From Cottage Garden to Smallholding - How to Grow Food in the Space You Have

As many of you will know, I recently moved onto a smallholding to grow food on a larger scale. The space is 8 acres in total and we’re currently using about a quarter of an acre of it for food production - this is plenty of space to grow food for just a few people.

Previously, I lived in a little cottage in Wales, and grew my own food in just a few raised beds in my back garden. I was content with this, and I found that I could easily use up quite a lot of my time maintaining a small garden. I had a lot of tricks for maximising space and packing in as many plants as I could. Below are a few of my favourite methods for getting as much as possible out of a small space.

Interplanting

One of my favourite methods for getting the most out of your space is interplanting - this is the method of planting different crops in between each other. This works great when you have different types of crops taking up different levels - for example a root crop, a ground cover crop, and a taller crop.

This technique has been used for hundreds of years, take the “Three Sisters” planting method for example, a technique that was developed by Native Americans, whereby they would plant squash as a low growing ground cover - her large leaves would shade the soil, keep in moisture and prevent weeds from growing. For the second sister they planted corn, which stood tall above the squash, occupying a space that the squash did not need and supporting the third sister - beans, as she scrambled and twisted herself around the tall and robust corn stem and fixed nitrogen into the soil to help her sisters to thrive.