Planting Spacing Calculator

Yes -- increasing Garden Length or Garden Width, holding Row Spacing and Plant Spacing fixed, always increases or holds steady the Total Plants that fit, since it directly increases how many rows and how many plants per row the bed can hold. It never decreases the plant count.

Plant Spacing sets the distance kept between plants within a row, so a wider Plant Spacing means fewer plants fit along the same Garden Length -- Plants per Row is Garden Length divided by Plant Spacing, so a bigger divisor produces a smaller result and Total Plants falls.

Number of Rows and Plants per Row are both rounded down to whole numbers, since a partial row or partial plant slot isn't usable in practice. That means Total Plants can stay flat across a small range of spacing values and then step up all at once once a full extra row or plant fits -- this is expected rounding behavior, not a bug.

It divides Total Plants by a typical average seeds-per-packet figure and rounds up, so treat it as a rough shopping estimate. Actual seed count per packet varies widely by plant variety and supplier -- check the seed packet's actual count for precise purchasing.

The two figures assume different layouts. Total Plants uses a traditional row-and-aisle layout: it accounts for the walking room set by Row Spacing between rows, so a chunk of the garden's area goes to aisles rather than plants. Square Foot Method Plants instead assumes an intensive grid with no aisles at all, spaced evenly at your Plant Spacing in both directions. Whenever Row Spacing is larger than Plant Spacing -- the normal case, since aisles need to be wide enough to walk in -- Square Foot Method Plants comes out much higher, because it is packing the whole bed rather than leaving room to walk between rows.