Vegetable Garden Planning

You must take time for garden planning before you start your vegetable garden.

The first step in getting involved with a vegetable garden is to take time to plan. This means answering the old 4 "Ws"(and an "H")...

• What vegetables you will grow
• Where you will grow vegetables
• When you will plant your vegetable garden
• Who will be responsible for maintaing the garden
• How you will grow the garden and keep it going

Let's take a look at each garden planning factor...

This question can only bring enjoyable answers to your vegetable garden planning activities, as the plant variety is huge and you can always add new items to your garden.

Here are some of the vegetables that are most popular throughout the world:

Each of these species has slightly different growing conditions that you should pay special attention to when doing your garden planning. It is always best to carefully read the seeding and growing instructions on the packaging of the vegetable seeds. This will let you know exactly when thinning, weeding and watering are required and you will have a nice and productive garden.

Of course, personal preference should enter into garden planning as well. No sense in growing vegetables that no one will want to eat, is there?

Depending on the size of your lot, you may not have a lot of choices for locating your vegetable garden plot. So, you'll just need to do the very best that can be done with what you have. Factors you'll need to consider, though, are exposure, and second, convenience.

Other things being equal, select a spot near at hand, easy to access. It may seem that a difference of only a few hundred yards will mean nothing, but if one is depending largely upon spare moments for working in and for watching the garden—and in the growing of many vegetables the latter is almost as important as the former—this matter of convenient access will be of much greater importance than is likely to be at first recognized. Not until you have had to make a dozen time-wasting trips for forgotten seeds or tools, or gotten your feet soaking wet by going out through the dew-drenched grass, will you realize fully what this may mean.

Consider Exposure When Doing Garden Planning

Pick out the "earliest" spot you can find—a plot sloping a little to the south or east, that seems to catch sunshine early in the day and hold it late, and that seems to be out of the direct path of the chilling north and northeast winds.

If a building, some shrubs or evergreens, or even an old fence, protects it from this direction, your garden will be helped along wonderfully, for an early start is a great big factor toward success. The importance of having such a protection or shelter is often underestimated by the beginner gardener.

Soil Is Also a Factor in Garden Planning

Chances are, you will not find a spot of ideal garden soil ready for use anywhere upon your place. But all except the very worst of soils can be improved upon—especially such small areas as home vegetable gardens require.

Large tracts of soil that are almost pure sand, and others so heavy and mucky that for centuries they lay uncultivated, have frequently been brought, in the course of only a few years, to where they yield annually tremendous crops on a commercial basis.

So, do not be discouraged about your soil. Proper treatment of it is much more important, and a garden-patch of average soil will produce much more for the energetic and careful gardener than the richest spot will grow under average methods of cultivation.

The ideal garden soil is a "rich, sandy loam." And the fact cannot be overemphasized that such soils usually are made, not found. "Rich" means full of nutrients, and we'll talk more about that on the garden composting page.

"Sandy" in the sense here used, means a soil containing enough particles of sand so that water will pass through it without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days after a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall apart readily after being pressed in the hand. It is not necessary that the soil is sandy in appearance, but it should be friable.

"Loam: a rich, friable soil," says Webster. It is soil in which the sand and clay are in proper proportions, so that neither greatly predominate, and usually dark in color, from cultivation and enrichment. Such a soil, even to the untrained eye, just naturally looks as if it would grow things.

Garden Planning Also Involves an Assessment of the Drainage

You'll also need to take a look at the drainage in the site you've chosen for your vegetable garden. Dig down eight or twelve inches, and examine the sub-soil. This is the second level, usually of different texture and color from the rich surface soil, and harder than it.

If you find a sandy or gravelly bed, no matter how yellow and poor it looks, you have chosen the right spot. But if it is a stiff, heavy clay, especially a blue clay, you will have to either drain it or be content with a very late garden—that is, unless you are at the top of a knoll or on a slope.

A Few Other Factors to Consider in Garden Planning for Location

There are other things less important than the previous factors, but still worth considering, such as the shape of your garden plot, for instance. The more nearly rectangular, the more convenient it will be to work and the more easily kept clean and neat.

Have it large enough, or at least open on two ends, so that a rototiller can be used in plowing and tilling, if possible. And try to locate the garden plot within reach of an adequate supply of water, which will be a tremendous help in seasons of protracted drought.

All these things, then, one has to keep in mind when doing garden planning and in picking the spot best suited for the home vegetable garden. It should be, if possible, of convenient access; it should have a warm exposure and be well-enriched, well worked-up soil, not too light nor too heavy, and by all means well drained; If it has been thoroughly cultivated for a year or two previous, so much the better. If it is near a supply of water, so situated that it can be at least plowed and tilled with a rototiller, and large enough to allow the garden to be shifted every other year or two, still more the better.

Fill all of these requirements that you can, and then by taking full advantage of the advantages you have, you can discount the disadvantages. After all it is careful, persistent work, more than natural advantages, that will tell the story; and a good garden does not grow—it is made.

But in addition to knowing where to put your vegetable garden, you'll want to decide where within that garden plot to plant each type of vegetable. For that, you need a planting plan...

To make a planting plan, take a sheet of white paper and a ruler and mark off a space the shape of your garden—which should be rectangular if possible—using a scale of one-quarter or one-eighth inch to the foot.

In assigning space for the various vegetables, several things should be kept in mind in order to facilitate planting, replanting and cultivating the garden. Crops that remain several years—such as rhubarb and asparagus—should be kept at one end.

Next, come those that will remain a whole season—parsnips, carrots, onions and the like. Finally, those that will be used for a succession of crops—such as peas, lettuce, and spinach—or that will be tall-growing crops, such as pole beans, should be kept to the north of lower ones, so that they don't shade the lower-growing plants.

Determining when to plant a vegetable garden should be made after consulting a gardening zones map. Click the link to learn more about using gardening zones.

I'm assuming since you're the one reading this page, you are the one planning the garden. But gardens take work, especially vegetable gardens, if you want them to flourish and produce abundant harvests. Are you going to have time to weed, mulch, check for pests, and pick the vegetables when they are ready?

If not, you may need to spend some time on your garden planning thinking about how to divide up the labor that will be needed. Can you share the daily work with a spouse or child? Or, maybe it makes sense to have a "neighborhood garden," where the work can be divided among many willing hands.

The answer to this garden planning question has to do with the maintenance and upkeep. Gardens need weeding. They need regular feeding. They need pest management and control measures. They need adequate water. And, they need harvesting when the vegetables are finally ripe. Follow the links at the top of this page to learn more about these different activities.

In summary, do not leave the planning of your garden until you are ready to put the seeds in the ground and then do it all in a rush. Start your garden planning in January, as soon as you have received the New Year's catalogs and when you have time to study over them and look up your record of the previous year. Every hour spent on the plan will mean several hours saved in the vegetable garden, come Spring and Summer.

Great vegetable garden planning is the KEY!

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