Plant & Seed Spacing Calculator

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.