Spacing Vegetable Plants and Seeds

Spacing vegetables adequately is important due to preventing crowding, diseases, adequate air flow, and support healthy growth. Spacing plants too close together will mean decreased yields. Spacing is also important with container gardening. I often have to tell people putting 3 indeterminate tomato plants in a 24" pot is a very bad idea. Also crowding pots and not allowing air flow means diseases might start happening. Every vegetable plant has it's own requirement. When I space seeds and plants I eyeball a lot of measurements, use my shoe (I'm a size 11 which is 10.5 inches, I round it up to a foot and just leave a little bit of extra space), and my stir up hoe (5.76" or just round up to 6").

LP Farm Stores grows all plants from the cucurbita family, peppers, and tomatoes on biodegradable plastic. Some people if they have smaller gardens will grow on landscape fabric. They will lay down the fabric, burn holes at the appropriately spacing, and plant the plants. The benefits of fabric and plastic are weed repression, heat retention, and water retention. LP Farm Store plants pepper plants and cucumber plants in a zig zag pattern. Peppers are spaced 1 foot apart and cucumbers every 6 inch. Cucumbers I have a trellis running down the middle of the row. Pumpkins I grow two plant per hole and depending on variety spacing is anywhere from 24-48" apart.

Pole beans and cucumbers need something to vine up. LP Farm Store has tried various things and most have been utter failures. When LP Farm Store grew cucumbers in a greenhouse they used a ridge fence panel and tied it to T posts. This worked amazing. Before they used string and clips. It worked well, but was work to get the plants to go upright and have enough support. This year the plan is to pound in T posts in the garden and string baler twine horizontally. The T posts will be 10 feet apart and the twine rows go up every 1 foot and go 6 feet off the ground. Plants are planted on both sides of the trellis.

LP Farm Store had custom cages made for tomato plants. The basic design is upside "u" s and horizontal bars welded on. I don't have the exact dimensions on the cages, but knowing what tomatoes need I can guess what the dimensions are. Between the "u" points 2-3 feet, the "u" being 3-4 foot high, the bars are placed/welded every 1 foot, and the entire cage is 10-15 feet long. The upside down "u" legs are pressed into the ground to hold the cage upright. I love this cage system because it has lasted for over 13 years and does it job well. The only complaint is that it could be a little higher as some tomato plants get to 6 feet tall. Also you want enough space between the "u"'s as crowded plants can bring on diseases. The "u"'s should be spaced every 2-3 feet.

I would not recommend growing sweet corn unless you have lots of space. LP Farm Store grows sweet corn in 4 row blocks: length is 50' and each row is 2-2.5 feet apart (my tiller width apart). I put 3 seeds into each hole and each hole is 1 foot apart. Sweet corn needs to be planting in blocks for adequate pollination. Pollen from the tassels needs to land on the silks in order to create a good crop, the more corn stalks you have the better chance of adequate pollination.