- When I first started gardening, I was in a small townhouse
with a north facing balcony and a tiny windowsill.
So I had almost no space.
Obviously, things have changed here
at the Epic Gardening Headquarters,
but in today's video I'm going back in time
to how I used to garden to give you five incredible
small space gardening tips.
So cultivate that like button,
and I will personally increase your square footage
by 100 or more.
And let's get into the video.
I modeled my raised bed garden here at the homestead
after my original epic garden
that many of you watching probably remember.
It was much, much smaller than this.
It was actually about here to maybe here or so,
and I had 11 raised beds in that space,
which brings us to our first tip, what I call cramming.
And what I mean by that is cramming your design
and also cramming plants into that design.
So let's imagine I was in a much smaller space.
What would I do here?
I like this space.
It's great.
It's about 30 inches or so.
But if I'm cramming, and I'm trying to get stuff in,
I'm actually gonna bring this bed in at least halfway more.
So I would probably bring it into here,
and I'd just slide on in through like this.
That's what I did back in the day.
I had about a foot spacing between all of my raised beds,
and then I even put containers into that spacing
and kind of just tiptoed around the garden.
It worked.
It worked at the time.
Was it the most convenient?
No, but did it allow me to grow about 50 or 60% more plants?
Yes.
And speaking of, you actually wanna be looking in your beds
and breaking some of the classic spacing rules.
So for example, this bed isn't really planted out
very much just yet, but take a look at this lettuce.
This is a pretty standard lettuce spacing.
It's about every four or five inches or so.
If you're in a small space,
every square foot really, really matters.
So what I would be doing here is I would say,
okay, I've got my lettuce here.
I'd go lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, lettuce
on this triangular style spacing,
and just go really intensive with it.
And I'd be a little bit more intentional
about how I'm harvesting those
so that I can make sure they're not really running
into one another.
So it's a little bit more
of an intensive management process, but it totally works.
Because I could take this space here
and compress it into about 50% of the space
with a little bit of sacrifice
on just the annoyance of dealing with it.
But hey, at least I can grow.
That's tip number one.
Our tip number two is extra spicy.
- Growing vertically is the perfect method
to maximize the food production in a small space.
Over the years, we built different vertical gardens
using plastic bottles,
and they helped us to create another layer
of growing plants above the garden.
Just making sure that you select HDPE 2 plastic,
which is the safest plastic to use in the garden.
But you can also build your own vertical trellis
with a bit of DIY like I did in the past.
So you can see how easy with a few materials
you can start growing your plants vertically.
Alternatively, you can use bamboo to build a structure
for peas or beans by simply placing them in a circle,
and then join them together at the top.
And this is called a teepee,
and it's a super easy and effective system
Grow bags are a small space gardening essential.
You have to have these.
I used them extensively when I was in my small space.
And in fact, I love them so much,
I literally wrote a book on them called Grow Bag Gardening.
So I'll show you how I like to use them
if you're in a tighter quarter.
But this is the magic.
You've got the handles.
You can move it around.
So like I said, back in the old days what I would do is
I would come in and just slot these into
random spots in the garden, wherever there was a gap,
sometimes even putting them on top of my raised beds.
But for a crop, let's say like potatoes,
or onions, or something where you're planting it,
and you're waiting for that growth to come up,
it doesn't even need to be in sun.
Thus, it doesn't even need to be in the garden.
I would actually keep these in the garage or the backyard
while I was planting out my potatoes,
and then I'd move them into the garden
the second that they actually needed a light,
which allowed me to grow something else in a grow bag
in that space before the potatoes needed to come out.
And so because they're so portable,
you can move them around.
And in fact, when I first moved into this space,
this place was desolate.
There was nothing here whatsoever except for an old shed
and a non-productive tree
right where you see this greenhouse.
And so what I did is I laid down some quick landscape fabric
and put a grow bag garden in place.
And in about a 10 by 10 square foot area,
I think I had 25 grow bags.
So you can grow a ton in these little guys.
- This plant is called comfrey
and is the absolute golden ticket
for every organic gardener.
It produce flowers, which attracts pollinators,
but also the wide leaves shade the soil
protecting the soil biology.
And he has a long taproot, which withdraws the minerals
down deep into the ground
in a bioavailable form for your plants.
So you can simply chop it down into pieces,
add it into an old sock,
and submerge this sock into a tank of water.
And then you can use that water to water your garden
and have a completely free source of fertilizer.
Alternatively, you can add it straight into your raised bed.
So it will slowly decompose
and provide food for your plants.
But you can also use it in a sort of tea infused solution
to reactivate your compost because it's full of nitrogen,
or you can place it around your plant.
So chop and drop as it's normally called,
and it will create a barrier against slugs and snails.
So if you're limited it on space,
growing this swamp plant will give you a wide variety
if you use this in your garden.
- One of my favorite things about gardening
is that you can grow hundreds of plants,
hundreds of different types of plants for the same plant.
Like tomatoes, there's probably 4,000 different varieties.
So if you're a small space grower,
there is a variety for you.
Pro tip is look for anything that says space in the name,
anything that has the word patio in the name.
Of course, at our seed company, Botanical Interests,
we have a ton of these varieties for small space growers.
But back in the day,
I used to live in downtown San Diego in a condo,
and I had a west facing balcony.
It was okay.
It wasn't great.
I had a railing planter,
and I would put in patio baby or patio choice,
or if it was a cucumber, I'd do spacemaster.
All of those allow you to grow one of your favorite crops
without having it trawling all over the place
and just making an absolute mess.
And speaking of,
there are some crops you might want to avoid.
Corn in a really small space, kind of difficult.
You have to plant it in blocks.
I've seen it done in grow bags,
but again, a little bit more of an advanced technique.
Huge pumpkins, huge squash,
absolutely massive indeterminate tomatoes,
stay away from those and go for some smaller varieties.
There are hundreds of options out there for you.
So check some of those out at Botanical Interests.
But small space gardening,
we're gonna do a lot more of it here on the channel.
So if you're a small space grower
aspiring to something bigger, make sure to subscribe.
Check out our other tips right here.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.