How to Plan a Vegetable Garden

How To Plan A Vegetable Garden

By Steve Kelley

Planning your vegetable garden layout is the most important aspect of building a vegetable garden. This article will tell you how to plan a vegetable garden that will provide your family with a great variety of vegetables and fruits. We will also talk about how to design a vegetable garden to get the most out of it for your family.

It doesn't matter whether you have a large space or a small area to start your garden. There is a garden plan that works well for your particular situation and that will meet your gardening needs.

Before planting your garden you will want to decide which fruits and vegetables you are interested in planting in your garden. You may also want to consider adding some flowers as part of your garden plan to add eye appeal to it. You could also use a trellis to grow climatis to add color to the garden or there are many other flowers you could grow depending on your climate zone of course. I like to plant pansies and daylillies in my garden personally.

In addition to your typical garden vegetables like corn, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, ect. I like to plant things like watermelon, blueberries, and rasberries. You could also grow things like cucumbers but you will need to construct a trelis for them to grow on unless you have a fence around your garden that they can grow on.

Cabbage Plant surrounded by flowers

Fresh herbs from the garden are great for cooking and spicing up salads. Examples of popular herbs to grow include: Cilantro, Rosemary, Oregano, Parsley, Sage and Thyme just to name a handful of herbs.

When planning a garden consider what you will do about weed control, especially in larger gardens.There are many ways to control weeds in your garden.

My top list for weed contol in a garden.

For starters only disturb the dirt in your garden if nessesary. If it is nessesary to till in amendments, you want to do this in the Fall. Disturbing the dirt will bring weed seeds to the surface where they will have a chance to grow.
Put down a layer of landscape fabric or newspaper in your garden.
Putting a 2" to 3" layer of mulch around your plants will help keep weeds at bay. Plus the mulch will retain mosture for the plants in your garden.
Put down preen for vegetable gardens before the sight of weeds. This will help prevent weed growth since preen is a pre emergent.
In larger gardens you may want to consider covering the paths through your garden with step stones or even gravel paths to keep weed growth at a minimum.
Raised beds not only keep weeds away, but also add eye appeal to any garden.

If you are working with limited space for your garden then you will need to come up with a more creative vegetable gardening idea than someone with plenty of space.You may want to consider vegetable garden containers or vegetable pot gardening. Especially if you are looking for balcony vegetable garden ideas or maybe you have a townhouse with a small patio in back. You still want the benifits of having a garden but just don't have the space. Another type of gardening that is great for these small spaces are vertical vegetable gardens.

Container gardening, pot gardening, and vertical gardening can all be done inside if you have the space. The area would need to have ample sun and you may need to provide grow lights for your plants to survive.

Other alternitives for having a small indoor garden would be to use a hydroponics system. This works well for growing small vegetables or herbs indoors if you don't have a sunroom or larger indoor space for your plants.

In conclusion the tips I have provided above should help you on your quest for how to plan a vegetable garden.