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Plant & Seed Spacing Calculator

Find out how many plants fit in your garden bed for both square and triangular spacing layouts.

How it is calculated

All three inputs are in centimetres. The square layout counts whole plants along each side and multiplies: square = floor(len / spacing) × floor(wid / spacing). Partial plants are dropped, so a leftover strip narrower than one spacing is not counted. The offset layout is estimated as triangular = round(square × 1.1547), where 1.1547 is 1/0.866 for staggered rows. Density is round(10000 / spacing²) plants per square metre for the square grid. All values must be above zero, otherwise nothing is returned.

Worked example

A bed 400 cm long and 120 cm wide with plants every 30 cm. Along the length: 400 / 30 = 13.33, so 13 plants. Across the width: 120 / 30 = 4. Square grid: 13 × 4 = 52 plants. Offset layout: 52 × 1.1547 ≈ 60. Density: 10000 / 900 ≈ 11 plants per m².

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Entering the bed size in metres or the spacing in inches. Every field is centimetres, so a 4 m bed must be typed as 400.
  • Using the final canopy width of the mature plant as spacing when the seed packet gives a row spacing and a separate in-row spacing. The tool uses one spacing in both directions.
  • Expecting the offset figure to be exact. It is the square count times a fixed factor, so a narrow bed with only a few rows may fit fewer staggered plants than shown.
  • Forgetting paths. If you need an access strip, subtract it from the bed width first.

About this calculator

For a rectangular bed, square spacing simply divides the planting area by the square of the spacing distance (plants per row × number of rows), while triangular (hexagonal/offset) spacing staggers alternate rows by half the spacing distance, packing roughly 15% more plants into the same area — a factor of 2/√3 ≈ 1.1547 — because each plant's growing circle overlaps its neighbours more efficiently than in a square grid.

Home gardeners and small-scale market growers use square spacing for row crops that need machine or hand cultivation between rows, and switch to triangular spacing for crops like lettuce, carrots, or beans grown in intensive beds where maximizing yield per square foot matters more than row access. Seed packet spacing recommendations feed directly into this calculation to plan how many seedlings or seed packets a given bed actually needs.

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