How to plant a salad garden with very little space

Even if you don't have much space, you can still grow your own food right in your own back yard. In just one square metre of planting area, you can grow a salad garden to enjoy fresh vegetables throughout their growing season. Here's how.

Choose an area of your yard that receives at least six hours of unfiltered sunlight each day.

Put stakes at each corner to mark your square metre and run twine around the perimeter.

Remove any sod within your square, then turn the soil with a garden spade to a depth of half a metre. Once the soil is broken, add compost and turn again, then rake it all smooth.

For a faster but more expensive plot, you can purchase or build a raised bed. Once the walls are in place, fill them with a pre-made mix of loam and compost from a garden centre.

Here's how to create a trellis along the north side of your garden plot:

• Sink two three-metre stakes in behind the northern corner markers of your plot.
• The stakes should be about two metres high when you are done hammering them into place.
• Then stretch trellis netting taut between the stakes to form a trellis for your cucumbers (or other climbing vegetable).

Once you've built your trellis, you can use it to grow cucumbers or other climbing vegetables while saving space. To do so, just plant your seeds every 8 to 10 centimetres along your trellis after all danger of frost has passed.

As your climbing vegetables grow, training them up the trellis will save you valuable space. And, growing them on the north side of your garden will keep them from shading the rest of your plot.

Cherry tomatoes are a great choice for small spaces as they are naturally more compact than full-sized tomatoes. Choose a smaller variety such as Patio, Sungold, or Sweet 'n Neat.

You should position your cherry tomato on the west border of your plot, where it will offer afternoon shade to the tender lettuces that will fill the rest of your garden.

Also, using a tomato cage will help keep your tomato tame, and you can trim back any unruly branches as the summer progresses.

Divide the remaining space in your garden in half. In the half closest to the tomato, evenly scatter mesclun lettuce seeds.

As this mix of salad greens grows, you can pick the outside leaves of many plants. They will continue to grow all season, as long as you don't pick too many leaves from any one plant at a time.

Also, note that if lettuces become too crowded, you can thin them, and still eat the thinnings.

In the remaining half of your garden, sow carrot seeds every 8 centimetres in rows that are 10 centimetres apart.

Halfway between each carrot seed in its row, plant a radish seed. The radishes will germinate more quickly and mark the rows. Also, as you pick the radishes, you'll create space for the slow-to-germinate carrots to grow.

If you have at least a square meter of space in your yard, you can still grow your own food. So, keep this guide in mind, and get growing your salad vegetables.