Welcome to Vegetable Gardening Online

View of a traditional in-ground vegetable garden on the farm.

Welcome to Vegetable Gardening Online — your complete resource for growing a productive, beautiful vegetable garden at home.

Whether you are planting your very first garden or you have been growing vegetables for years, you will find practical, experience-based advice here on every aspect of vegetable gardening from planning and planting through harvest, preserving, and everything in between.

This site has been a labor of love for more than seventeen years.

Everything here comes from real vegetable gardening experience in the Willamette Valley of Oregon — one of the best climates in the country for growing a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and herbs.

Beautiful Vegetable Garden Plans & Ideas

The advice on these pages is grounded in what actually works in a home garden, not what works on a commercial farm or in a laboratory greenhouse.

Use the sections below to find exactly what you need.

Whether you are looking for help planning your garden layout, advice on growing a specific vegetable, free printable worksheets and charts, or fun vegetable garden activities for your children or grandchildren — it is all here!

Planning a Vegetable Garden

All the information you need to create an organic vegetable garden; from seeds, to compost, fertilizer, pest control, and much more.

Good vegetable gardening begins with a good plan!

Choosing the right location, deciding what to grow, understanding your growing zone and frost dates, and designing a layout that makes efficient use of your space are the foundations of a productive garden.

Click on image above to use our free Interactive Garden Planner software to design your vegetable garden.

Our Planning a Vegetable Garden hub covers all of this —

• raised bed gardening
• container gardening
• vertical gardening
• square foot gardening
• companion planting

and much more.

Use our free interactive Zone Finder to determine your planting zone, along with information for gardening in your specific zone.

Use our free Zone Finder to find your frost dates and our free online Garden Planner to design your layout before you plant.

• Planning a Vegetable Garden — complete hub for garden design, layout, raised beds, containers, zone finder, and planting tools
• Raised Bed Vegetable Garden — building, filling, and planting raised beds for maximum productivity
• Container Vegetable Gardening — growing vegetables in pots, patios, balconies, and small spaces
• Companion Planting — which vegetables grow best together and which to keep apart
• Vegetable Garden Planting Times — complete guide to when to plant every vegetable by zone
• Zone Finder — find your USDA growing zone and frost dates
• Free Online Garden Planner — design your vegetable garden layout online

Growing Vegetables

The heart of any vegetable garden is the vegetables themselves. Choose only vegetables that you and your family enjoy eating!

Our Growing Vegetables section covers how to grow every major vegetable crop — from the most popular tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn to less common crops like ground cherries, Egyptian onions, and kohlrabi.

Use our handy Planting Calendar chart to keep track of when to plant each type of garden vegetable. Click the image to download this chart.

Each vegetable growing guide covers:

• choosing the right variety
• planting times
• soil preparation
• spacing
• watering
• feeding
• pest management
• harvesting

Whether you are growing a single tomato plant in a pot or a large garden with twenty different vegetable crops, you will find the specific guidance you need here.

• Growing Vegetables — complete hub for growing all vegetables at home
• Growing Tomatoes
• Growing Cucumbers
• Growing Corn
• Growing Green Beans
• Growing Lettuce
• Growing Carrots
• Growing Potatoes
• Growing Peppers
• Growing Broccoli
• Growing Onions
• Planting Asparagus
• Growing Squash

Growing Herbs

Having a kitchen herb garden located near your home, is an excellent way to supply fresh herbs for your cooking needs.

Fresh herbs from the garden elevate every meal and are among the easiest and most rewarding plants to grow alongside vegetables.

Most herbs thrive in containers as well as in the ground, making them accessible to gardeners with any amount of space.

Our Growing Herbs hub covers all the most popular culinary herbs — basil, thyme, parsley, rosemary, dill, cilantro, fennel, sage, and more — with specific growing guides for each one.

Herbs can be grown both indoors and outdoors in pots or containers, as well as in your vegetable garden.

• Growing Herbs — complete hub for growing culinary herbs in the garden and in containers
• Growing Basil
• Growing Dill
• Growing Herbs in Pots — container herb gardens for kitchens, patios, and small spaces

Growing Fruit and Berries

Guide for growing fruit and berries in your garden. Click image to download.

Adding a row of berries or a few fruit plants to the home vegetable garden rewards gardeners with some of the most delicious produce possible to grow.

Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and gooseberries all grow well in home gardens across a wide range of climates.

Fresh berries at peak ripeness — eaten straight from the plant or preserved for winter — are one of the genuine luxuries of home gardening.

Our Growing Fruit and Berries hub covers all the most popular home garden fruits and berries with complete growing guides.

Ripe Raspberries Freshly Picked Blackberries from the Garden

Growing Blueberries in the Garden Fresh Ripe Strawberries from the Garden

• Growing Fruit and Berries — complete hub for strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and more
• Growing Strawberries
• Growing Blueberries
• Growing Raspberries
• Growing Blackberries

Seasonal Vegetable Gardening

Use our guide for growing vegetables through all four seasons. Click on the image to download.

A productive vegetable garden is not a single-season project — it is a year-round cycle of planning, planting, growing, harvesting, and preparing for the next season.

Our Seasonal Vegetable Garden hub covers the garden through all four seasons — what to plant in spring, how to manage heat and drought in summer, which crops to extend into fall, and how to keep a winter garden producing in mild climates.

See our guides to planning and planting a fall vegetable garden to extend your growing season.

Cold frames, cold-hardy vegetables, succession planting, and crop rotation are all covered in depth.

Adding a cold frame to your garden plan can help extend the growing season in cooler climates.

• Seasonal Vegetable Garden — complete guide to year-round vegetable gardening through all four seasons
• Spring Vegetable Garden
• Summer Vegetable Garden
• Fall Vegetable Garden
• Winter Vegetable Gardening
• Cold Frame Vegetable Garden
• Succession Planting Vegetables

Vegetable Garden Soil, Fertilizer, and Composting

Preparing the soil for in-ground, raised beds, or container gardens will make a difference in how your garden grows!

Healthy soil is the foundation of every successful vegetable garden.

No matter how good your seeds or how favorable your climate, poor soil will limit what you can grow.

Rich, well-drained, biologically active soil produces vigorous plants that resist pests and disease and deliver exceptional harvests.

Our Soil, Fertilizer and Composting hub covers everything you need to know about building the best possible soil for vegetable gardening — composting, organic fertilizers, mulching, cover crops, raised bed soil, and compost tea.

Reference chart for healthy vegetable garden soil, fertilizer, and compost. Click image to download chart.

• Soil, Fertilizer and Composting — complete hub for building rich vegetable garden soil
• Vegetable Garden Fertilizer
• How to Make Compost Tea
• Mulching a Vegetable Garden
• Cover Crops for Vegetable Gardens
• Build a Compost Bin

Vegetable Garden Care and Maintenance

Care and maintenance can "make or break" a vegetable garden! Plan your garden based on how much time you can commit to gardening; or how much you enjoy gardening.

A vegetable garden rewards consistent attention.

Watering, weeding, pest management, fencing, and seasonal maintenance all contribute to a garden that produces well from spring through fall.

Our Garden Care and Maintenance hub covers the practical work of keeping a vegetable garden healthy and productive — irrigation systems, organic pest and disease management, garden fencing to keep out wildlife, weed control, and the surprisingly popular topic of vegetable garden scarecrows.

Use this handy chart for vegetable garden care and maintenance. Click image to download.

• Garden Care and Maintenance — complete hub for vegetable garden upkeep, pest management, watering, and fencing
• Vegetable Garden Irrigation
• Garden Weed Control
• Vegetable Garden Pests and Diseases
• Vegetable Garden Scarecrows
• Vegetable Garden Fencing

Organic Vegetable Gardening

Home grown organic tomatoes are a delicious treat all summer long!

Growing vegetables organically means working with natural systems rather than against them — building soil with compost and cover crops, managing pests with beneficial insects and organic sprays, and avoiding synthetic chemicals that disrupt the living soil biology that makes a garden productive.

Our Organic Vegetable Garden hub covers the full picture of chemical-free growing, including organic fertilizers, organic pest control, companion planting for pest deterrence, cover crops, and no-dig vegetable gardening methods.

A sunny balcony can be used to grow a surprising amount of fresh organic vegetables.

• Organic Vegetable Garden — complete hub for chemical-free vegetable gardening
• Organic Pest Control
• Organic Fertilizer Recipe
• No-Dig Vegetable Gardening
• Cover Crops for Vegetable Gardens

Preserving Garden Vegetables

Pantry filled with garden vegetables and fruits through canning, freezing, drying, fermenting, and free-drying; see our guides to all.

One of the greatest rewards of a productive vegetable garden is having more than you can eat fresh — and being able to preserve that abundance for the months ahead.

Freezing, canning, and drying extend the garden harvest through winter and give you homegrown vegetables at their nutritional peak rather than produce that has spent days or weeks in transit and storage.

Our Preserving Garden Vegetables hub covers freezing vegetables, home canning, making sauerkraut, drying garlic, and storing onions and potatoes.

Freezing home grown corn for winter use takes time and effort. But the reward is eating delicious fresh-tasting corn in the winter months!

• Preserving Garden Vegetables — complete hub for freezing, canning, and storing vegetables from the garden
• Freezing Vegetables
• Canning Vegetables
• Making Sauerkraut
• Drying Garlic

Kids Gardening — The Kids Garden Club

Our Kids Garden Club has lots of fun gardening related activities for children preschool through 7th-8th grade.

Children who grow vegetables learn patience, responsibility, and the deep satisfaction of producing their own food — lessons that stay with them for life.

Our Kids Gardening hub features the Kids Garden Club printable series — a growing library of free educational activities, games, and crafts designed to make vegetable gardening exciting and accessible for children from preschool through middle school.

Visit our Free Vegetable Garden Printables hub for free vegetable gardening coloring books, activity books,and crafts projects; for preschoolers, through elementary school ages.

The Kids Garden Club collection includes:

• vegetable garden coloring books,
• garden scavenger hunts in three grade levels,
• vegetable and fruit and flower Go Fish card games,
• vegetable flash cards,
• cut and paste garden activity sets,
• plant life cycle worksheets and charts for preschool through grade 8,
• vegetable garden craft projects,
• a wide range of educational worksheets, mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, and bookmarks.

All Kids Garden Club printables are free to download.

Free vegetable gardening coloring pages for all ages of children; preschool and up. Click image to download and print this coloring page.

Many children who are picky eaters at the table become enthusiastic vegetable lovers in the garden.

My six-year-old granddaughter told me recently that she now likes tomatoes — after she ate a cherry tomato for the very first time while helping in the garden one summer afternoon.

That small moment captures everything that is wonderful about growing a vegetable garden with children.

Our scavenger hunt activity sheets are for preschool through 3rd-4th grade levels. Click image to download and print.

Cut and paste vegetables and helpers into the garden. Click image to go the the page of "Cut and Paste Activities for Kids."

• Kids Gardening — complete hub for children's vegetable garden activities, printables, and growing guides
• Garden Scavenger Hunt Printable — free printable in three grade levels, Preschool through Grade 4
• Plant Life Cycle Worksheet — free charts and worksheets for Preschool through Grade 8
• Vegetable Flash Cards Printable — free vegetable vocabulary cards for Grade 1
• Vegetable Go Fish Card Game — free printable card games for vegetables, fruits, berries, and flowers
• Vegetable Garden Cut and Paste Activity — free printable garden scene activity sets for ages 3-5
• Vegetable Garden Coloring Books — free printable coloring books and pages
• Free Worksheets for Kids — mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, bookmarks, and more
• Preschool Art Activities — free printable art and learning activities for preschool children

Free Vegetable Garden Printables

We offer many free "how to" charts for growing vegetables, caring for a garden, compost, soil, etc. Click on the image to download this chart.

Our free vegetable garden printables are some of the most popular resources on this site.

Download our:

• free planting calendar,
• companion planting chart,
• seed starting chart,
• vegetable garden journal,
• zone chart,
• worksheets, and more — all formatted to print cleanly at home.

Our interactive online Garden Planner lets you design your garden layout on screen and print the result.

Everything in our Free Vegetable Garden Printables section is free to download and use as many times as you like.

Print our handy Companion Planting Chart to guide your vegetable garden planting. Click the image to download and print this guide.

• Free Vegetable Garden Printables — all our free downloads in one place
• Vegetable Garden Worksheets — free planning worksheets, garden diary, and zone chart
• Vegetable Planting Calendar — free printable zone-specific planting calendar
• Companion Planting Chart — free printable quick-reference chart
• Seed Starting Chart — free printable indoor start dates for every vegetable
• Vegetable Garden Journal — free printable growing journal for recording your season
• Zone Finder — find your USDA growing zone and frost dates
• Free Online Garden Planner — design your vegetable garden layout online
• Free Vegetable Garden Journal — beautiful printable journal with 20 pages for recording planting dates, harvests, weather, pests, and garden notes — free download

Free download Vegetable Garden Journal. Click image to download.

Getting Started With Vegetable Gardening

When the children are young, they love to "help" in the garden. You cringe as they step on things, and mistake vegetable plants for weeds. When they are really old enough to help, they usually disappear quietly and quickly if they possibly can.

If you are new to vegetable gardening, the most important piece of advice is simply to start.

Start small — a four-foot by eight-foot raised bed or a few containers on a sunny porch is enough.

Choose vegetables your family actually eats.

Find the sunniest spot available, because most vegetables need at least six hours of direct sunlight each day.

Prepare the soil with compost before planting. Water consistently. And then watch what happens.

Vegetable gardening teaches patience and rewards observation.

The same garden in the same location behaves differently every year — responding to rainfall, temperature, and the specific varieties you choose.

A vegetable garden journal helps you track what works and build on it year after year.

Healthy raise bed vegetable garden with companion planted marigolds to help repel insect pests.

No matter how little space you have, you can always grow something.

Fresh herbs on a kitchen windowsill, lettuce in a pot on the balcony, tomatoes in a container on the deck — vegetable gardening in any form connects you to the food you eat in a way that no trip to the grocery store ever can.

Involve your family. Children who help choose seeds, plant, water, and harvest are far more likely to eat the results.

Growing a vegetable garden together creates memories and instills habits that genuinely last a lifetime.

And you may be surprised — the child who refuses tomatoes at the table will often eat one happily, still warm from the sun, standing right there in the garden.

This site has been helping home vegetable gardeners grow better gardens since 2009.

We are glad you are here.

Let's get growing!

National Gardening Association —
Additional Vegetable Gardening Resources

Even a small sunny backyard can be used for growing a vegetable garden; whether a raised bed, or a container garden. The important thing is plenty of sunlight.

For additional vegetable gardening resources — including plant library information, regional growing guides, and school garden program resources — the National Gardening Association at garden.org is one of the most comprehensive vegetable gardening reference sites available online.

Reap the Delicious Benefits of Vegetable Gardening!

• National Gardening Association — comprehensive vegetable gardening resources including plant library, regional guides, and educational garden programs

Easy Saturday Project:
Build a Raised Bed Garden

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