Design Your Garden Online! eBook Questions & Answers Free & Fun Stuff Garden Center Planning a Garden Planting a Garden By Vegetable... By Fruit Canning Foods Freezing Foods Recipes All About Tomatoes Container Gardening Contact, Privacy, Sitemap
Free vegetable garden planning, design, and layout software. Also, use our free garden plans, worksheets, and diary to help you get started with your home vegetable garden.
The planning is really one of the most fun parst of gardening!
Long before it is time to plant your garden, you can begin gathering ideas and information that will help you decide what kind of garden to plant. It's fun to daydream a bit with a seed catalog during the long winter months!
Whether you are a beginner and want a small first vegetable garden, or you are an experienced gardener looking for some new ideas, there is plenty of help for designing your vegetable garden layout!
Depending on the amount of space you have available for gardening, you may be looking for ideas for a traditional in-ground garden, a raised bed, or a container garden for growing your vegetables.
One of the first steps in planning your garden is determining the planting dates for your area.
Many garden vegetable plants cannot survive frosts or freezing temperatures.
To help determine planting dates in your area, and vegetable plant growing times, download our free vegetable garden planting guide and zone chart.
Or you can ask your local garden center, or a friendly gardener for the dates!
Add Some Color to Create a Beautiful Vegetable Garden
There are plenty of plants with pretty flowers, colorful fruit, and unusual growth habits to make your vegetable garden planning exciting as well as productive.
The fun of making gardening plans is to leave room to mix plants up a bit as you discover which vegetables grow best in a specific location! Grow some colorful annuals such as marigolds, zinnias, petunias or geraniums mixed in with your vegetable garden.
Try Edible Garden Borders!
Use the edible colorful plant backdrops that can be grown as shrubs near the vegetable garden:
Blueberry- white flowers in spring; blueberries in late spring
Banana- flowers year round in warmer climates; produces yellow fruit summer through fall
Pitomba- white flowers in spring; yellow fruit in summer
Pomegranate- orange-red flowers in spring; yellow to red fruit in summer
Cherry- pink flowers spring through fall; bright red fruit year round in warm regions
Vegetable Garden Designs
In your vegetable garden planning be sure to consider growing tomatoes, broccoli, Swiss chard, and stalks of corn if space and time permits.
Leave room for walkways in your garden, unless you build a raised bed garden, or plant a square foot garden.
Space-saving gardens can be a great help in many situations where space is at a premium.
The fillers or transition plantings can be designed to be perennials or annuals. Fill in with an herb garden, raspberries, or a sweet potato creeping vine.
Where to Plant your Garden?
When making your vegetable garden plans, consider every available spot.
Think about placing pots or containers vegetables on your porch, deck, or patio.
Or perhaps add containers of vegetables by a decorative fishpond or garden water fountain if you have one.
When gardening, plant what you know will be eaten. Don't waste space and effort on foods you and your family don't really enjoy eating.
More Vegetable Garden Design Tips
Research crops that interest you before planting to determine if they will be adaptable to your soil and climate.
Learn about the care and feeding of the vegetables that you want to grow.
Once your vegetable plants are established, your plan should be to water deeply and infrequently.
Vegetable Garden Plans--Easy First Crops to Grow
Growing lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, beans, and radishes are all easy, need only minimal looking after, and are good starter crops for beginners.
How Much to Plant?
Figuring out how much to plant is another deciding factor in vegetable garden planning.
A 10-foot row of beans may produce a few weeks worth of pickings while cauliflower might only yield one head per plant.
Tomatoes are one of the most "fruitful" vegetables you can grow in your garden, and usually yield a huge harvest.
Use yield tables to get an idea how much to except from a row of vegetables.
Where growing area is limited, consider vegetables with the highest return for the available space.
It helps to have an idea or plan to get started. Here is a small garden plan that will be easy to plan, design and build. Other plans are available for download on our "sample garden plans" page.
Remember...
Each season, there will be crops that exceed your expectations and there will be those that don't do so well. As you become a more experienced gardener, the successes will far outweigh the failures.
When you get the vegetable garden planning accomplished, it’s time to get to work! There is no time to waste if you want to own the bragging rights to the best garden around. Planting your own vegetables is a great way to have some clean healthy fun for the whole family.