You do not need a massive garden to grow a lot of food.

Probably the #1 thing I hear from people when they visit my gardens is they cannot believe how much I’m able to grow in the space that I use. Not to say I have a tiny garden. Mine sees expansion with every year. But it’s not acres big. Not even one acre big. I could not tell you what a “100 foot row” looks like. I could not tell you how many square feet of space I use. I have no idea.

Why?

Because I don’t garden in the “usual” calculated, measured, and lined up sort of way.

What I DO do is maximize my surface growing area. I plant intensively. I employ the “edge effect” to often double the available accessible planting space without compromising soil health and while eliminating soil compaction.

All of these things together mean more food in a smaller space, grown more effectively and environmentally responsibly.

Sound like something you’d like to do too?

Then I’m glad you’re still here. Let’s talk about how you too can maximize your garden space by employing permaculture methods.

First, forget everything you know or have been taught about gardening.

Well, not really.

But forget the idea of tilling up a space of ground year after year, planting your straight rows spaced 3 feet apart with no mulch to protect the soil.

Forget about weeding.

Forget about single file rows of like vegetables.

Forget about watering every single day.

And pretty please, forget about Miracle-Gro, would ya?

Just erase it all from your mind for just a few minutes. Long enough to approach this idea head-on without any preconceived ideas about what works.

Because you’re here for a reason, and it’s probably because there’s this curious little bugger at the back of your brain that wishes you could do things a little bit better. Wishes you could work a little less harder (I know it should technically say “a little less hard” but it doesn’t rhyme with my last sentence so “harder” it is. Hey, I don’t always rhyme, but when I do I break grammatical rules).

So approach the bench with an open mind and I promise you will take SOMETHING away with you from this post.

#1 Think more growing space and less walkway.

I know that your seed packets instruct you to plant things ____inches apart in rows ____feet apart. The simple, innocent act of following those directions immediately sets you up for a ton of wasted space. Not to mention a massive amount of ground that will be compacted by your walking on it. {Not-so-fun fact: the soil beneath your feet- when wet such as after some rain- can become 75% compacted after stepping on it just ONE time. This robs the roots of your plants of much-needed oxygen and destroys the fragile soil structure that allows for nutrient-delivering highways and home to countless beneficial microorganisms.}

So what to do? You don’t need to put in permanent raised beds (although you certainly can).

But you do need to at least designate a permanent growing space. There needs to be a clear distinction between where you grow your plants and where you walk. You can do this by raising up your beds, framing them in, lining them with logs or rocks, staking them off, using twine to distinguish the borders, etc.

You want to avoid ever walking where you intend to plant or planting where you walk.

When determining this space, make your beds (or designated growing area that we will just refer to as a bed) wide enough that you can reach the middle of it from both sides. This allows you to use more surface area while greatly decreasing the necessary walkways. This way, when planting your crops, you no longer need to leave ___feet of space between rows. Instead, you can plant ___inches apart in all directions because you no longer need to leave space in which to walk.

#2 Feed the soil, not the plants.

If you wish to maximize your growing space by planting intensively, you need the soil to support it.

So often, we hear about fertilizing and what fertilizers best benefit which plants. Many think that just dumping a bunch of Miracle-Gro on their gardens will produce what they want. But this practice is not a sustainable one. If you want a long-lasting, fruitful garden space that gets BETTER with each passing year (not worse, as is typically the case), you need to concentrate on feeding your soil, not your plants.

You can pour on the fertilizer all day, every day. But most of it will wash away with the rain or with your hose.

If you do not have soil that is high in organic matter, it cannot hold on to the food you are trying to feed it.

But if you do have lots of organic matter, those particles will cling to and store nutrients to feed your plants over an extended period of time.

Additionally, soil that is high in organic materials provides a welcoming environment for important little critters such as earthworms, microorganisms, and fungi. These work together to transform the nutrients that are fed to your plants into a form your plants can actually use.

Therefore, if you are not feeding organic materials to your soil to support microbial life and a nutrient storehouse necessary for a sustainable and thriving intensively planted garden space, you will not have the results you wish.

And then you will go back to Miracle-Gro, which I’m trying to stop you from doing.

So just how do you increase the organic matter in your soil?

The simplest way is by applying plenty of good organic compost. This is something that should be done every single year, preferably throughout the entire growing season.

If you are just starting to build your garden, mix the compost with your soil. But if you already have an established garden space, we want to imitate nature by applying compost to the surface layer and allowing for the creation of the biological framework necessary for a properly functioning ecosystem. This obviously takes time. But, how does that saying go?

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Or vegetable.

Whatever.

#3 Increase your edges.

The “Edge Effect” is a pretty deep and lengthy permaculture principal, worthy of its own post entirely. But for today’s discussion, I want you to consider ways you can increase the amount of edges in your garden space. And to do this, we want to look at the natural designs we find in nature.

For example, think about the intestines inside of our body. Just our small intestine alone is approx. 20 feet long! Now, imagine if that same intestine was pulled into a straight line. How much shorter would it be? How much surface area would decrease?

I want you to apply that same thought to your garden. If you can create a meandering bed that mimics that design in nature, whether it be our intestines or a winding river as opposed to a straight line, you drastically increase your growing area, as well as your edges. Edges are important for several reasons. If we look at nature, think about an open field skirted by a forest. The area where the field meets the forest is the space that benefits from both environments, and is as a result the most fertile and diverse.

Winding edges also trap heat and moisture, offer shade or provide sunlight, and it slows down the distribution of water and nutrients. If you are planting in straight rows and it rains, that water has a much faster escape when it is able to travel in a straight line. Put that same rain storm over a winding pathway, and the water not only has to travel at a drastically reduced rate, but it has to cover a much larger surface area. This gives your garden the opportunity to more efficiently draw up water and nutrients it needs.

“We only invented the word organic because we made things inorganic.
We only invented the word natural because we made things unnatural.
We only invented the word permaculture because we made agriculture.”
― Khang Kijarro Nguyen

#4 Stagger your plantings.

I want you to apply the same principal of edges to your actual planting.

By staggering your plants rather than planting them in a straight line, we again are able to increase the number of plants in our garden without increasing the garden space. In essence, you will be planting in a zigzag. This is especially helpful for those of us who love to reap the benefits of companion planting.

Additionally, you can intercrop fast growing plants with slow growing ones. That way, the fast plants will be done before the slow ones, giving them the room they need. And then consider succession planting. Follow up your summer beans with fall kale. Always having a plan for your space.

#5 For the love of God, cover up!

Repeat after me: Mulch…mulch…MULCH!

If there’s anything that makes me cringe, it’s looking at a garden with its naked soil exposed to the elements. Seriously. Stahp. It’s so unnatural it makes me crazy. And I’m already crazy enough, thank-you.

Covering up your soil is one of the most beneficial things you can do for any garden. Why put all of this work in to the thought, design, and construction of this amazing permaculture intensively planted and edged-out garden space if you’re not going to properly maintain it?

Mulching protects your soil, its delicate structure, and all of its precious inhabitants from sun, rain, compaction, wind, and erosion. It also retains water, greatly decreasing the amount of water needed to maintain your garden through the growing season. It moderates your soil temperature. On top of that, it aids in the control of weeds, provides happy habitats for beneficial organisms, and feeds your soil. A good mulching system is one that uses biodegradable materials (think straw or leaves) that can be layered, breaks down on its own, and that is added to each season. This, in turn, aids in the building of the organic matter needed to support this intensive model.

#6 Get creative.

Now, let’s talk about design. I’ve already discussed with you in the past the keyhole garden. This is a very small scale example of how you can maximize your growing space, and a great place to start if you’re just getting your feet wet with this concept.

A mandala style garden is another excellent way to put these principles to work. The idea behind the mandala is to have a continuous growing space with multiple inlets that allow you access to all areas of the bed. Mandalas are usually fashioned into a circle or partial circle. Sometimes there are concentric circles involved. A simple Google search of “mandala garden” will give you endless design concepts.

My market garden last year was fashioned after the mandala approach. It consisted of an inner keyhole style garden bed with almost a dozen access inlets.

This garden is also a hugelkultur garden, with the bottom of the bed being constructed of branches, sticks, twigs, and other woody debris, topped with manure, and then covered with topsoil. I like my beds to be plantable on both the tops and sides, to fully take advantage of my growing space.

(In the center of the keyhole, I planted a dwarf cherry tree).

The outside bed that surrounds the inner keyhole bed runs the entire perimeter of the garden fence in another continual bed. That means there is one continuous path that runs between these two beds, all the way around. And one that enters the center of the keyhole. That’s it. A ton of growing space with minimal walkway.

So what do you say? Are you ready to start maximizing your growing space by applying permaculture methods and concepts?

To start looking at how you can not only grow more food in a smaller space, but do it in a way that is environmentally friendly, effective, and abundant?

I hope I’ve piqued your interest. And made you look at your own garden plot with fresh eyes.

Perhaps you’ve even resolved that you, too, can set aside the Miracle-Gro and get to focusing on building healthy soil that can retain the nutrients you feed it, and in turn feeds you.

I will leave you with one final thought today, from the late, great, founding father of permaculture, Bill Mollison:

“Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things.”