Utilising your urban garden space

There are so many ways you can utilise the space in your garden to get the most out of it. Ezra (@diyplantman) shares his tips to growing vertically and the square foot garden method, to help you pack even more goodness in!

CREATING A VERTICAL GARDEN

All you need is a sunny fence and you have an awesome way to grow more!

1. Fabric wall planters - in these I love to grow herbs, leafy greens and of course strawberries! These planters were purchased from Mitre 10.
2. Get creative and make a DIY gutter garden - It’s an awesome way to grow chives, radishes and leafy greens that don’t grow too large.
3. Trellis structure - cucumbers and beans work well on a trellis and will help stop the vines from shading out your garden.

Watch Ezra's video on 3 ways to create a vertical garden here >

SQUARE FOOT GARDENING

Any garden space can be transformed into a square foot garden. Planting by the square not only stops you from overcrowding your plants, you better utilise the space in your garden and it also helps you buy the right amount of seedlings in store.

My raised garden bed contains 21 squares (30cm x 30cm) and each square can hold a different number of plants, depending on the plants size at harvesting. Plants that don’t grow too big like radish, can be planted at 16 per square. Crops like leek, spring onion and chives, plant at 9 per square. Bigger leafy green crops like lettuce, spinach, silverbeet, celery and even peanuts, can be planted at 4 per square. Fruiting plants like tomatoes, capsicum and chillies need the most space to grow, so only plant 1 of these per square.

I highly recommend giving square foot gardening a go, it’s simple to understand and set up. Breaking the garden space up into small spaces can make it much more manageable too!

Watch Ezra's video on the sqaure foot gardening method here >