> Next: Organic Gardening
Garden Options and Decisions
Key decisions for new and seasoned gardeners alike include:
-
- How large a vegetable garden and its location?
- French intensive, permaculture (layered), no-till, or traditional bed preparation?
- What vegetables and how many plants to grow?
- Plant vegetables from seed or nursery starts?
- Organic or traditional sources of plant stock, materials, and cultural practices?
- Single planting or sequential plantings?
Choices for Your Garden
One of the most enjoyable aspects of vegetable gardening is the planning you’ll do in the weeks and months before it’s time to plant.
Garden Size
You should start this process by choosing the best location for your garden [See: Climate and Exposure].
Next, determine its size by weighing two factors: your needs and your available space. The size of most vegetable gardens is limited by how much area you have available to plant or site conditions.
If, instead, your garden has room to sprawl, you’ll be free to choose which vegetables to plant and to how many plants of each will satisfy your needs for immediate eating, sharing, or preserving.
Growing Vegetables with Intensive Methods
If instead your garden must fit within a smaller yard—or in containers or a few small-space beds—plan to use so-called intensive methods so your space yields as much produce as possible [see Growing More Vegetables].
Deciding to grow vegetables using one of the intensive gardening methods is a matter of personal choice. Intensive gardeners choose plants that most interest them. They divide their space to accommodate those plants set in dense but small groups.
Remember, however, that some vegetables need to be planted in groups to yield quality produce. Corn is one example. Corn requires cross pollination, best achieved when a block of stalks forms a dense group.
Most other vegetables, however, can be grown successfully either solo or in isolated beds comprising just a few plants. Separating plantings also helps prevent pests and diseases.
The three major options for intensive growing are French Intensive, permaculture, and no-till planting methods [See: Growing More Vegetables].
Choosing Vegetables
Start the selection by listing those vegetables you definitely want to grow and eat.
The most popularly planted vegetables in American gardens include beans, carrots, peas, peppers, pumpkins, salad greens such as lettuce and spinach, and tomatoes.
Regional favorites are next. Your choices might extend to okra, southern peas, sweet or regular potatoes, swiss chard, and watermelon.
Have some fun and experiment. You may want to try your hand at growing unusual vegetables, such as amaranth, gourds, peanuts, popcorn, or husk tomatoes.
Once you have made your initial selections, consult GrownByYou’s Vegetable Plant Selection Guide [see Vegetable Plants]. In its listings, you’ll find recommendations for estimating yields, harvesting, and spacing, as well as specifics for how to plant each vegetable.
A Planting Plan
As you choose vegetables for your beds, decide on the number of vegetables to plant and note the space that they’ll require [see Planting and Harvesting Planner].
Finally, sketch out your planting areas. One popular method for arranging vegetable plantings is to use a grid based on square-foot (9-cm2) units. Another is layering, popularly called “Lasagna Gardening.”
Example bed layouts can be found nearby [see Organic Gardening and Growing More Vegetables].
Many use graph paper and colored pencils to plan sections of their beds and design their gardens. For others, a rough sketch is enough to guide them. [see Grid Planting Diagrams and Bed Layout Diagrams].
Bed diagrams allow for use of vertical space as well as the soil area, and some plants such as peppers and bush and pole beans have two options for spacing.
Armed with your vegetable list and plot sketches, you’ll be ready to prepare your garden for planting.
Two Important Garden Choices
For home gardeners, the two most important choices to weigh are the size of the garden you will plant, and whether you’ll use seeds for greatest variety, transplants for ease and convenience, or both options in combination.