High-Yield Intensive Bed
A 4×4 bed tuned for maximum output: vertical peas and cucumbers, dense root blocks, and zero wasted centimeters.
About This Template
This layout treats a small bed like prime real estate: everything that can grow up, grows up, and everything else is planted at the tightest spacing the plants will tolerate. A curtain of sugar snap peas climbs the north edge next to a trellised cucumber, so the bed's biggest producers occupy almost no floor space. The middle row carries the leafy workhorses — kale, chard, and broccoli — that yield for months rather than weeks. The front is a packed root section where carrots, beets, and radishes mature at different speeds, letting you pull the radishes just as the carrots need the elbow room. Expect more food per square meter than any conventional row garden.
Benefits
- 1Vertical peas and cucumber triple the productive area of the bed
- 2Radishes finish just in time to free root space for the maturing carrots
- 3Kale and chard crop continuously from spring until hard frost
- 4Dense planting shades the soil, cutting water loss and weed pressure
- 5Proven square-foot spacing — no guesswork about what fits where
Growing Tips
- 1Install the trellis before sowing peas — driving posts later damages roots
- 2Pick cucumbers daily at full production to keep the vine setting fruit
- 3Feed this bed monthly; intensive spacing draws nutrients fast
- 4Follow the early radishes with a second sowing in the same gaps
Included Plants (9)
Sugar Snap Peas×8
Pisum sativum var. macrocarpon
Spacing: 8 cm · 3 in
Cucumber
Cucumis sativus
Spacing: 60 cm · 24 in
Kale
Brassica oleracea var. sabellica
Spacing: 45 cm · 18 in
Swiss Chard
Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris
Spacing: 30 cm · 12 in
Broccoli
Brassica oleracea var. italica
Spacing: 45 cm · 18 in
Basil
Ocimum basilicum
Spacing: 25 cm · 10 in
Carrot×6
Daucus carota subsp. sativus
Spacing: 8 cm · 3 in
Beet×4
Beta vulgaris
Spacing: 10 cm · 4 in
Radish×6
Raphanus sativus
Spacing: 5 cm · 2 in
Ready to Start Growing?
Use this template as a starting point and customize it in the garden editor.
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