Our lot is about 4400 square feet, roughly 1/10th of an acre. The house, porches and back parking spots take up 60% of that space, so we have less than 1/20th of an acre to work with.

The raised vegetable beds take up 100 square feet. We let our tenant use a 16 sf box. So we don’t have a lot of space devoted to food production, which is fine. If I had more land, I’d rather plant an orchard than have more raised beds.

A little vertical space helps us maximize our raised beds space, and makes it look like a real garden.

trellis system

The trellis system idea was inspired by the 60 Minute Garden and the Square Foot Gardening book. Both books have instructions on how to build a trellis system.

As you can see, the nice June weather made all my greens grow like crazy. And with the melons and tomatoes plants growing bigger and bigger, the trellis needed to go up.