If starting a vegetable garden is on your to-do list this year, you may feel the itch to run right out to your nearest big-box hardware store as soon as the sun comes out, buy some potting mix, a few packets of seeds, maybe a raised bed or two, and slap it all together followed by a thorough drenching from the garden hose.
If this was your plan, you’re not alone. This was how my very first attempt at growing a vegetable went, and I quickly learned that an entire packet of tomato seeds in a medium-sized container will NOT in fact yield more tomatoes… or anything.
While throwing everything together and hoping for the best might work (if the stars and the growing conditions align), a little bit of planning and pre-work can go a LONG way.
And even though I am still staunchly team-intensive-planting, I might squeeze 5 tomatoes in one square foot instead of 50 plants. 😉
Over the last several years, I have learned what works, what doesn’t, and why a little bit of planning can help yield more plants, more produce, more happiness, and less disappointment and wasted dollars.
If this is your year to start a garden (or try again!) keep reading to know EXACTLY what you can do to set your garden up for success.
Step 1: Evaluate Your Space and Goals
Usually, every new gardener starts with an idea of where they’d like their new garden to go. But before you start mentally installing your dream garden, it’s important to take some time to observe how the elements (sunlight, wind, critters, etc.) might impact the success of your dream space.
Best Garden Styles for Beginners
There are several ways you can go about setting up your garden, but some of my favorite setups for beginners are raised beds, container gardening, hydroponic gardening, and back-to-eden gardening.
Raised beds will always be my favorite way to grow a ridiculous amount of food in a small space, but depending on your situation, container gardening or hydroponic gardening might make more sense for you. Back-to-Eden is a great method when you’re aiming to keep costs low, and you don’t mind putting in a little extra elbow grease to grow within your budget.
The key theme within all of these growing methods is YOU control the growing medium.
In containers and raised beds, you are not limited to the soil quality of your area, but instead, you can create and use a soil mix that’s rich in organic matter, nutrients, structure, drainage, and breathability. Hydroponic gardens — while soil-less — grow in circulated water systems with added nutrients to keep them healthy and thriving. In my opinion, hydroponic gardens are the most fool-proof gardens you can grow, but they can come with a higher setup cost. Back-to-Eden encourages proper soil management and amendments and can be a great way to grow more traditionally with less startup costs.
With all of these garden setups, growing vertically is a great way to maximize your yields and also incorporate biodiversity in less space. If you’re looking to get the most bang for your buck (and your time and energy!) in the garden this year, include trellises like arches, panel trellises, vertical growing systems (like a LettuceGrow FarmStand or a GreenStalk Planter), or even plan your garden using time-honored methodologies like the 3-sisters when you grow plants like corn, beans, and squash together so the beans climb the corn, and the squash provide ground-cover.
Know Your Elements
Being tucked away in the most convenient corner of your yard might not always give way to the best results. Most importantly, you need to be mindful of how much sun your garden will receive, the direction of the sun, how the sun’s position might change from Spring to Summer to Fall, and if there are any nearby structures that might interfere with its exposure throughout the day.
It is also important to consider how vulnerable your garden will be to strong winds or stormy conditions. You may be able to capture some perfect full sunlight underneath a mature oak tree to the north, but if that tree is likely to drop big branches during a thunderstorm, your delicate tomatoes underneath might be in danger.
The biggest culprits to consider along with the weather elements are the hungry furry friends that co-habitate in your yard. When we moved into our house, one of the first things I noticed was a consistent and regular set of hoofed tracks. Our yard is apparently the main vein highway for the many deer that live and traverse through our neighborhood. Fear not if you have the same “neighbors” as we do. A little bit of deer fencing and strategic planning goes a long way.
Consider your long-term plans for your yard as well. Are there less desirable trees casting shade that you’d be happy to remove to give way to more productive and abundant plants? Do you plan to fence in your yard to block your neighbor’s unsightly garage? Would you like to add a new four-legged family member like a German Shepard to keep watch over your pretty plants?
Thinking through where the best location to place your garden is a critical first step. For me, it took months of observation through the springtime to eventually realize the best spot for my first garden was actually in the narrow space between our driveway and my neighbor’s fence.
Observation of your yard over several weeks is key in narrowing in on the best spot to put down roots.
Set Realistic Garden Goals and Expectations
“Homesteading” amongst millennials is on the rise and has become quite trendy! This is great news that so many people are discovering and rediscovering connecting with the Earth, our food and the interdependent systems that bring them together. While your Pinterest might be brimming with gorgeous gardens overflowing with greenery, it’s important to meet yourself where you are. You can ALWAYS expand and build out more as your skillset develops.
As soon as we moved into our house, I wanted to wipe the slate clean and build a ginormous enclosed garden area to grow 90% of our food! This is a beautiful, big, ambitious goal, but I had to check myself and think about my garden plans in a new way.
Building your dream garden is like building a new relationship with someone. You don’t get married on the first date, but rather you get to know each other, figure out their strengths and weaknesses, their best qualities, and how they fluctuate over time. Get to know your land the same way you’d get to know (or you got to know!) a love interest. Spend time with one another. Allow for things to evolve and unfold naturally and organically before jumping into the sheets (or the soil!) right away.
What Should I Grow In My Garden?
A good place to start is with the basics like tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, etc. but be sure to include a variety of companion plants to help them thrive. The biggest mistake new gardeners make is not planting flowers and herbs alongside their bigger fruiting plants. Herbs and flowers attract beneficial insects and some even repel pests. Win-win!
To add some fun and flavor to your garden, you can set themes around the plants you’d like to grow. Perhaps fresh garden salsa is the number one thing you’d like to get out of your garden this year. You can then focus your plant selections around tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and the like. Maybe you’re a smoothie and salad junkie, and you want to harvest cut and come again almost every day in the summer. Channel your inner green goddess and make it happen.
Over time and over the years, your garden goals will continue to grow with you. So don’t get yourself down if harvesting a single tomato is the only goal on your list. Little as it may seem, that’s a HUGE accomplishment. Roma tomatoes were not built in a day.
Step 2: Know Your Zone and Growing Season
Find Your Hardiness Zone
This step is important to point you in the general direction of what you can and can’t grow, but you can safely take it with a grain of salt. Hardiness zones are determined by the USDA and group regions with similar temperature patterns so that growers have an idea of what will grow and what will not based on those temperatures. You can find your Hardiness Zone HERE.
The lower the number, the colder the region and the shorter the growing season. The higher the number, the more tropical the region is with the opportunity to grow much more frost-sensitive plants, and potentially grow more, longer throughout the year.
If you’re on this page, you’re likely well aware of the changes in our climate and how average temperatures are changing over time. Every 20 years, the USDA reevaluates these averages and re-grades the zones. In 2022 when they updated the hardiness zones, I moved from a zone 6b to a 7a. Am I going to rush right out and start planting more tender plants that can grow in a zone 7? Not quite. But it will be something for me to observe over time and see how my in-ground perennials might fare over time.
Generally speaking, you can grow most plants as annuals if they reach maturity within your growing season.
Find Your First and Last Frost Dates
How do you know when your growing season is, you ask? Slightly more important than knowing your hardiness zone is knowing your First Frost Date and your Last Frost Date. These dates are not guarantees of when you’ll see frost or when the risk of frost has passed, but rather these are based on averages of when you can anticipate the risk being significantly less likely. You can find your FFD and LFD HERE.
Perennial vs. Annual Plants
As you start to read the back of seed packets, you may notice some are labeled as annual and some are labeled as perennial. What’s the difference? In simple terms, annuals will only live through one season and will need to be replanted every year after the threat of frost has passed. Perennials on the other hand (my favorite!) are plants that you plant once and they come back year after year.
As a “lazy gardener” with a busy life, I prefer to do less work and reap more reward. Who wouldn’t? And there’s a number of plants that are hardy enough to survive brutal winters and be the first to pop up in spring, ready to flourish and thrive.
I like to load my garden up with lots of perennial herbs and flowers that will stay in the garden all winter long. My favorite perennial herbs and plants are oregano, thyme, chives, strawberries, lavender, and sage.
Because these plants start to wake up in early spring, they will be the first to support your local pollinators and ensure they know that they can find delicious nectar in your yard all season long.
Identify Your Growing Season
The next step after figuring out your first and last frost dates is figuring out when your cool season and warm season are, and if applicable when your cold season and your hot season are. Where I live in Ohio, I only have a warm season, two cool seasons, and a cold season.
Warm Season – When temperatures are between 55 degrees and 85 degrees.
Cool Season – When temperatures are between 35 degrees and 65 degrees. This is a great time to extend your growing season and plant your cool-loving crops!
Hot Season – When temperatures are above 85 degrees.
Cold Season – When temps are below 35 degrees and very few things will grow without protection. It’s definitely still possible to grow hardy plants (and of course you can occasionally harvest from some perennials too!) but this is the time to rest and let the garden recover.
Understand Your Eco Region
Are you the over-achieving type? Take your understanding of your area one step further and look into your eco region. You can find it HERE and it will give you a list of plants that thrive in your eco region and support your native habitats. These plants will be the EASIEST to grow because they belong where you live and have adapted and thrived over many years.
Eco Regions go beyond just average temperatures in your area, and they also consider regional soil characteristics, local wildlife, and specifically which plants have adapted to growing in that area over hundreds (if not thousands) of years.
There are several levels of eco regions which go from broad to specific, but to get a good understanding of your region, you’ll want to look at the Level III eco region where you live.
This level will give you specific native plants that will not only thrive but also support your local ecology.
This isn’t just a good deed to help fight climate change… rather, an ecologically strong local environment will DO THE WORK FOR YOU in providing high-yielding, healthy food systems right in your backyard.
More biodiversity directly yields more productive plants.
Step 3: Create a Planting Calendar
Breaking Down Your Seasons & Plant Selections
Start by making a list of all the plants you want to grow. I like to start by FIRST making a list of all the veggies and produce I buy at the grocery store.
Next, determine if each plant is a cool season plant, a warm season plant, or a hot season plant. Then, you’ll need two more important pieces of information: the number of days to harvest and the general size of the mature plant.
Once you know these 3 pieces of information, you can start plotting out what can grow where, when, and for how long.
If you live somewhere with a cool season in springtime, the first plants to go in your garden will be your short-lived, cool-season crops. This will include frost-tolerant varieties that are ready for harvest in less than about 60 days.
Once it gets closer to your warm season, you can start pulling or using up your cool-season plants to start planting out your warm-season plants.
Sketch it Out
Visualizing your plan on paper can be super helpful in understanding what will fit where and when… and for how long! You can draw this out, but I especially like using Excel or Google Sheets to map out my plans.
I start by making a spreadsheet and making the cells have the same pixel height and width. I’ll add borders around the cells that will make up my garden beds.
From there, I can either print those out to have templates to draw by hand, or I can type right into the cells and note what will go where.
You can also free-hand this step on blank paper if that’s more your style!
Free Tools You Can Use
There are also some really incredible tools with free versions which still provide a TON of value for new gardeners. One of my favorites is SeedTime.
SeedTime’s free version allows you to plan as many plants as you like, and they have a very robust database that pre-populates a calendar (and tasks) of when to sow, plant, transplant, and harvest. It will even allow you to change settings if you plan to use row covers or season extenders.
Step 4: Plan Crop Placement
Sun Exposure
Without the proper amount of sunlight, plants simply will not thrive. You will want to make sure that wherever your garden goes, it will capture enough sunlight for the plants you are hoping to harvest.
Keep in mind the size of the plants you’ll be planting, and account for any shade they might throw over other plants as they begin to take off in midsummer.
I love using trellises in my garden to maximize space, which means I’ll only be able to plant shade-tolerant varieties under and around those bigger, taller plants.
You can plan to use this to your advantage too. Planting shade-tolerant plants like lettuces underneath your trellised tomatoes is a GREAT way to maximize space and create microclimates in close quarters!
To Rotate or Not to Rotate?
Most gardening resources out there will tell you that crop rotation is A MUST. And while there’s truth to this… it’s not a hard and fast rule when growing in a small space.
The truth is, certain plants WILL deplete the soil of vital nutrients for others, but in a raised bed garden, for example, the best practice is to be top-dressing with compost and other organic nutrients at the end of each season anyway.
The more practical reason to rotate your plants (if space allows) is to avoid the proliferation of unwanted pests in the garden. If cucumber betels know you have a favorite spot to grow cucumbers, they will definitely come back stronger and stronger each year if they know where their food source is going to be.
Size Matters
As mentioned before, certain plants may grow to a size that steals the spotlight (literally!) from other plants, but you also want to be mindful of how much certain plants may sprawl. Zucchinis, for example, don’t require much root space, but their large spiky leaves may make it difficult to interplant as densely as you can around a tomato.
It’s also important to know if a plant likes to grow up or out so that every plant in the garden gets a chance of growing and thriving.
Step 6: Prepare for Challenges
It is inevitable that challenges will arise, and not every plant will do well every single year. I like to plan for at least 10-20% of my yields being consumed by local critters, bugs, and birds, which is why I ALWAYS over-plant. When you are swimming in cucumbers and tomatoes, you’re naturally going to be less sad if you’ve harvested all but one yellow squash.
Unpredictable weather is another factor to consider. A hail storm can ding up or decimate a beautifully blossoming garden in a matter of 10 minutes. Heat waves and excessive rain (or lack there of) can also throw wrenches in your garden dreams.
Step 7: Monitor, Maintain, and Adapt
The goal is ultimately to set up an ecosystem that doesn’t require a ton of work, but a healthy garden does require a ton of observation. Keeping an eye out for insect damage, struggling plants, and unwanted residents is huge and will make the difference between someone eating everything in sight and weekly baskets of freshly picked produce.
Conclusion
With a little planning, careful consideration, and these helpful inside tips, you can be harvesting loads of fresh fruits and veggies for months and months throughout the year!
Planting a garden can be easy, but the most prolific and fuss-free gardens are well-planned.
Have any questions about starting a garden this year? Feel free to send me an email or check out my free resources.
Happy planting!