Plant Spacing & Bed Layout Planner
Enter your bed size and pick a crop to see how many plants fit, how many seedlings to raise and a diagram of the layout.
Too close and plants compete, get diseased and crop badly. Too far apart and you waste bed space. This planner takes the size of your bed and the crop you want to grow, uses typical spacings from the grow guides, and tells you how many plants fit, how many seedlings to raise, and what the layout looks like.
Plant Spacing & Bed Layout Planner
Spacings are typical home-garden figures for the crop. Rich soil, good watering and the variety all change them, so use your own figures in the optional boxes if your seed packet says otherwise.
Rows: —
Plants in each row: —
Plants in each bed: —
Plants in all beds: —
Seedlings to raise: —
Spacing used: —
Full guide, more detail, and a printable version at https://hollyshomestead.com.au/tools/plant-spacing-bed-layout-planner.html
How It’s Worked Out
The bed is shrunk by the gap you leave at each edge. Rows run along the bed or across it, as you choose. The number of rows is the usable width divided by the between-row spacing, plus one, and the plants in a row are the usable length divided by the in-row spacing, plus one, both rounded down. Staggered layout offsets every second row by half a plant, which lets the rows sit about 13 per cent closer together while each plant keeps about the same room from its neighbours. Whether it fits more depends on how the bed size works out: it helps in long or wide beds with similar in-row and between-row spacings, like lettuce, and gives little or nothing in a small bed or with very different spacings, like tomatoes. Try both layouts and keep the better one.
The seedling count adds the spare percentage and rounds up. Some crops, such as carrots, radishes and peas, are sown directly rather than transplanted, so the count is the number of plants to end up with, and you sow more thickly and thin.
Beds That Work
A bed 1.2 metres wide lets you reach the middle from either side without stepping in, which keeps the soil loose. Bed length is up to you, but 3 to 4 metres is easy to net, cover and rotate. Large vining plants like pumpkin and zucchini do better at the edge of a bed, or on a trellis, than in the middle of a small one.