Plant Spacing Calculator

Up to a point. Crowding raises total yield per square foot for leafy crops and roots, but reduces the size of each individual plant and cuts airflow, which raises disease pressure in humid climates. For fruiting crops like tomatoes and peppers, crowding usually costs you more in fruit set and disease than it gains in plant count.

It divides a bed into 1 ft squares and assigns each crop a per-square count based on its mature size — 1 tomato, 4 lettuce, 9 spinach, 16 radishes. It works well for small intensively watered beds and poorly for large sprawling crops like winter squash. See the full guide.

Staggering every other row into the gaps of the row before it (a triangular or hexagonal pattern rather than a square grid) packs the same spacing distance more efficiently — about 15% more plants in the same area with no reduction in the distance between any two neighbours.

Seed packet spacing is usually written for row-cropping with walking paths between rows, so it is generous for a raised bed you never step in. In a bed you can often use the in-row spacing in both directions. The row spacing figure exists to fit a hoe or a foot between rows, not because the plants need it.