One Bed Veg! (Plan & Video Series)

It is so incredibly fantastic that sooo many people are excited to grow some of their own food.

Home grown vegetables taste amazing and by foodscaping we can make it look good and grow a ton of food in a small space.

We thought it would be fun (and hopefully a useful learning tool) to do a video series demonstrating what we would do if we only had one 4′ by 10′ vegetable bed. We are going to pour all of our planning, multi-cropping and season extension experience into it. We’ll weigh all our harvest to see just how much veg we can pull out of 40 square feet! The plan includes most of our favorite vegetables and will hopefully provide lots of variety and bountiful harvests in spring, summer and fall, as well as some winter carrots, greens and squash, and maybe even some homegrown salsa/tomato sauce and frozen soups!

Here’s our first Instagram Live video introducing the video series, talking about bed prep, season extension and planting peas!

Here’s the plan in images made from the ‘Vegetable Garden Planner’ software, notice changes from spring (left) to fall (right).

Here’s the plan on 1/4″ graph paper. 1″ equals 1′ of garden space, so a 4 by 4 of little squares is one square foot. Notice approximate timings in parentheses:

With season extension, multi-cropping and inter-planting we should be able to get two full crops out of most of the space. We plan to plant tomatoes and peppers extra early using wall’o’water type water pyramids to be able to have an extra long harvest season. And notice how the tomatoes get much larger as lettuce and spinach come out after spring. In general we will sow seed for subsequent crops about a week before the first crop is finished. For example, seed for summer bush beans will be sown about a week before the spring carrots are all harvested toward the end of June. 😊

The plan is designed for USDA Zone 6b but with hot dry summers (Utah) or Sunset Climate Zone 3A. Our average last frost is May 1 and first is Oct 15. This plan could easily fit milder climates without late frosts (eg California) without all the season extension. Frost prone colder climates would want to adjust timing according to avg frost dates.

Here’s our page How to plan your vegetable garden: A-Z which includes more on multi-cropping and season extension including photos of low tunnels and water pyramids. Here’s our video showing how we foodscaped: our frontyard which includes info on raised bed construction and foodscaping over grass. Here’s more on preparing garden beds: raised beds.

Follow this videos series on Instagram or check back frequently for video updates as we will try to show the One Bed Veg in all its glory throughout the season!

We are so excited to see how it grows and changes dramatically from March through October and we hope it helps spread ideas and inspiration!

Updates will be posted below:

Materials list and sketch of how we made this 4’x10′ redwood raised bed with 6” bench on both sides:

Hello! Thank you for checking out our site! Did you notice it does not have advertisements? Foodscaping Utah is an educational nonprofit organization. In an effort to provide easily accessible educational material, we do not sell advertisements on our website. If you find the information valuable and would like to help us develop more educational content and programs, please visit our Donate/Shop page. Thanks!