Vegetable Plant Spacing Chart: Inches Between Plants

In short: The chart gives one distance per crop, between plants. Radishes sit closest and watermelon farthest. It has no row spacing, so take row width from the seed packet.

What the chart gives you

NC State Extension prints a planting table for central North Carolina with a column headed Distance Between Plants, in inches. This page lifts that column for all 56 crops in the table. There is one distance per crop, and it is a distance between plants. The table gives no distance between rows, so this chart cannot tell you how wide to make a row or a bed. For that, the seed packet or your state Extension service is the better answer.

For 16 crops the table prints a range rather than a single figure. Arugula is listed at 6 to 9 inches, basil at 2 to 8 inches and sunflower at 9 to 24 inches. The source does not say what moves a crop along its range, and it does not recommend an end of the range for rich soil or for a big variety, so let the variety on your packet settle it. Where the table gives one number, that is the number.

Close, medium and wide

The tightest crops are small roots and quick greens. 7 crops are listed at 2 inches or less: radishes, green onions, mustard, beets, carrots, turnips and bush snap beans. Radishes are listed at 1 inch, green onions at 1 to 2 inches and carrots at 2 inches. Pole snap beans open up to 6 inches, and vining peas sit between the two at 2 to 3 inches. Kale is listed at 6 inches, a third of the distance listed for broccoli.

In the middle are the plants most beds are built around. Tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and collard greens are all listed at 18 inches, which makes them easy to mark out on one grid. At the wide end are the vines and the big squash. Summer squash needs 24 inches, winter squash 36 inches, pumpkin 48 inches and watermelon 60 inches. Globe artichokes are listed at 30 inches.

How spacing meets the planting windows

The same table gives each crop its planting dates, and the two columns tell you different things about a bed. The widest crops have only one window each. Pumpkin goes in during one window, Apr 15 to Jul 1, and watermelon during one, Apr 15 to Jun 15, and neither has a fall window. Plan their space once, for spring.

Close-spaced crops are the opposite. Radishes have a spring window of Feb 1 to Jun 15 and a fall window of Aug 1 to Sep 1, and at 1 inch apart a short row holds a lot of them. NC State also says that planting additional plants every few weeks within a window extends the harvest. With crops that sit close together, a small patch can take each round. The central North Carolina planting calendar lists every window.

One crop in the table carries a warning that matters for spacing. Jerusalem artichokes are listed at 9 to 12 inches, with the note that they are best grown in a pot because they can spread aggressively. Do not read that distance as permission to plant them in the middle of a bed.

Worked example: tomatoes, summer squash and radishes

Say your plan has three plantings: a few tomatoes, a hill of summer squash and a short row of radishes. You make three lookups. Tomatoes are listed at 18 inches, summer squash at 24 inches and radishes at 1 inch. The squash wants more room between plants than the tomatoes, and the radishes want almost none. Cut a stick or a length of string to each distance and use it to mark the spots before anything goes in the ground.

What the table does not do is say how to space two different crops from each other. Give each plant the distance listed for its own crop on every side that has room, and keep the gaps between crops generous when you are unsure. Transplants you raised yourself go out at the same distances. The hardening off checklist covers the step before they reach the bed.

Limits of the chart

The table comes from a publication dated July 8, 2016, written for gardens in central North Carolina, and it does not say whether the distances change elsewhere. It also does not say whether a distance applies at sowing or after thinning, so for crops sown where they will grow, such as radishes and carrots, follow the thinning directions on the packet.

Spacing is one input to a bed layout. Timing belongs in the plan too, and the days to harvest chart shows how long each crop occupies its space and which beds free up first.