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2 questions: Distance between plants and what types?
We are planting tonight. I read online that I should put my tomato plants about 2 feet a part. So we are planning to do that, but I was looking at some gardening blogs and their tomato plants looked awfully close together. Maybe it's because it's just photos and I can't see really the space between then? Or because the plants really grew outwards?
I'm obviously a novice. First time gardener here.
Also, we are in SW Ohio and we have about 20 square feet left in our garden to fill (community garden, info in blog) and I'm not sure what else we should get? We can't do things that run, because we don't want them running into someone else's garden.
We have tomatoes (several heirloom varieties), peppers (several varieties), butter lettuce, carrots, green onions, and eggplant. We also have 2 watermelon plants (I know they run) but we can put those in a different area, but we don't want to take up too much space on that communal spot because there are 30 some families with plots at the garden. We opted out of growing corn (I don't like corn).
Thoughts? We have 12 tomato plants and 6 pepper plants--I'm afraid to get much more of those because I'm sure they will be heavy producers.
Thanks.
EDIT: we have herbs in pots at our house, so we don't need to do herbs at the community garden.
Re: 2 questions: Distance between plants and what types?
Different kinds of plants will need different amounts of space. It should say on the plant info. I've never grown peppers - not much of a fan! - but 2 feet seems a little much for any tomatoes. I think mine are about a foot apart, but I'm not quite sure. Mine have never gotten all that bushy.
What about peas? Green beans? Squash? Cucumbers?
Can we start those from seeds? I feel like we are too little too late here on our planting. Peas and Green beans would make my husband very happy!
It's too late for peas, but you can generally buy plants of squash, cucumbers, etc. (it's too late to start them from seed).
Also, spacing is dependent, in part, on the fertility of your soil. If you've got super fertile soil, you can get away with tomatoes being 12" apart. If it's not very fertile, then you need more like 24". If it's in-between, then 18" might be right (I believe this is what is specified on most of the packets of tomato seeds). The reason SFG has such intensive planting is b/c Mel's Mix is well-draining & very high in nutrients.
Wow, I don't know how fertile the soil is. It's a community farm and it's all organic farming, so I'm sure we could add maneure, but otherwise we are just working with the field they tilled for this.