It’s not too late to start planting your vegetable garden, and it is important to know how the garden will be laid out. Your vegetable garden layout will depend on what vegetables you want to grow, the location and amount of available space, and if you would like to do companion planting. Here are some helpful tips on how to design your vegetable garden layout and start planting vegetables.
The first thing you need to do is sit down and plan.
Before choosing a layout, you need to decide on what type of vegetables you would like to grow, what fruits and herbs you may want to include, and where you would like to plant them. Here are other factors you need to consider for your garden layout:
- Garden Space – How much do you have to work with?
- Amount of Light in the Space – How much sun is available? How much is shaded?
- Drainage – Does water pool up or does it drain off too fast? Just right?
- Soil Amendments – What do you need to do to your soil as a result of your drainage observations? How much compost will you need?
- Type of Vegetable – What do you want to grow and how much space and light does it need?
- Additional Space – Do you have additional separate space you want to utilize? Do you need more space generally? Should you supplement with some containers?
You should think about whether you want to grow one type of vegetable like lettuce and tomatoes or if you want multiple varieties of any vegetables like head and romaine lettuce and roma and beefsteak tomatoes.
Make a list of the vegetables, fruits and herbs you want to plant and find out the space and light requirements of each, then compare it with the garden space you have. This should give you an idea of where you want to plant certain plants in your space.
Choose your Gardening Method
There are three basic vegetable gardening methods and they are: rows, raised bed gardens and potager style.
The rows style is traditional, and requires planting seeds in a row which could either mean planting one type of seed in a row or different seeds in a row. This method is very labor intensive requiring tilling the soil, and it does not make maximum use of available space. If you are very limited on space, you may not want to choose this method.
The raised bed garden, as advocated in Mel Barthalomew’s Square Foot Gardening, is an increasingly popular and very effective method. This style allows access to the plant beds from the exterior of the garden, or as you walk through the garden path instead of coming from inside of the plant bed between the rows as in a traditional garden. This is particularly convenient to avoid stepping on the beds which tends to pack in the soil and makes it difficult for seeds to grow as the earth compacts. A raised bed garden is a great way to maximize space and you can even use raised beds on tables for easy gardening.
The most decorative style of layout is the potager which means kitchen garden in French. This layout is described as geometric which allows you to layout your garden in circles or arrange plants by color or even food type.
If you want to have the best chance of increasing your results, square foot gardening is recommended. You can maximize the use of your space, and you can make your own soil, giving your plants a superior growing environment.
Consider Companion Planting
The idea behind companion planting involves planting different kinds of plants together so that they help each other grow and/or control pests for each other. A perfect example of this is planting beans, corn and squash together, which was commonly done by Native Americans. The corn gives the beans a place to climb, the beans gives its two companions nutrients in the soil, and the squash provides shade at the roots of the plants beside it. This not only prevents weeds from growing, it also saves on water.
Onions repel slugs and aphids and can be beneficial to plant near plants that are prone to slugs and/or aphids. Tomatoes grow well with carrots and basil, which improves the taste of tomatoes. Another example is horseradish and potatoes which when planted together give your potatoes protection from disease.
When you take the time to consider all these aspects and how they function together, you will find that your unique vegetable garden layout will produce optimally for you, and you may be surprised at how satisfying a successful gardening project like this can be.
