Learn how to plan and plant a vegetable garden from selecting just the right vegetables to starting your own transplants indoors. Also, get some special tips on planning so you can cultivate your best garden yet.
Featured Expert: Frank Williams
Professor of Plant & Animal Science, Brigham Young University
Featured Guest: John Foss
John Foss only moved into his Bungalow 3 years ago but he immediately drew a plan for the garden. Though space is limited the garden has won a second prize for "best created garden."
Featured Guest: Graham Henson
Graham Henson practices succession planting to maximize the space in his English backyard. Some of his vegetables, the tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots, are grown in buckets.
Click on a topic below to view additional information.
Planning A Vegetable Garden
Planning a vegetable garden requires thinking ahead to the harvest. Even if you are an experienced gardener ask yourself these questions:
What grows well in my area?
What is my soil type?
What are my climate conditions?
When are the first and last dates for frost?
One of the common mistakes in planning a garden is thinking that you must plant every seed that comes in a seed packet. One zucchini plant, three tomato plants, two or three pepper plants will supply most small families with plenty of harvest. In the Vegetable Garden consider:
Who will be doing the work?
What do you like to eat?
How do you plan to use the produce?
How much space is available?
Planning and Preparing suggests that a well-planned garden is easier to plant and care for. And by keeping a plan, you won’t repeat the same mistakes year after year.
Planning the vegetable garden gives tips on site selection, soil test, vegetable variety and sketching out a plan. A large garden plan is drawn out as an example.
What if you don’t have a lot of space for a garden? Small plot vegetable gardening will give tips on how to maximize what soil you have.
When planning a garden, take into account the location, the soil, what you want to grow and how to optimize your garden space. By drawing a scale model, you can determine how much of each plant you need for order seeds or buying transplants.
Here is a calendar for the year round gardener with tips on what to do each month for a successful harvest.
What Do You Want To Grow?
Choosing what vegetables and how much to plant can be overwhelming because of the seemingly limitless varieties available. Start with vegetables you know you like and then grow from there. Remember that some varieties only grow in specific regions, so be sure to check with your extension service for varieties suited to your area.
At Watch Your Garden Grow get tips for what and how to grow EVERYTHING from asparagus to watermelon!
Home Vegetable Gardening has a wealth of information on the basics of home gardening. Click on the handy links to learn good information about vegetables and their varieties.
Get some tips on how to choose which variety or cultivar is best. Vegetables: Crop selection teaches about hybrids, disease resistance and how to understand seed catalogues.
A Taste of Gardening discusses factors that you must take into account when planning the garden: soil, sunlight, water, and location.
Home Vegetable Gardening gives tips for deciding where to locate the garden. Consider soil, water supply, and adequate light.
Carefully planning your garden can save a lot of trouble in the future. These are the factors to consider: sunlight, soil, water, location, size, and what you want to grow.
Locating the garden should take into account factors like soil, wind, water, and the convenience of the location.
Which way should the rows run? Vegetable Garden Layout recommends planting the tall crops on the north and the short ones on the south to get better yields.
Water
In the home garden, it is usually best to adjust irrigation to meet the needs of shallow-rooted crops.
At Fertilizing the vegetable garden you can learn which crops need less fertilizer (Beans, peas, radishes, watermelons and turnips) and which ones need more (Cabbage and related crops, tomatoes, sweet corn, beets, carrots, onions, celery and potatoes).
Garden size depends on the kinds and amounts of vegetables you want to have. Make it large enough to be interesting and enjoyable but not so large that it becomes a burden.
A Taste of Gardening recommends choosing a plot according to how much land is available, how much time you intend to spend in your garden and how much produce can you use.
Location
A garden takes some tending. When planning the garden you want to ask yourself: How convenient is the location?
Selecting a location is critical to good vegetable production. Consider sunlight, soil, water, and easy access.
Air circulation is important to consider when selecting your site.
Some crops like corn are fertilized by the air flow or wind.
Frost Dates
Vegetable Planting Guide lists the four categories of plants: Very hardy, frost tolerant, tender, and warm-loving. Vegetables are planted according to their ability to withstand frost.
Get Ready for Planting talks about how the time of planting depends upon the temperature.
While this site gives tips for the 4-H gardening project, it has great ideas for anyone who wants to get started. Once you know where your garden will be, draw up a plan.
Use this handy graph to make a plan of your garden plot.
Get some tips on how to choose which variety or cultivar is best for you. Vegetables: Crop selection teaches about hybrids, disease resistance and how to understand seed catalogs.
Planning a garden gives tips in choosing seed varieties. Consider disease resistance, yield, maturity date, size, shape, color, and flavor.
At Planning a Garden you will find recommendations for obtaining seeds and transplants.
The Master Gardener has tips on traditional planting, row planting, hill planting, and intensive planting. To do intensive gardening, you may try square foot gardening, space saving varieties, wide row planting, and raised beds.
Grow more food in a small area has tips on location, soil, fertilizer, spacing, and how to extend the growing season.
You may not need to plant every seed in the packet. This site has tips on How to store seeds.
Tip from Dr. Frank Williams:
Purchase your seeds in the fall of the year before you plant them.
Planting warm season crops before late May is risky because they won’t grow in cold soil.
Home & Garden Information Center has a Planting chart with dates to plant the warm and cool season crops in South Carolina. Find out the frost dates in your region for similar information.
Growing vegetable transplants can be done in many different containers. Once they germinate, they need adequate light. When buying transplants, the biggest ones are not always the best.
Make sure your transplants have acquired “true leaves” before setting them out.
These are the second leaves that appear on the plant and are the first hardy leaves that grow.
Crop Rotation and Succession Planting
Crop rotation is important in preventing plant diseases and pest problems. It can add to the fertility of the soil. It is important that individual plants from the same family do not follow each other in the rotation. When planning the garden, it is easy to vary plant location. Find out which vegetables belong to the same family so that crop rotation can benefit your soil.
Succession planting is planting a different crop in a garden spot as soon as the current vegetable is harvested. Cool season and warm season crops work best if grouped together. A small planting of radishes or lettuce, for example, can be done every week through the early summer to provide a continual harvest.
Intercropping allows growing more than one crop in the same field at the same time. For example: Beans, corn, and squash can grow together in the same plot.
The home vegetable garden gives a comprehensive garden guide including tips on intercropping and succession planting.
Tip from Dr. Frank Williams:
Use the three-year crop rotation plan and be sure to do succession planting within each growing season.
Gardening Journals
Keeping a garden journal helps you take the guesswork out of gardening and makes you a more confident gardener.
Planning and Preparing suggests that a well-planned garden is easier to plant and care for. And by keeping a plan, you won’t repeat the same mistakes year after year.
Tip from Dr. Frank Williams:
Put your garden plan on paper and keep track of the performance of your vegetables in a garden journal. This will help you in planning, remembering your favorite varieties, and in crop rotation for the next season.
Experiment with your garden and try new things. Before you know it, you’ll have the garden you always wanted!
