Using all this information to plan out my garden before planting ensures I will have enough room for the plants I want plus they will all have exactly what they need to produce a bumper crop for me!
I mean, nobody wants to spend all that time and effort to plant a garden that fails right?
This year we are moving the location of the garden! I'm super excited about this because we live in the woods and over the years as the trees in the woods have grown they are blocking more of the sun on the garden and the clearing that is our yard.
So after more than 15 years, the garden needs to move.
How to map your garden before planting
Of course moving the garden means I have to rewrite the entire map that I use every year, basically starting from scratch!
I have to figure out what I'm planting and how I'm arranging it all so that we have the produce we want without having so much that I can't use or preserve it all!
I also need to decide how many times I'll replant as plants are harvested and lets not forget making sure all the plants are by other plants they like and not ones that will cause them problems.
*sigh* It's a lot! Well, it sounds like a lot...but if you break it down into smaller steps, it's actually not so bad. Lets get started!
Determine your gardens purpose
First, decide what your garden will do for you. Are you planning on growing enough so you don't have to buy produce in summer? Do you just want fresh herbs? Are you planning on selling produce? Do you really just want enough to can so you don't have to buy canned vegetables in winter? Do you just want cucumbers and tomatoes for salads and that's it?
Or maybe you just need some really juicy tomatoes for tomato and chipped ham sandwiches with mayo on Mancini's bread? Oh, is that just those of us that grew up in Pittsburgh? My bad! lol Anyway...
Is there just two of you or are there six mouths to feed? Are you reliant on the garden for food or is it just a nice addition to your diet? Answering all those types of questions first will help you determine how aggressively you want to plant and how much succession planting you'll want to do.
Once you have your goals established the next step is to decide what exactly you want to grow. I wrote the post What Should You Grow In Your Garden? to help you decide which plants will work best for you.
You can head over and check that out when you're ready but we're basically breaking down what produce you like/use frequently and using the amount of space and time your have for your garden to decide which foods to buy and which ones to grow.
Make a list of plants you want to grow
After you have a location chosen for your garden you'll want to make a list of what you want to grow. Figure out if what you're growing is full sun, partial shade or full shade.
This information is on the seed packet, on the plant tag or you can easily look it up online or in garden catalogs. I like to get plain old pen and paper and make a list!
On the list you'll write: plant type and variety, sun requirements, days till harvest & spacing requirements. With this list you'll be able to figure out how to situate your plants and what has similar or different care needs.
For instance if you're growing corn which needs a lot of sun and grows very tall, you can put something beside it that tolerates some shade since as the corn grows it will block the sun. However corn gets harvested around the middle of summer and the sun will then be restored in that area.
Since the sun will be full at that point, you can't plant something next to corn that doesn't do well in full sun unless you're replacing the corn with something tall enough to block sun for the other plants.
You could plant the spot the corn was in with something like radishes or carrots that don't take too long to grow. That way you take advantage of the empty spot in the garden and get a second harvest of certain crops.
Of course you'll need to check the harvest time on the particular seeds you plant. That information will be on the seed packet and if you're not sure how to figure it out this post on How to Read and Understand a Seed Packet will help you.
One of the most important things to do before you start a garden is to plan it by making a garden map. You can ensure all your plants will fit (before buying them or starting seeds) and make adjustments based on your garden size and crops. It's also much easier to move things around on paper than in the actual dirt!
Planning your plants properly ensures that not only will they have enough room to grow, but gives you the opportunity to plant the correct companions next to each other. If you've never tried companion planting, then you'll have to give it a look as it is a complete game changer.
Also knowing how much space each plant needs can actually help you save space! For instance a radish can be a lot closer to another radish than to a tomato plant! So knowing how much space to leave around each plant is important when planning your garden map.
Also, it can help you from having to rip out perfectly good plants that aren't producing because they don't have enough space to grow! Again, that information should be on your seed packets you just need to jot it down in your notes because we'll use it later when drawing the map.
Pick your Gardens Location
I talk about making a sun map in the post Sun Mapping The Garden but that's not really something I have to worry about now because I have lived here for 15 years and while this location was perfect in the beginning, things changed.
If you are putting in a garden for the first time or working with a new property and don't have time to spend a year watching the sun trek across your yard, you'll want to figure out your sun map first and the online tools in that post can help you.
In time though things can change and whether your neighbors put up a house, you needed to add a fence or a tree grew too high and it now covers the garden, you might need to choose a new location for your garden.
You'll probably want to pick a location that gets direct sun all day long as most vegetables need a lot of sun. If you have a garden like mine where some of it doesn't get much direct sun because of the trees and other plants, you'll want to know that in order to plan which vegetables you like to grow in those spaces.
Or you could even decide that you don't want any of the vegetables that grow well in shade and want to toss some flowers in their instead. Flowers are great for attracting pollinators to the garden and every garden needs bees and butterflies so that is a great use for excess space!
Create a Planting & Seed Starting Schedule
The next step is to create a planting schedule to make sure your garden grows with the proper timing. I've put in tomato plants too late before and barely got a harvest before they started dying off for fall, so timing is pretty important!
When creating your planting schedule, consider factors such as your climate, the types of plants you want to grow, and the optimal planting times for each. Research the specific needs of the plants you picked and map out when they should be sown or transplanted.
Most of us put the whole garden in right around the last frost date for the year or even a little early if we don't mind covering plants when there's a frost danger. This means that every one of your seedlings needs to be ready for the first planting of the year.
Except those that are direct sown of course! For instance tomato plants are usually started in the house 8 weeks before being planted in the garden or they can be purchased at planting time and transplanted immediately.
Direct sewing tomato seeds when the ground is warm enough will very rarely give you a good crop of tomatoes before the days get too short and cold for them to thrive, as I've learned several times when I thought 'starting a few more seeds won't hurt' in mid July!
However carrots and onions don't transplant as well and they have a shorter growing time so they can be direct sewn once the soil warms up. Sometimes you can even harvest your crops and then resow seeds to get a second crop in the same season.
Radishes and lettuce can often get 2 or even 3 crops since they like the cool fall temps.
You're also going to want to make a seed starting schedule. As I mention in What should you plant in your garden? not everything you want to grow is available as seedlings, some things you will have to start seeds for even if you're not planning on doing seeds for your whole garden!
For instance one of the things I grow every year is Cucamelons. You cannot buy these plants in store so I have to start them from seeds.
I also like to grow Luffa which is another one that not only can't be bought in stores, but needs to be started earlier than most seeds so it has enough time to fully mature before the growing season here ends.
They can take 6 months to be ready, so I need to start them at least 3 months ahead of transplant time!
You also need to consider what's available in stores. If you're growing big boy tomatoes and burpless cucumbers you'll be wasting time and space by planting them indoors and tending to them for 8 weeks when you can buy them ready to transplant at planting time.
I'm pretty sure after buying the seeds then using heated mats and grow lights for multiple weeks that you'll have spent more money and time than if you just bought a few seedlings to plant! It's definitely easier to only start the less common plants!
However, you'll find very few heirloom tomatoes in stores and even less rare gourds, medicinal herbs or interesting varieties like lemon cucumbers so you'll definitely need to start those from seeds. Seriously, why does every nursery offer the same 6 herbs and nothing else?
By creating a planting schedule that takes into account the timing for each plant you've chosen you can set your garden up for success. This 'schedule' doesn't have to be complex! I simply make a list of each plant/variety I want to grow and write down the days till harvest number from the seed packet.
I do not have the patience to list them in order of time so I get out the colored markers and color code them with check marks!
Anything less than 30 days (like radishes and lettuce varieties) gets one color which means direct sow seeds. 60 days or more, another color. 90 days another color and so on.
One year I did use several pieces of paper and each one had a different growing time assigned to it and I just added each plant to the proper list as I went. It worked out pretty well. Play around with ideas and find something that works for you.
Next you want to consider when you want to start seeds, how much room you have and for how long do you want to live with a jungle inside your house? I aim for 8 weeks out from my estimated last frost date.&
If you don't know yours check out How to figure out my last frost date and gardening zone.
Oh and there's also transplant shock to account for! It would be great to grow your plants indoors and pop them in the garden in time for them to produce fruits and vegetables, but unfortunately your plants need an adjustment time after they go into the garden to when they get into full swing.
I don't know if there's actual data on this, but it feels like it takes my plants 2-3 weeks to adjust to being transplanted before they start growing well again. In that time just water regularly and give them time! After 2 weeks you can start your regular fertilizing schedule, but hold off till 2 weeks because fertilizing too soon after transplant is not good!
Design the garden layout
When designing a layout for your garden, consider the spacing and placement of your plants to optimize sunlight exposure, access to water, and air circulation.
Grouping plants with similar needs together can make watering and fertilizing more streamlined, while also reducing the risk of pests and diseases spreading. By arranging your garden plants and walkways, you can create a garden space that is easy to maintain and harvest from.
Remember, you need to move around in there and you'll need enough space to get in between plants to water, fertilize and harvest but you also don't want to waste space where something could be growing.
There are lots of online tools you can use to plan and space your garden but I promise you that you want to print them out if you do this! Not only is it awkward to use your laptop or tablet in the garden, there's water and mud out there and electronics easily get ruined!
I can't even count the times it rained on me unexpectedly while I was gardening, or the hose threw a fit and sprayed where it shouldn't, so if you chose a online garden planner make sure it can be printed to paper.
I'm annoyingly old school (according to my husband) and I prefer to use graph paper. Graph paper is the best because you can assign the squares to whatever size you want. You can make them be 1" or a foot, or even 6" each. Just put a little note at the top for your size rules and you're good to go.
Luckily, I have the book I have used for the last few years (because I will quite literally never use up an entire book of graph paper) so I can show you last years map! I like to use pencil for this because after certain plants are harvested I erase them and write in the plants I replaced them with...but of course, do whatever makes sense for you!
Start by measuring your whole garden. Draw that space on your graph paper. Then go back into the garden and measure where permanent spaces are.
I have Stargazer lily's in the back with echinacea right in front of them and a metal tub mint planter in one corner in the back. Raspberry plants next to those. Two perennial Rue 'O Grace plants in the other back corner and an asparagus bed in the front right by the garden gate.
None of these can be moved so I have to work around them. It's also nice to have the structure when doing the actual planting so I'm not constantly busting out the tape measure.
If you don't have anything permanent in your garden, you can place rocks or stakes at specific places while you're planting to help you stay on track without the constant measuring!
Spacing your plants
Next you're going to go back to your plant list from the beginning and figure out how much space each one needs. I usually give each of my tomato plants 3 feet around them so when putting them on my graph, that's how much I mark off for each one.
I only put my radishes about 3" apart so I block off a 3 foot by 3 foot area on the graph and put dots for each radish plant. Green onions are even closer together! Determining your map and spacing first also helps a lot when trying to work with a small garden.
If 1 tomato plant fits in the same space as 12 radishes then which one should you chose if you only have 1 space left?
Radishes also need less sun, so you could plant your radish behind your tomatoes and both would do well. A singular zucchini plant needs more space then a tomato plant though so depending how much zucchini, radishes and tomatoes I need, I have to balance my space with plant sizes and food usage.
We usually can't use more than 2 zucchini plants worth of zucchinis but we can easily use 4 tomato plants worth of tomatoes! Also corn is ALL ready within a 2 or 3 week window, so how many ears can we eat in 3 weeks? Will I be canning or freezing some? This all matters so you can allocate the correct amount of plants & space for each.
Now some plants need to be moved every year, so putting the tomatoes in front of the asparagus this year means I don't put them there next year. Corn is another one you'll want to move each year. You'll need to keep your garden plans till next year so you can make those changes when you plan again.
Also I write notes like this tomato plant got ate by a deer and was replaced with nasturtiums' or whatever happened on my garden map so I can account for that next year.
Corn uses a LOT of nitrogen, peas put it back in. In fact, that's why the corn field you drove by last year is full of really short bushy plants this year! It'll be corn again next year. This is called crop rotation and it helps the soil to not get depleted of what one particular plant needs.
This is also a type of companion planting. Since peas put in what corn takes out, planting them next to each other can help them both to grow better. This is also where you're going to do the most confusing part of this project...juggling plants to make them all fit!
Related reading: Beginners Guide To Companion Planting
You'll need to take into consideration which plants like other plants and which ones don't! For instance strawberries love chives but asparagus would prefer the chives be far away! Spinach loves those strawberries too, but it really hates potatoes!
Corn and tomatoes do badly near each other because they attract the same sorts of pests which can allow the bugs to take over quickly! As mentioned above, corn and peas love each other but once you harvest the corn it may be too hot and sunny for the peas, unless you have something you've started and is growing in pots just waiting to be transplanted into the garden as soon as the corn is harvested?
Or will you just harvest the ears and let the stalks stand because they're providing shade? It's a lot to think about and organize for sure! This is definitely the hardest part of the planning process and I honestly do the map before actually starting seeds because I need to know how many seeds to start for each thing I want to grow!
Also doing the spacing on a map before starting to plant keeps you from having to move plants around once they're already in the ground! That is a whole lot more work!
Well, I think I need to take a break here since this is getting dangerously long! I will be back with part 2 next week! Next up is more about companion planting, utilizing all space including up and maintaining the garden. Plus harvesting and replacing crops after they're done, or do we just leave those spots empty? See you next week!
Related reading: Want to learn more about growing food in containers? Check out all my 10 Ways to Attract bees to your Garden!
~L
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