Square foot garden planner

What square-foot spacing means

Square-foot gardening plants a bed as a grid of one-foot squares instead of rows. Each square gets a set number of one crop, worked out from how far apart that crop grows. A crop spaced 12 inches apart gets one to a square, 6 inches gets four, 4 inches gets nine, and 3 inches gets sixteen.

NC State Extension's 4-H Square Foot Gardening guide states it the same way: 4 inch spacing between plants is nine plants per square foot, which is the count the planner uses for garlic. A crop that needs more than a square takes a block, so one zucchini covers two squares. Where a regional extension chart gives a different count, the planner uses it once you add your ZIP.

Where the counts come from

Most counts in the planner come from Clemson Cooperative Extension's Small-Scale Gardening chart, which lists plants per square foot for the common vegetables: one tomato with a cage, four leaf lettuce, nine bush beans, sixteen carrots. Snap peas are eight to a square on a trellis. Tap the i on any crop to see the chart's own wording and the source it came from.

A few crops have no square-foot count in the charts we use. For those the planner says so and leaves the spacing to the seed packet rather than guessing.

Using the grid

The 4 by 4 bed above is sixteen squares, open and ready. Pick a crop, then tap its squares. Switch seasons to plan what follows what, and go to Beds to add more beds or change this one's size. Your plan saves in this browser and in the page's link.