One Square Meter Salad Garden
Nine squares, one salad bowl: a 3×3 plot that keeps a household in fresh greens from a single square meter.
About This Template
This is intensive gardening at its simplest: nine squares, each with one job, together producing salad every week from barely one square meter of ground. Three full-size lettuces headline the back row. The middle row is cut-and-come-again territory — spinach, arugula, and mizuna sown densely and harvested with scissors, regrowing three or four times before they bolt. The front row pairs quick radishes with chives for the dressing and a marigold to pull aphids away from the greens. Because every square is replanted the moment it empties, this tiny plot out-produces beds five times its size that are only planted once a season.
Benefits
- 1Produces a salad a week from roughly one square meter of soil
- 2Cut-and-come-again greens regrow 3–4 times before needing resowing
- 3Nine clear squares make succession planting foolproof for beginners
- 4Shade-tolerant greens keep producing where fruiting crops would sulk
- 5Fits on a balcony, in a courtyard, or in any spare corner of a yard
Growing Tips
- 1Cut greens 2 cm above the crown with scissors and they regrow in days
- 2Resow any empty square the same day you clear it
- 3In high summer, switch spinach for heat-proof arugula and mizuna
- 4Water little and often — shallow-rooted greens hate drying out
Included Plants (9)
Lettuce
Lactuca sativa
Spacing: 25 cm · 10 in
Romaine Lettuce
Lactuca sativa var. longifolia
Spacing: 30 cm · 12 in
Oak Leaf Lettuce×4
Lactuca sativa
Spacing: 20 cm · 8 in
Spinach×4
Spinacia oleracea
Spacing: 15 cm · 6 in
Arugula×4
Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa
Spacing: 15 cm · 6 in
Mizuna×4
Brassica rapa var. nipposinica
Spacing: 15 cm · 6 in
Radish×4
Raphanus sativus
Spacing: 5 cm · 2 in
Chives×4
Allium schoenoprasum
Spacing: 15 cm · 6 in
Marigold
Tagetes patula
Spacing: 25 cm · 10 in
Ready to Start Growing?
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