> Next: Planting Succession Diagrams
Planning On Tracing Paper
Succession Planning in a Vegetable Bed
The three diagrams above show a bed’s plan for three successive plantings as the growing season progresses, vegetables are harvested, and their space is replanted, with first planting in early spring, followed by a late spring planting and a late summer planting [See: Planting Succession Diagrams for details of the process to follow].
Planning a Successful Garden
On this page, find an introduction to the process used successfully by many gardeners to fit vegetable plants into their home gardens and allow for rotation of plantings from season to season, including:
-
- How to draw diagrams of vegetable planting beds.
- Allocating space within beds for each vegetable species.
- Dividing planting areas by area and plant growth habit.
- Why rotating plantings in beds is important.
Placing vegetable seeds or seedlings in garden beds is easy with a modular grid system that shows where each plant goes and how many to plant.
Plant adjacent areas using the same or different grids, and mix different vegetable species in your beds to vary your harvest and dates of maturity.
Some diagrams allow multiple plants in a single square. Others visually divide the area as shown into the orange dashed units and helps determine how many plants are required. Still other diagrams use two, three, four or nine base squares.
When that’s the case, divide the area according to the orange dashed line, and place a seeding at the center for each area or as shown in the diagram.
For best results, make small, separated planting of each vegetable rather than a single, massed planting. Dividing your planting will reduce disease or pest damage.
Think Twice, Plant Once
The starting point for planning vegetable gardens is proper plant spacing.
Each species of vegetable has a predictable mature size and spread: its diameter or width, and its height. The spacing requirement for all common vegetables are found in the listings in the Vegetables plant guide [See: Vegetables].
Scale diagrams of your beds makes fitting plants by their spacing requirements simple.
Growing A Perfect Garden
Visualizing the garden to be and drawing it out on paper or by using a graphics program on a tablet or computer screen means problems will be addressed before they become costly mistakes.
Rotating Plantings from Season to Season
Rotation of plantings in regular intervals is as useful and common a practice for home gardeners as it is for farmers.
Rotating crops reduces the buildup of harmful soil-borne pests from reaching population levels that make growing certain vegetables—onions, garlic, cole crops such as cabbage, peas, and other vegetables—impossible.
A three- or four-year cycle of rotation is best. After multiple seasons with no host plants to keep their population thriving, the pests die off to low levels. Then it’s safe to replant again for a single season.
It’s generally a good practice to plant small blocks of single species as well, and to separate them from other plantings of the same species.
A troublesome soil pest group are the nematodes. These microscopic, wormlike creatures feed on and damage the roots of many valuable plants. Once soil is infested with them, plantings of their host plants generally fail to produce, and there’s little a home gardener can do to eliminate them.
Plan to rotate your plantings to avoid these problems in your garden.
Hobby hobbies garden gardening vegetable vegetables plan plans planning plant planting diagram diagrams grid layout bed beds grid system chart species harvest area division architecture design landscape landscaping disease diseases pest pests how-to DIY