Plant Vegetables: Do the Planning First
The best gardeners put in plenty of work before planting season even begins. Learn what it takes to plan out your garden, from choosing the best seed varieties to deciding on a garden style and setting up a planting schedule.
When it comes to having a successful garden, much of the hard work needs to happen before the growing season even starts. If you don’t have a plan in place for what you want to grow, you might find yourself with the wrong kinds of plants and possibly overwhelmed with weeds in the middle of the summer.
Here’s a guide for planning out your vegetable garden to ensure you start the season out right.
How to Choose Seeds
Your first task when planning a vegetable garden is deciding what to grow.
Plant nurseries and seed catalogs contain more varieties than you could master in decades, so it’s important to practice restraint and make practical choices. In fact, the most common mistake beginning gardeners make is trying to grow too much at once. Every plant has different needs, so committing to more than you can maintain can ruin your enthusiasm before the season’s half over.
Keep yourself from getting overwhelmed by growing six or fewer varieties your first year and adding up to three more every growing season after.
What should you plant? That depends on what you want to eat. Tomatoes are a popular choice because they are relatively easy to grow, come in hundreds of varieties, and are versatile for canning and cooking. Besides, once you taste a home-grown tomato, you’ll never want to return to storebought.
Salad lovers should consider growing various greens, while those with more space may enjoy mastering melons and winter squash. Pay attention to the characteristics and growing requirements for every variety to make sure it fits your garden conditions.
This is also the time to calculate how many plants you need. Think through how much your family will eat over the summer, how much you would freeze or preserve, and how much you want to give away, and plan how much you plant accordingly.
How to Make a Garden Planting Plan
Next, it’s time to determine how you will set up your garden. Popular strategies include row cropping, planting in raised beds, and setting up a small-space container garden.
Row Cropping
The traditional method is to plant each vegetable in rows approximately four feet (1.2m) wide. This provides plenty of space for each plant while still making it possible to reach across the whole bed for weeding.
- Pros: Best for large spaces, makes it easy to fit rototillers and other tools, easiest to set up
- Cons: May have lots of weed problems, adding compost and amendments gets expensive because they disperse
Raised Beds
Raised beds make it possible to start your garden from scratch. You build or buy a structure, add a quality growing mix, and plant directly into this new soil. Gardeners love raised beds because they make it possible to grow lots of plants in small spaces, and they raise the soil height so you aren’t bending over to nurture the plants.
- Pros: Space-efficient, defines the growing space, soil tends to heat faster than at ground level, easier maintenance (less bending down), makes it possible to garden if you have poor soil
- Cons: Expensive to set up, raised beds may need to be replaced after a few seasons, soil tends to dry out quickly
Container Gardening
For those low on space or who need to keep their garden portable, growing plants in containers is a surprisingly productive way to produce food. Many plants like tomatoes thrive in containers, meaning you can maximize any unused corner of your yard for gardening.
- Pros: Adaptable to any space, easy care and maintenance, possible to bring plants indoors on chilly days
- Cons: Limited planting space, doesn’t work well for root crops, pots dry out quickly
How to Set Up a Summer Planting Guide
Now that you’ve decided on the varieties and gardening style, it’s time to plan where each plant will go. Again, this stage takes careful planning for the best results. Here are the steps to follow to determine what to plant where in your garden space.
1. Sketch Out Your Garden Area
First, make a blueprint of your total growing space, adding dimensions where you can. You can do this by hand on graph paper or a computer if you want a reusable template.
2. Pay Attention to Spacing Needs
Next, look at the spacing requirements for each plant variety and write those down. This gives you a sense of how much of each plant type would fit in each part of the garden so you can optimize it for what you most want to grow.
3. Add Your Top Priority Crops
It’s now time to add plants to your sketch. Start with the crops you care most about to ensure you have enough space for them. You’ll fill in the other varieties around these top priorities.
4. Give Space to Vertical and Vining Crops
Next, plan for the crops that have special requirements. For example, squash plants start small but quickly can take over a square meter or more in trailing vines, and cucumbers and pole beans do best with sturdy trellising. Factor these spacing elements into the garden to keep things organized.
5. Plan for Crop Rotation and Succession
As your garden progresses over the growing season, you’ll start pulling out one-time producers like heads of lettuce and carrots as you eat them. This leaves space for new plants, so plan out what your next growing round will be, so you use the space efficiently all summer.
A Note on Plant Spacing
Many beginning gardeners make the mistake of attempting to cram too many plants in one garden bed. Plants start small, so it’s tempting to pack them in tight to maximize the harvest. However, this strategy only harms your garden in the long run.
As the plants grow, they will start competing with each other for soil nutrients and sunlight. The result may be a garden bed of mediocre plants rather than a few standout super-producers. In short, resist the urge to overcrowd and give each plant the space necessary to thrive.
Eager as you might be to start digging in the dirt immediately, a well-planned garden is the best way to get results. Take the time to plan your garden in advance, and you’ll reap the rewards all summer long.
