Square Foot Gardening Spacing Chart (30+ Vegetables)

Square Foot Gardening Spacing Chart (30+ Vegetables)

Try Growli: Snap a photo of your seed packet or seedlings and the Growli app tells you exactly how many fit per square foot in your raised bed.

Square foot gardening (SFG) is the simplest way to plan a productive raised bed without a horticulture degree. Instead of memorising row spacing, you draw a grid of 1 ft (30 cm) squares and drop a fixed number of plants into each one. This guide gives you a real plants-per-square-foot chart for 30+ vegetables, plus two density tricks — edge cheating and triangle staggering — that most SFG guides skip.

If you are still building the bed itself, start with how to start a vegetable garden for beginners and the best soil for raised vegetable beds, then come back here to plan what goes where.

What square foot gardening actually means

SFG splits a raised bed into a grid of 1 ft × 1 ft (30 cm × 30 cm) squares and assigns each crop a fixed plant count per square. The method was popularised by Mel Bartholomew in the 1980s and remains the go-to system for small raised beds because it removes guesswork: you plant in blocks, not long rows, so almost every inch of soil grows food instead of pathway.

The four standard densities are 1, 4, 9, or 16 plants per square. Big plants like cabbage take a whole square (1 per square); medium plants like lettuce take a quarter (4 per square); small plants like spinach take a ninth (9 per square); and tiny seed crops like carrots and radishes take a sixteenth (16 per square). Pick the density from the chart below and you are done planning.

Reading the spacing number on the seed packet

Use the smaller, in-row spacing number on the packet — not the between-rows number — to set your SFG density. Seed packets list two figures: how far apart plants sit within a row, and how far apart the rows sit. SFG ignores rows entirely, so you only need the in-row plant spacing.

The maths is simple: divide 12 in (30 cm) by the spacing, then square it. A 3 in spacing gives 12 ÷ 3 = 4 across and 4 down = 16 per square. A 4 in spacing gives 3 × 3 = 9. A 6 in spacing gives 2 × 2 = 4. A 12 in spacing gives 1 per square. As the saying goes, when in doubt, follow the seed packet — variety size varies, and a compact cabbage can be spaced tighter than a giant one.

Plants-per-square-foot chart (30+ vegetables)

Here is the quick-reference density chart for the most common raised-bed crops. Spacing follows the standard SFG system; always defer to your seed packet for a specific cultivar.

University Extension figures track this chart closely. The University of Maryland Extension lists cabbage at 15–18 in (38–45 cm) in-row spacing, which is why a full-size cabbage claims a whole square. Carrots at 3 in (7.5 cm) genuinely fit 16 to a square.

Why triangle staggering beats a strict grid

Offset each row by half a spacing — a triangle pattern — instead of lining plants up in a square grid, and the same bed holds roughly 15% more plants. In a grid, every plant has four neighbours; in a staggered triangle (hexagonal) layout, every plant is equidistant from six neighbours, packing the circular root and leaf zones more tightly while keeping the same minimum distance between plants.

The practical upshot: when you sow that 16-carrot square, nudge alternate rows over by 1.5 in (4 cm) so the seeds zigzag rather than form a perfect 4 × 4 lattice. Each plant gets more equal light and airflow, and you can often squeeze in a few extra. Triangle staggering works for any crop and is especially valuable in small raised beds where every square counts.

Edge cheating — half-spacing on the bed wall

You only need half the normal spacing on the side facing a bed wall, because nothing competes for root space outside the bed. Plants pull nutrients and water from the soil around them; on the wall side, there is no neighbour, so a plant can sit half its usual distance from the edge. This "edge cheating" trick fits an extra row of small crops along every wall.

For a 4 ft × 4 ft (1.2 m × 1.2 m) bed, edge cheating along all four walls can add a meaningful number of lettuces, radishes, or spring onions over a season. Reserve it for compact crops — leave full spacing for sprawling courgettes or heavy feeders that genuinely fill a square.

Big footprints — cabbage, kale, broccoli

Brassicas like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale each take a full square, spaced 12–18 in (30–45 cm) apart. A cabbage forms its head from tightly curled outer leaves, so it needs that whole footprint to size up. Crowd it and you get small, loose heads.

One handy planting trick: bury cabbage and kale transplants slightly deeper than they sat in the pot, up to the lowest leaves. Their stems are often floppy, and the extra soil contact stabilises the plant and encourages roots along the buried stem. Just keep the growing point well above the soil line. For spacing, the University of Maryland and Utah State Extensions both land in the 12–18 in (30–45 cm) range — confirm your variety on the packet, since compact cabbages can go tighter than giant storage types.

Succession greens — keep the harvest coming

Sow lettuce and other fast greens every 1–2 weeks rather than all at once, so they mature in a steady stream instead of bolting together. If you fill four squares with lettuce on the same day, all 16 heads mature in the same week and most go to waste. Stagger the sowings and you pick a few each week for months.

The RHS recommends sowing salad crops in small batches roughly every two to three weeks across the season — closer to weekly in warm summer weather, and slightly longer gaps in early spring. Radishes are the fastest reward in the bed, typically ready in about 28–38 days (some varieties in as few as 21 days under ideal conditions), so they are perfect for tucking into gaps between slower crops and re-sowing constantly. Pair succession greens with a good watering routine for your vegetable garden to stop fast crops from turning bitter.

Vertical crops — tomatoes, peppers, and root crops

Grow tomatoes as single-stem cordons up a string or stake and you can fit about 10 plants in 10 ft² (≈0.9 m²) — versus only two or three if you let them sprawl. Cordon tomatoes keep a narrow base (often just 12 in / 30 cm wide) even when 6 ft (1.8 m) tall, so they pack in vertically while sprawling bush tomatoes swallow several squares each. Documented growers report this roughly quadruples the yield per square foot; commercial growers use cordons almost exclusively for the same space efficiency. Our full guide to the single-stem tomato method walks through the pruning.

Peppers (capsicum) and aubergines take 1 per square and stay upright without much fuss. For root crops, density rules the bed: carrots and radishes go 16 per square at 3 in (7.5 cm); beetroot fits 9–16 per square because each "seed" is a cluster that yields several seedlings. You can also multi-sow alliums in module trays — typically 5–10 seeds per cell for spring onions, or 3–4 per hole for bunching onions — then plant the whole clump out together. One spring-onion clump can grow into a roughly 100 g (3.5 oz) bunch without ever needing to thin.

When you are pricing all this out, remember that seed-grown squares cost a fraction of buying transplants. See seeds vs seedlings cost comparison before you fill a whole bed from the garden centre.

About the sources

This guide blends the square foot gardening system with spacing figures cross-checked against university Extension resources (University of Maryland, Utah State) and RHS succession-sowing advice. Real-world technique is drawn from three documented growing journeys: Epic Gardening (Kevin), a nursery-and-bed walkthrough in southern California; a first-year UK garden (Alex), a season-long beginner experiment with weighed harvests; and Team Grow, a 15-year backyard gardener in USDA zone 7A, New Jersey. Always defer to your specific seed packet for cultivar spacing.