.

Planting both intensively and seasonally keeps the garden space productive, healthy, and beautiful. If you start growing this way, you'll be so excited to step outside each day to see what's growing.

Thanks for bringing back the kitchen garden with me!