How to Plan a Small Space Kitchen Garden from Scratch

It’s my favorite time of year, garden planning! As someone who has rented a fair few spaces I have a bit of experience on how to plan a small space kitchen garden from scratch.

There are so many reasons to start a garden. It’s therapeutic, you spend more time in nature, a great step in being your own grocery store if you wish, provides beauty to your home and so much more. Transform your small backyard into a space that will serve so many amazing functions to your life. From a window sill herb gardens to a couple raised beds, I think it’s so vital to create garden spaces wherever you live. I firmly believe no space is too small to start gardening in some capacity. Today I’m going to walk you through my approach on how I plan a small space kitchen garden from scratch.

Plan a Small Space Kitchen Garden From Scratch

Step 1: Set Goals

Now as exciting as getting plants into the ground is the first thing we need to do is decide what we want out of our garden. Your goals for your garden may be different from mine. Do you want to start a kitchen garden, flower garden, perennial landscaping type garden? For the sake of this post we are focusing on a kitchen garden, which means my primary goal is food production but my secondary goal is creating a beautiful space to host in and enjoy nature. Keeping your goals in mind will help you figure out the rest!

Step 2: Assess Your Garden Space

Start Small

I know, I can already hear you saying but my space is already small. It’s just as much about how much space do I have as it is about how much am I able and willing to maintain? If you fill your space to the brim because you can, you may find that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, so start small. Consider how much space the plants will take up once the’ve matured and how much walking space you need to properly care for them. Maximizing square footage is not always the name of the game.

Track the Sun

One of the easiest mistakes to make when planning your garden is not taking the amount of sun your space receives into consideration. Deciding what to plant will be made easier once you know how much sun you get. There a couple ways you can do this the first is simply getting out into your garden at least 4 times throughout the day and taking note what areas are in shade. Recommended times are 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm. Take care to note what time of year you are mapping because a winter sun and summer sun will track across your space differently.

Another option is to use a sun tracking app like SunCalc.org to help you see the trajectory of your sunlight but keep in mind it will not be able to factor buildings or tall trees that may block sunlight.

Step 3: Deciding What to Plant

Know Your Growing Zone & Frost dates

Depending on your geographic location, the kinds of fruit and vegetables you can grow will vary. Use your zip code on the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map to find your growing zone and then using your zip code again you can use this Almanac website to find your frost dates. The reason you want both is because the growing zone will help you decide what varieties you can plant and the frost dates will help you decide when your last succession of those plants will be. If you don’t know what succession planting is I’ll go into more detailed below.

Write a list of What You ACTUALLY eat

This one may seem obvious but start with what you actually eat! Write down the fruits and vegetables you regularly purchase at the store and plant as many of those as you can first. Planting multiple varieties of heirloom tomatoes is great and all but if you aren’t sure what you are going to do with all those tomatoes best to stick to the varieties of plants you’re already eating and buying. Once you have a good foundation then of course you can add on and experiment.

Purchasing Seeds and seedlings

The very best place to get your seeds and seedlings is at your local garden center or nursery. The big box store garden centers will have plants that are not necessarily a good choice for your zone but local garden centers are going to know what works best for your climate. Some other wonderful places to shop online for seeds are:

Step 4: Sketch out your garden

Creating a visual will help you figure out the spacing necessary for each variety and this is also the perfect time to decide what you are going to use to contain your plants. Of course, you can plant straight into the ground but if this garden is potentially temporary then containers will be the way to go.

Containers for small space gardening

This list will help get your creative juices flowing for how to potentially house your plants based on space availability and the needs of your plants. This list goes from smallest containers to largest.

Window sill herb garden
Indoor window herb garden planter boxes
Vertical outdoor herb/ strawberry planter
Heavy duty grow bags ( Great for potatoes, carrots or other root vegetables)
Raised planter box with legs
Galvanized raised beds
Raised bed with trellis ( for cucumbers or other vining plants)
Deeper Galvanized raised beds

Choosing your containers go hand in hand with sketching out your garden because you’ll need to know how much space each plant will take up and choose the appropriate container for it. Wherever you can, go vertical with your growing so you can still maximize space within the limits of your small garden area. Once you’ve chosen the appropriate containers for your space and plants, the actual planting begins!

Step 6: Planning Ahead

Succession Planting

Lastly, because our space is small we need to take as much advantage of our growing time and space as possible, which brings me to succession planting. Based on when you are starting your seedlings, there will be a certain number of cycles of the plants you choose that can be squeezed into one growing season. Succession planting is essentially just taking the cycle of one plant into consideration and planning ahead for its replacement so that you can continue to harvest more of that fruit or vegetable throughout the season. Now you can calculate this yourself but the very BEST thing I’ve discovered recently is Seedtime.

I may do a whole blog post or video on this because I love it that much! It takes all the guess work out of knowing when to sow seeds, when to transplant those seeds into your growing beds and estimated harvest. It literally will plan your successions for you as well. Seedtime has so many amazing features but succession planting is part of the free version so you won’t have to pay to plan your crops throughout the season. This app will most definitely take the stress out of trying to keep your small space kitchen garden. I can’t recommend it enough.

With all that said, I hope this was helpful in getting you started on how to plan a small space kitchen garden. As always let me know how it goes!