Planning Your Garden – 6 ideas for your best garden yet!

Planning your garden is an important step that many gardeners neglect. Get yourself some paper, make a map, and plan out your garden this year!

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If you haven’t already started planting your garden, I’m sure you will soon. Please take a few minutes before you start this year to create a written garden plan!  For me planning your garden is one of those tasks that can be completed in the dead of winter. It’s nice to think about my summer garden when the world is covered in snow!

This often overlooked step in the gardening season can save you time, prevent diseases, and make for an overall more productive garden!

Make a Garden Map

An annual garden plan is an important tool for your garden. One of the most important things to include is a map. This map lets you see what was planted and where from year to year. You can use some graph paper or just do a simple sketch on a notepad so that you know where you planted in your garden. This map also helps with many of the other planning tasks outlined below!

Plan for Succession Planting

The next step in planning your garden is to plan for succession planting. Succession planting in its simplest form is just figuring out a planting schedule that will allow the most use of your garden space. As one crop matures you should plan for another to take its place.

Here are a few examples:

Peas are usually finished up by mid-June in my garden. This leaves a whole bed and a whole summer to deal with. You need to plan what will follow in this bed.

Short-season crops like spinach or lettuces can be followed in the summer with warm-season crops.

Plan for larger warm-season crops, like tomatoes, to have a faster growing cool season companion. Depending on the bed size I often plant either beets or broccoli on the south side of the bed where I plan on planting my tomatoes. These cool-season crops don’t take up too much space and will be close to maturity when I set out my tomato seedlings. They will finish growing and be harvested before the tomatoes start to take over the beds.

Plan for Crop Rotation

The next step in planning your garden is to plan for crop rotation. Rotating your crops through your garden beds is a vital practice for every gardener. Even those of you with small gardens should practice crop rotation.

Crop rotation is too big of a subject to try to tackle in this post. But I have a three-part series I wrote on crop rotation that will help you out with that topic. The first post in that series can be found here.

Plan for Companion Planting

Planning your garden includes making a plan for companion planting. The growth and production of many plants are enhanced if they are closely partnered with other plants. Learn more about this interesting practice by reading this post by my blogging friend.

Plan for Shade

The amount of sun your garden receives each day will vary a lot based on the time of year. Shadows from trees or buildings, particularly those on the south side of your garden are much longer in the spring and fall. So you need to plan accordingly. Leafy greens can do well in the shade so plan those crops for the shady spring spots and then replace them with sun-loving crops as the shade recedes.

Plan for Seedlings

If you grow your own seedlings be sure to take a little time to plan out the dates you want to get them started. Remember that most veggie starts need between 6 to 8 weeks before they are ready to transplant. To learn more about growing your own seedlings check out our Seed Starting Simplified course.

Plan Planting Times

As your yearly garden plan comes together make notes and put together a schedule of the actual dates you will be planting out in your garden. We all have busy lives and having a planting schedule that you can transfer to your calendar is a great way to keep your garden on track.

Planning your garden is an important step to having a successful garden! Take some time over the next 6 weeks or so to sit down and map out your garden for this year!