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| You understand me Ryan Gosling |
What do you actually want to grow? How much space do you have to grow things? What can you grow in that space? What is your budget for this garden?
The order in which you determine these things isn’t all that important. This is how I like to do things, you might find another method that works better for you and that’s awesome. If you do please share it!
First I make a list of all the things I want to grow this year in my veggie garden along with the amount of space each one takes to grow. There is a popular garden method called “Square Foot Gardening” that I really like to borrow from. (If you’re interested you can get the book here: Link to Amazon) If you have a healthy, well fertilized, raised bed you can use pack a lot more into each square foot than in traditional row gardens. However, the Square Foot Gardening method does not really enough air circulation, water, or light for the other plants to survive, so I trim it down a little. They also do not allow for enough space to get through the beds in order to tend plants that may be behind other plants. If you only have 4x4 beds, with total access all the way around, in absolutely flat and full sun areas with perfect soil and you always remember to water every day it doesn’t rain then the Square Foot Gardening method is for you. For the rest of us it leaves a bit to be desired. I do however find it to be one of the most useful books and methods for urban and smaller space gardening.
There are a lot of great resources out there for how much space different plants need, and I find that thinking about your garden in terms of square feet can be really helpful for some plants.
Here’s my quick and dirty spacing vegetable garden guidelines:
1 per 2 sq ft: Zucchini (summer squash), Winter squash, Gourds, Pumpkins, Tomatoes, Standard Cucumbers
1 per sq ft: Peppers, Eggplant, Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Cabbage
2 per sq ft: Small cucumbers, Corn, Bush Beans, Collard Greens
4 per sq ft: Strawberry, Marigold (to be totally honest with you, I mostly just tuck marigolds into my garden anywhere I have a bit of space, they’re lovely pest repellent and also look super cute), Swiss Chard
Space 6’’ apart along trellis or fence: Pole beans, Peas (I don’t think much about these in terms of their footprint because they grow up along their supports so much)
Plant in rows more or less according to seed packet: Lettuces, spinach, most greens, carrots, beets.
A quick note about herbs:
An herb garden is one of the most enjoyable and cost efficient types of home gardening. If you have only a little bit of space you get the most dollar savings by growing your own herbs. Herb gardens are also great candidates for container gardens. Personally I prefer to grow my herbs in containers around my patio. I’ll write posts specifically about container gardens and herb gardens later.
Next you need to know about your space. Where are you planting this garden? How much space do you have? What kind of sun do you get?
First you need to know how big your garden is. Go out and measure your space. Are you building raised beds? I’ll be writing a post about raised beds later on, but (spoiler alert) if you can build raised beds I HIGHLY recommend that you do. They cut down on weeding, retain water better, give you more control over your soil quality, and they look pretty. Over all they’re just an awesome choice for your veggie garden.
Once you’ve measured your space or spaces, write it down.
Most garden vegetables require full sun (6+ hours per day) in order to thrive and produce blooms. Keep in mind that the sun will move across the sky, so that if you look at your garden in the morning you might have different exposure than if you check it out in the afternoon.
Check on your space at a couple different times during the day to see what kind of sun you get. Write that down too.
The Process:
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| Super high tech. |
First thing’s first, gather your materials. There are as many different ways of writing up a garden plan as there are gardeners, but I have found that few things work quite as well as some graph paper, some colored pens or pencils, and my notebook.
If you’re not a pens and paper sort of person Gardeners.com has a great free tool that you can use right on their website to get much the same effect.
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| This is just an example, my blog doesn't have its own garden |
Be sure to label your chart with both your space, the date, and your dimensions.
Up next is just plug and play. I like to do my initial spacing with a pencil and then write it in with pen later, so that I don’t have to redo everything if I mess up.
There are two different ways of laying out your garden plan, either using symbols for the different types of veggies or by blocking the space out and labeling it. I do both and either way works just fine and is totally up to you how you want to do it.
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| My actual garden journal on Left, example on right. |
Some quick tips:
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere the southern sun will be the brightest and hottest and what most of your plants will want the most.
Bare in mind that taller plants will shade shorter plants. Plant your taller stuff towards the North side of your bed so that it won’t shade out the smaller stuff.
Remember that you need to be able to reach all your plants in order to tend them and harvest them. I made that mistake and spent a summer playing twister with a dense forest of tomato plants so that I could harvest the green beans I had growing on a fence behind them.
If you have a fence or wall, consider going vertical and growing something on them. Also if you can’t reach all the way around your garden, plant the tall stuff in the back, so that you can reach over the short stuff to get to it.
Once you’ve drawn, re drawn, tweaked and made yourself a beautiful garden that’s filled with yummy things you just can’t wait to eat, the next step is to ask yourself two key questions:
Where are I getting all these plants from?
and
When do I need to do stuff?
I’ll be answering those two questions in my next blog post!
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