Beginner Vegetable Garden Free Plans, Pictures, and Worksheets

Easy Beginner Vegetable Garden Idea

Check out our beginner vegetable garden free plans and worksheets, and easy vegetable gardening plans for beginners!

Beginner garden plans include small in-ground plots, raised beds, and container gardens.

Design Your Own Vegetable Garden Layout Using our Free "Vegetable Garden Planner" Software!

Easy Vegetables for Beginner Gardeners to Grow

Salad vegetables are among the easiest plants to grow in the garden. Lettuce, radishes, green onions, cucumbers and tomatoes are mainstays in most vegetable gardens!

Add a dill, parsley, cilantro, and a sweet basil plant, and you will have some great fresh herbs to add to your salad!

Simple Vegetable Garden
Ideas for Beginners

Simple Garden Idea For Beginners

All of these gardens are simple to design and plant!

• The most important first step is finding a sunny location for your garden.
  
• Depending on how much time and effort you want to spend, there are several options that will work for planning a basic garden.
  
• Growing your favorite vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, onions and a few herbs for the kitchen is easily accomplished when planning your garden layout.
  
• Most vegetable plants can be grown from inexpensive packets of seeds, and a few can be purchased as small plants or seedlings from your local garden center.
  

Download Free Garden Planning Worksheets, Garden Diary, Zone Chart, Or Planting Guide

When to Plant?

Download Zone Chart

Download Garden Planting Guide

When to plant your vegetable garden depends on where you live.

Many garden vegetable plants cannot tolerate freezing weather.

You will need to know when the last frost in your area typically occurs.

Easy Vegetable Gardening
Ideas for Beginners

Raised Bed and Container Vegetable Gardens are Easy for Beginners

Do you know that beginner vegetable gardens come in all shapes and sizes; large, small, and in-between?

In a crowded landscape, your garden may have to take a sharp bend, form a semi-circle, or be placed in a flower bed, or on the patio.

So be creative! Let’s take a look at some small space vegetable garden plans.

Download Free Garden Planning Worksheets, Garden Diary, Zone Chart, Or Planting Guide

Small Geometric Garden Plots

Beginner Vegetable Gardens Can Be Simple and Easy to Care For

Planting schemes based on geometry are intensive.

The aim of this small space vegetable garden technique is to use all available land.

Root crops often are sown at close spacing.

For instance, a square foot can accommodate 50 carrots or 20 turnips before thinning.The thinned plants can be eaten, too!

Using the French intensive method, the gardener sets vegetable plants in a six-sided configuration inside far-apart rows.

The plants are transplanted or seeded at suggested spacing in hexagonal patterns, with an extra plant planted in the center.

Square Foot Garden
Beginner Vegetable Garden

Square Foot Gardens are Great for Beginners

A "Square Foot" garden is a simple version of intensive gardening.

It is one of the easiest gardens for someone beginning vegetable gardening!

To design a small square foot vegetable garden layout, draw a square on a piece of paper.

Divide the square into four equal spaces from top-to-bottom, and from side-to-side.

Each of the resulting 16 squares can be planted with a different type of vegetable seeds or plants.

This garden can be planted in the ground, or designed as a raised bed.

If you choose to make a raised bed, use the following step to build the frame:

• Use untreated lumber (either 2 by 4's, or 2 x 6's will work fine) to frame for a square foot garden.
•  Cut the boards into 4' 2" lengths.
  
• Nail or stake the ends together at the corners to create a square with an inner dimension of four feet.
• Use strips of wood or lengths of string to diivide the square into 16 equal parts.
  
• Follow the planting instructions on your vegetable seed packets or small plants for spacing requirement.
  
• For larger vegetables, plant in the center of the square. For smaller plants, space seeds evenly within each square.

Raised Bed Gardens for Beginners

Raised Bed Beginner Vegetable Garden

Raised bed gardens are not the easiest gardens to build.

But once you clear the ground, build a frame, then fill it with garden soil, you can "live happily ever after" with a garden that is easy to plant and care for thereafter!

Raised bed gardens are perfect for a first vegetable garden.

• Building a raised bed garden can easily be done as a weekend project by one (strong) person with a helper to assist.
  
• This type of beginner vegetable garden can be fully planted, as there is no need to leave space for walking.
  
• Build your garden no more than four feet wide, so that you can easily reach the center from either side.
  
• Any length that you have room for is fine, and the height can be anywhere from 6 to 18 inches.
• Taller raised beds are convenient in that you can easily sit on the side of the garden frame to care for your garden.
• Use wood (untreated), bricks, stones, or cement to build the frame for your garden.

Easy to Build Raised Bed Garden

Container or Potted Gardens
for Beginners

Container Vegetable Gardens are Easy to Plant and Maintain

Indoor Container Herb Garden

Clay Pot Vegetable Garden

This is the easiest and quickest of all beginner vegetable gardens to set up.

Simply recycle or purchase larger-size containers (5 gallon is a good size) with drainage holes in the bottom.

1. Fill your containers with enriched potting soil.
2. Place them in a sunny location.
3. Plant your seeds or plants following spacing instructions on the packet or plant.
4. Provide adequate water. When the top one-inch of soil feels dry to the touch, water the plant deeply. Be watchful in hot weather, as soil in containers can dry out very quickly!
5. Provide a cage or trellis for support when growing vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and eggplants.

Garden Planting Techniques for Beginners

Planting Techniques are Important for Beginner Vegetable Gardens

It is important to remember that plants need plenty of room to grow when planning a beginner vegetable garden.

For example, if plantings are too cramped, the results could be a lot of tops and only a few roots from radishes or just a small picking of bush beans.

So follow the planting instructions on your seed packets or small plants carefully!

Vegetable Planting Guide
for Beginners

Download our chart shown above to help determine when to plant your garden, and the approximate growing times for some of your favorite vegetables.

Gardeners have been plotting and planting for years to develop techniques that give the best production from gardens.

Manipulation of row length and width plus crop planting intensities are designed to get the best harvest from a specific space.

Square feet or geometric gardening techniques use all available space.

Rows are eliminated and every square foot produces a harvest for maximum production.

A beginner vegetable garden site 4 x 4 can typically produce enough fresh vegetables for one or two people.

Beginner Vegetable Gardens can be Part of the Landscape Design

In an effort to use every bit of land, inventive gardeners plant small space vegetable gardens in the corners of triangles, squares, or rectangles, and then add a plant or two in the middle.

So get out there and plan your vegetable garden even if you are a beginner!

You will quickly learn from your own experiences what works well in your location and climate, and what not to try again.

Even very experienced gardeners report having successes and failures each gardening season.

So involve your family, design a garden together, and enjoy simple vegetable gardening for beginners!

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