10 High Yielding Fruits and Vegetables to Grow in Small Space Gardens
Here’s a list of the 10 highest yielding fruits and vegetables I’ve grown (in gardening zone 8b), which work beautifully in small space gardens.
“Growing your own food is like printing your own money.”
Whether you are container gardening on a patio, have a small back yard or terrace, or, like me, simply have a mostly shady yard with only a small patch of full or partial sun to work with (and a small community garden plot to compensate for a too-shady yard) - here’s what I have grown and yielded the most fruits and veggies from with just a small plot of land to work with!
1. Peas
The earliest ready high yielding crop of the season, delicious sugar snap peas rarely make it inside at our house - instead, they are picked by little fingers and eaten right off the vine in the garden!
The more you pick, the more peas will grow, which means you get the most value for the space needed to grow 2-5 pea plants.
The bonus with peas is they are best grown vertically, so the actual soil real estate needed is very minimal for how much food you can get from just a few plants trellised at the end of your garden bed or container.
My favourite variety are Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Peas and Super Sugar Snap Peas, both from my favourite seed company, West Coast Seeds.
2. Pole Beans
Pole Beans (vs. Bush Beans) are another vertical gardening win for small spaces, and always by far the largest yield of any variety I grow each summer.
I especially love growing beans, as they are expensive to purchase in the grocery store, so returning home from the garden with armfuls of fresh green beans (so many that we can hardly keep up with them at times) feels extra satisfying!
I love to grow as they are just as beautiful on the vine as they are in recipes. My favourite variety to grow are Kentucky Blue and Purple Peacock Pole Beans, both from (again) my favourite seed company, West Coast Seeds.
3. Cherry Tomatoes
Another vertical, super high yielding plant to grow is the indeterminate cherry tomato.
Indeterminate tomato plants will continue to grow, and grow, and grow, as long as the plant is happy and there’s adequate sun, water, and nutrients available! So you will get as many tomatoes out of your plant until the frost hits.
On the other hand, determinate tomato varieties have a specific number of fruits (tomatoes) which will develop, set from the birth of the seed.
This information can usually be found on your seed packet or on the seedling/baby plant information tag at the garden centre.
I love indeterminate/vining tomatoes because again, they can be grown vertically, saving space in your small garden and allowing you to trellis your tomato plants - which also keeps the plant healthy by keeping it off the ground and away from mould, diseases and pests which may cause your plant to produce less than it’s full potential of tomatoes!
My favourite variety to grow are Sweet Million Cherry Tomatoes and Pink Bumblebee Organic Cherry Tomatoes, both from (again) my favourite seed company, West Coast Seeds.
4. Blueberries
Blueberry bushes are perhaps not something that comes to mind when you first think of small space gardening. But, I’ve had some great success in our partially shady small yard with young blueberry plants producing a ton of blossoms and surprising amount of fruit for how small and young the plants are!
That is why I’ve decided to add this delicious and healthy fruit to the list.
Unlike home grown strawberries, which I absolutely love, but require lots of real estate to grow a decent amount of berries, you can produce quite a few handfuls from one small blueberry bush. And as it grows, again, it grows upwards!
So for a couple of square feet within 10 years you’ll have a nice, tall blueberry bush producing hundreds and hundreds of berries! When selecting your blueberry bush varieties, check out the requirements for cross pollination.
Some varieties do best with 2, 3, or more varieties of blueberries planted within close proximity, while some are self pollinating (great for people with space for just one bush)!
I also don’t see why you couldn’t plant a blueberry bush in a container on a sunny patio! I haven’t tried this myself, but perhaps I will sometime soon…
5. Raspberries
I think that most people envision wild, tangled masses of raspberry canes all twisting and growing massive together when they think of growing raspberries at home!
However, I’ve had lots of success with sticking raspberry canes in small corners of my garden, and allowing them to grow up fences or be tied up against the side of sunny walls.
If you keep on top of relocating or removing new growth in the spring and summer, you can keep your raspberry patch as small (or as large) as you want it to be!
Another nice bonus with berry plants like the raspberries and blueberries I’ve mentioned, is that they love acidic soil. So they are wonderful plants to stick in areas that might have a lot of pine needle droppage, where other plants aren’t so happy to live!
I also love to mulch my berry bushes with the copious amounts of spent coffee grinds my household seems to produce…they love it!
6. Corden/Columnar Fruit Trees
Okay so I don’t personally have a corden/columnar fruit tree, but I have seen LOTS in the wild (aka other people’s gardens and in community orchards), and it’s something I’ve had on my garden wish list for a few years now!
I think they are genius, and I’ve decided to add them to this list because they add such a whimsical look to a garden and/or patio, AND they produce handfuls of delicious and edible fruit!
My parents have a young espaliered apple tree that produces a shocking amount of apples for the small, small space it takes up, planted up again a cedar fence and only protruding about 1.5 feet out from the side of the fence. Genius! And beautiful!
7. Arugula & Lettuces
The best way to whet your appetite for gardening ever. Arugula and lettuces of all varieties are usually really easy and quick to grow, and are SO satisfying to eat.
I know that lots of varieties advertise themselves as cut-and-come-again varieties (meaning that you trim the mature leaves off the plant and allow it to keep growing), but in my experience, you can treat any arugula or lettuce variety this way to keep enjoying fresh salads for as long as the plant will live!
Even head lettuce varieties can have their outer leaves trimmed, and trimmed, and trimmed, and remain happy and growing.
My favourite varieties to grow are Wild Arugula (it comes back year after year, yay!), Butter Crunch and the Mild Mesclun Blend all from (again) my favourite seed company, West Coast Seeds.
8. Cucumbers
Cucumbers are one of those plants that I’ve either had a LOT of success with, or none. I haven’t yet figured out what determines my success with these little babies, but I wanted to add them to the list because the times that I HAVE had success with my cucumbers, you’re working with more cucumbers than you could ever possibly eat on your own!
And once again, they are the best plants because the base of the vine takes up like 4-7 inches max, and then they just grow, and grow, and grow vertically - on whatever their little tendril arms can grab onto!
My favourite variety to grow are Suyo Long Cucumbers (pictured here) and Homemade Pickles, both from (again) my favourite seed company, West Coast Seeds.
9. Squash*
Another addition to this list that might seem strange…but I have started growing all my squash (even zucchini!) vertically, and I will never go back to the trailing vines all over the ground again!
I added the asterisk because if you don’t trellis, stake or allow your squash to grow up an arch of some sort, then these beautiful and bountiful plants absolutely will take over your entire garden, or yard, or more…
But they love to climb, so let’s allow them to, alright?! Similar to tomatoes, the benefits of growing your squash vertically are endless. Less rot, less disease, less pest infestations…they even look more beautiful when grown on a vine because they aren’t getting squashed (hehe) on one side because of gravity!
For large varieties, like pumpkins, you can even craft cute little hammocks to support them on their trellis out of old pantyhose or whatever cloth you have handy so that they don’t break off the vine because of their weight! So fun.
There are SO many gorgeous ways to grow a vertical pumpkin patch, or butternut squash arch, or tromboncino wall…I love it all!
10. Kale, Collards and Swiss Chards
If I could grow only one thing to eat in my garden, it would be collard greens. I love everything about them! I love how they look, I love how they taste, I love how versatile they are (salads! wraps! soups! stews! fresh! frozen!), and most of all, I love how much food you get from one single collard plant.
I always do the cut and come again method with my collards, and because the leaves are so large, you can make a meal out of just 4-5 of the largest outer leaves!
They are also cold hardy so you can keep your beautiful collard green plant in your garden all winter, and it will continue to (slowly) grow you more food, bursting into productivity in the spring once more.
All of the above applies to any Kale variety, too! They are just amazing plants. And anytime I eat any kale or collards from my garden, I feel like I am the definition of health for the next couple of hours, which is a major bonus.
My favourite variety to grow are Top Bunch Collard Greens and Lacinato (Dinosaur) Organic Kale - I love the texture -, both from (again) my favourite seed company, West Coast Seeds.
The Biggest Lesson I’ve Learned So Far Gardening:
So, there you have it! My top ten picks for the highest yielding fruits and veggies you can try growing in your own small space garden - complete with my favourite variety recommendations from West Coast Seeds!
Whether you have room for just one of these plants, or a few (or more) my biggest lesson learned in gardening so far is to grow what you eat.
I am definitely the type of person to get excited by every new and interesting variety I come across in a seed catalogue, but the truth is, the most rewarding things I’ve ever grown have always ended up being those staple ingredients that you add to your shopping cart again and again in the winter months (for us, that’s cucumbers and kales/lettuces)!
There’s nothing better than growing your own food, and if you’re able to cut down on your grocery bill by opting for a high yielding, typically expensive to buy in stores crop like sugar snap peas, vs. carrots for example (which take up a lot of space and are always affordable at the grocery store no matter what season it is) - then all the better!
Before you go:
Happy gardening, and let me know which of these 10 are your favourite to grow at home in the comment section below, or if I’ve missed any of your favourite high yielding crops to grow in small gardens! 🌱
