Vegetable Garden Planning

If you are serious about the cultivation of successful future crops, the first step lies in the process of vegetable garden planning.  

The piece of ground you have available for the cultivation of vegetables will be a deciding factor at this stage. Its size will determine how much you can produce and its quality should be determined to make sure it matches up to its potential. From ancient times, those who grow vegetables have understood that certain crops grow better in certain soil types. Today, authorities refer to its PH balance, a quantity that expresses the acidity of the soil on a scale from 0 to 14. In olden times, farmers took an abundance of sorrel growing in a field or a sour taste to mean that the soil must be fixed and they added elements such as limestone or eggshells to change the composition.

These days, you can buy soil-testing kits. You should however bear in mind that you are unlikely to get an accurate reading too soon after the winter thawing, as the bacteria in the soil may still be sluggish and inactive. Test your soil in the first part of summer.   The best time to utilize a fertilizer is a few weeks before you plan to plant your first crop. Most commercial fertilizers will be a mix of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. You could also consider the use of organic alternatives such as compost, peat moss or cow manure.

Once the soil passes inspection, you will need to spare a thought to the watering needs of the vegetable varieties you plan to grow. It may not seem like much at the outset, but your crop will depend on a stable routine to make it to fruition. Some vegetables will not recover from drought suffered at a crucial part of the growth cycle and may die or fail to bear any fruit. If you plan to be away, you will need to have someone else caring for your vegetables. If you work, spare a thought to the amount of time you will need to spend watering your vegetables. The optimum time for watering vegetables is early morning, or failing that, the late afternoon or early evening. Too much moisture is lost to evaporation during the middle of the day.

A large vegetable garden means more work for the gardener.  Some of the tools you might need to take care of the basic duties include a spade, a rake, a hoe and a trowel. A ruler or measuring tape will help you space out your vegetables for the best results and labels will remind you of what you sowed.

Vegetables such as peas, beans, squash and cucumbers may need to be accommodated with an upright structure such as a pole, a fence or a trellis. By employing succession planting, you can use the same patch of ground for a spring variety and a summer vegetable. Vegetable garden planning is all about using your mind before you use your hands.

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Unless you own a fair-sized piece of land, you will probably need to make a few compromises, in your vegetable garden planning.

Your first decision will most likely involve what crop to grow. As a beginner, the best strategy might be to start out with a vegetable you love, especially, if it is something that is not always readily available at the grocery store. You may look into the possibility of interplanting, which is basically the combination of two crops that have different development patterns. Without these two vegetables becoming rivals for water, light or nutrition, you will be able to make the most of the space you have available. Radish and lettuce are good companion plants as are tomatoes, pepper and basil.  Another strategy often employed is the interchanging of spring, summer and fall vegetable crops. Space your plants out in order to avoid the leaves touching when they reach their mature size.

Many vegetable gardeners begin to germinate some of their spring crop indoors in seed trays. You will need to toughen the seedlings with a few hours of daily exposure to the outdoors before finally replanting them. There are various types of throw-away food containers that can be utilized for the cultivation of seedlings.

A trend of recent years has seen the use of heirloom seeds in non-commercial vegetable gardening making a comeback. These are plants lines developed from earlier versions of fruit or vegetables. Some disagreement exists amongst the experts regarding what age qualifies a cultivar to earn the term heirloom seed. While some are adamant that no heirloom seed should be under a century old, others include varieties from around the time of the Second World War.

Another term you could run across when planning a vegetable garden is the PH balance of your soil. This is a quantity that reflects the acidity of your soil, in a value between 0 and 14. Zero corresponds with the most acidic. You would need a balance of somewhere between 4 and 9 to grow anything. The ideal lies somewhere between 6.0 and 7.0, although different types of vegetables have different needs.

When your vegetables ripen, you may find yourself battling various pests. A rather unusual tip for getting rid of slugs is to leave a plate of beer overnight in your vegetable patch. Apparently slugs cannot resist beer and will drown themselves. Another interesting option is to make use of the naturally repellent qualities of some plants to protect others. The cabbage maggot and the asparagus beetle tend to avoid tomatoes, while radishes keeps the cucumber beetle away.  

As your experience grows, you might eventually find yourself in a position to advise others on the principles of vegetable garden planning.

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For some dedicated gardeners, the task of vegetable garden planning begins long before the first seed is deposited into the earth. You should consider whether you have the resources to commit yourself to several months of care before any results are visible.

Since vegetables require soil to grow, you will need to assess the space you plan to dedicate to a vegetable garden. For thousands of years, farmers and gardeners have understood the need to manage the composition of the soil in order to ensure a good crop. Without being familiar with the scientific terms we use today, they understood that if a plant like sorrel thrived, the ground may be too acidic for other types of crops and fixed this by spreading limestone in their fields. Another ancient way of testing the soil was to taste it. If it was sour, it contained too much acid. There are soil-testing kits available that can determine not only the PH balance but also the nutrient content of your garden. A gardening authority warns, however, that a reading obtained soon after the spring thaw may not reflect the true worth of your soil as some necessary bacterial processes may take time to kick in after winter. An early summer test would show a more accurate picture of the state of your soil. Your fertilizer will usually be composed of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, although often in varying degrees.  Organic fertilizers such as peat moss, compost or composted cow manure are also a good source of nutrients.

Another commitment is a watering schedule that will ensure the most beneficial conditions for your vegetable garden throughout the growth cycle of your crop. If you will be absent for some time, you should arrange for someone else to take over the responsibility. The damage that plants suffer if inadequately watered, can seldom be undone. The best time to water your vegetable garden is early in the morning, when it is still cool, but if that proves impossible, you could opt for late afternoon or early evening. In the middle of the day, water sometimes evaporates too quickly to benefit your vegetable plants in the long run. If watering late in the day, however, there should still be enough sunlight to dry the leaves a little before nightfall.

The larger the garden, the more maintenance it will require. A few of the basic tools you will require include a rake, a hoe, a spade and a trowel. Labels will come in handy, to help you keep track of what was planted where. You would also be using a ruler or some other measuring device to space out your seedlings for optimum growth.

To maximize the output of your soil, you should provide some vertical support, such as poles, fences or trellises, for plants like squash, cucumbers, beans or peas. Succession planting, a strategy whereby you would use the same soil for a spring crop and a summer crop also helps to make the most of available resources. Ultimately, good common sense makes for the best type of vegetable garden planning.

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Vegetable garden planning may require serious thought in order to maximize the potential of your available resources.

Deciding what to grow if your space is limited should be an easy consideration. Choose vegetables you love or varieties that are difficult to buy in your neighborhood. Many vegetable gardeners optimize their efforts by inter planting, a strategy that lets you combine two or more vegetable types that have different development cycles and do not compete for water, sunlight or nutrition. It usually boils down to combining a fast-growing crop with a slow-growing crop. Lettuce and radish combine well in this way, as do tomato, peppers and basil. The growth cycles of vegetables can be quite accommodating to seasonal rotations of crops. It will benefit your garden to avoid planting vegetables of the same family in the same part of your garden. Plan the layout so that the leaves of adult plants do not touch and avoid placing tall plants in a spot where they may compromise the sunlight of others.

With some vegetables, you could give them a head start by germinating the seeds indoors before the end of winter. It is recommended, though, that you harden up the resultant seedlings by moving their containers to a sheltered outdoor location for a few hours each day before transplanting them. If you want to save money, bear in mind that various items that are normally thrown away such as yoghurt containers could gain a second life to accommodate the early growth of seedlings.

The use of heirloom seeds among small vegetable growers has grown popular in recent years. Heirloom seeds are cultivars of variants from earlier eras that are not used in commercial production. The actual definition varies. While some state that an heirloom variety must be over a hundred years, others see the Second World War as cut-off period. In the truest sense, an heirloom seed is a treasured specimen handed down from generation to generation.

You may encounter the term PH balance when browsing about the soil requirements for certain types of crop. This refers to the acidity of the ground, as measured on a scale of 0 to 14, with zero being the most acidic and 14 being the most alkaline. A close to ideal chemical composition would be somewhere around 7, although different plants thrive in different soil types.  A value below 4.0 or above 9.0 would make plant growth impossible.

A rather unconventional tip for dealing with leaf-eating slugs is to tempt them away from your vegetable greens with a plate filled with beer. According to one gardening writer, slugs love beer and will sip the beer until they grow intoxicated and drown. There are certain plants that double up as insect repellents. Tomato plants, for example, will discourage both the cabbage maggot and the asparagus beetle, whereas radish repels the cucumber beetle.

You will probably find the process of vegetable garden planning an education in itself.

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Having thoughts of vegetable garden planning in your own backyard can be an amazing experience. But the real deal is when you eat the fruits (and veggies and greens) of your labor. It can also be a soothing experience and what’s more, you can grow them organically hence improving the quality of your food. But what scares a lot of people is the enormity of the whole process. It initially looks like it’s too big a job to be handled by an individual. Well, it sounds a bit overwhelming but when you start putting your thoughts and ideas on paper, you can see your own healthy vegetable garden unfold before your very eyes.

Drafting a vegetable garden plan is easy but there are certain factors to be considered even before you sit down with a pen and paper. Here is what they are.

• The climate in your region: Growing vegetables depends largely on the kind of climate that is prevalent in your region. In general there are three kinds of climates- temperate, cold and tropical. You must be very clear on how many months in a year do you experience each one of these climates. Like if you live in a region where it is cold most of the year and there is frost and snow, then you will have lesser number of sowing, growing and harvesting days. Check for frost dates so you do not lose out on precious time. But if it is too hot a climate, too much of sunlight may damage the crops. A temperate climate would be ideal for a lot of veggies, fruits and greens.

• The soil fertility: Like we eat food which is rich in nutrients, the seeds that we plant also need good nutrients which to a certain extent they derive from the soil. Soil contains nutrients like nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous. It even contains minerals which are necessary for plant nutrition. The organic matter in soil improves the soil structure and moisture retention. So do not neglect the fertility of soil factor. Get the soil tested for its pH level; this will make it easier for you to decide on the kind of things that you want to grow.

• Sunlight: Some plants need at least 8 hours of direct sunlight every day, whereas some need only a few hours. Depending upon the availability of sunlight, decide the type of plants you want to grow.

Apart for the above, check the direction of winds too. If there is a strong wind there are chances of the plant not growing to its full capacity, whereas hot winds may dry the soil and harm the crops. Some plants need shade so make sure that there are taller plants providing a canopy like cover to protect them from the harsh sunlight. vegetable garden planning can be successful if all these factors are considered and necessary steps are taken.

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Most garden lovers like to own a vegetable garden, but what is important is that you have the right vegetable garden planning before you begin the actual task. Once you have the necessary ground work in place and are ready to start your plantations, you should first sit back and plan your activities.

Start by making a drawing of your backyard or the place where you are planning for your garden. If you have a blue print of that area, it will make things easier. Make your drawing realistic by taking actual measurements in to consideration. You might also use a graph sheet to get a clearer picture. Now, decide on the area that you want to use for gardening and the area that you want to leave vacant for your family picnic times, kennel, shed, pool, compost bins, rubbish bins, sand pit, gazebo and anything else. Then you can start sowing seeds on the allocated area. Again, plan the garden space appropriately. You can do this again on the graph sheet using a ruler. Divide the area in to a square of 5 feet each if you have a larger space or of I foot each if your garden space is limited. This division will help in bifurcation of the different plantations. It is advised to start with one bed of vegetables if you are a first timer and depending upon your success, plan for more vegetation. Hence, leave room for expansion.

Once you have the garden area plan sketched out, the next step in your vegetable garden planning is deciding the vegetables that you want to grow. Opt for those fruits or vegetables that you eat regularly and are fond of. Also, consider the harvest time that these plantations take. If a vegetable takes a lot of time for full harvest and you reside in a colder climatic region, then the whole process of sowing and vegetable garden planning will go a waste. Check which vegetables and fruits are easier to grow in your region and select only those many that you can manage. Opting for fruits and vegetables that harvest quickly is a good option as you can have 2 to 3 yields and can also go for plant rotation. For beginners, vegetables like beetroot, carrot, potatoes, green spinach, onions and radishes are recommended as they are easy to grow and manage.

With some good vegetable garden planning, you will be able to create a beautiful vegetable garden conveniently.

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