Planning Your Vegetable Garden

It may be hard to imagine it given the cold, dreary weather outside, but it's time to start planning your vegetable garden. Within a few months spring will arrive and if you already have your plan and your supplies, you'll be able to get an early start planting vegetables you can enjoy for the rest of the year. So ignore the weather outside and start dreaming about warmer days, flowers, new green leaves, and your garden.

How do you start planning? Perhaps one of the reasons people never get around to starting a garden, or the reason they've always gotten their garden planted a little late, is from lack of a plan. By breaking the planning and preparation process down into the following small steps, you can easily develop a comprehensive plan and be well prepared to plant your garden as soon as any risk of freezing is gone.

Decide What to Plant

Most people would agree that the best part about planning a garden is choosing which vegetables to grow. It makes a lot of sense to only grow vegetables you know you and your family will eat. But you need to take your plan a little farther than that. After developing a list of vegetables you know you'd like to grow and eat, check each type against the following list. The answers to these questions can usually be found online:

Does the vegetable tend to grow well in your part of the country?

Will the vegetable thrive given the location of your garden (i.e., hot sun, partial shade, dry conditions, etc.)?

Is there enough room in the garden to fit all of the vegetables you want to plant?

Map Your Vegetables