Community gardens · Your plot
A 4x8 or 10x20 community plot is small. Managed well, it's remarkably productive. Succession planting, vertical growing, and good soil turn a small rectangle into a serious food source.
Plan your plotLayout strategy
Divide your plot into functional zones rather than planting in single long rows. Zones let you manage different crops with different water, sun, and harvest needs without interference.
Trellised tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, and peas. Place at the north edge so they don't shade shorter plants.
Lettuce, spinach, kale, chard, arugula. These tolerate afternoon shade from the tall zone and bolt slower with partial cover.
Peppers, eggplant, squash, melons, and herbs. These need maximum heat and light. Put them where nothing blocks the sun.
Carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, onions. Need loose, deep soil without rocks. Interplant with quick-maturing radishes as a space-filler.
Five techniques
Plant a new row of lettuce or beans every two weeks. When one batch finishes, the next is ready. A single 4x8 bed can produce three to four harvests per season with succession planting instead of one.
Trellises, cages, and string supports move production upward. Pole beans on a 6-foot trellis produce more per square foot than bush beans on the ground. Cucumbers climb. Peas climb. Use the air.
Basil next to tomatoes, beans next to corn, marigolds around the perimeter. Companion planting uses every gap, deters some pests, and makes the plot work as a system rather than a collection of individual plants.
Square foot gardening or biointensive spacing places plants closer together than row-farming standards. Works in raised beds with good soil. A 4x8 bed can hold 32 planting squares — each one producing a different crop or a succession stage.
Row covers, cold frames, and low tunnels add 4 to 8 weeks to your growing season. Plant cool-season crops (spinach, kale, radishes) under cover in early spring and late fall. The plot produces food when everyone else's is dormant.
Add compost every season. Mulch paths and beds. Plant a cover crop (winter rye, crimson clover) when the plot is fallow. Good soil produces more food per square foot than any technique applied to poor soil.
What to grow first
These ten crops are forgiving, productive, and teach you the most in your first season. All fit in a standard community plot.
Tomatoes
High reward, long season
Lettuce
Fast, succession-friendly
Basil
Pairs with tomatoes
Green beans
Easy, prolific, freezable
Peppers
Heat-loving, compact
Zucchini
Massive yield, 1 plant enough
Radishes
30 days to harvest
Kale
Cut-and-come-again
Herbs
Rosemary, thyme, mint
Cucumbers
Trellis for vertical space
"The harvest matters, but the skill matters more."
Go deeper
Affiliate disclosure: New World Survival earns a small commission on purchases made through links on this page, at no cost to you.