Planning Your Vegetable Garden Layout

Posted by admin on April 9, 2010

Originally posted at Urban Homesteading Today

It’s not too late to start planting your vegetable garden, and it is important to know how the garden will be laid out. Your vegetable garden layout will depend on what vegetables you want to grow, the location and amount of available space, and if you would like to do companion planting. Here are some helpful tips on how to design your vegetable garden layout and start planting vegetables.

The first thing you need to do is sit down and plan.

Before choosing a layout, you need to decide on what type of vegetables you would like to grow, what fruits and herbs you may want to include, and where you would like to plant them. Here are other factors you need to consider for your garden layout:

• Garden Space – How much do you have to work with?
• Amount of Light in the Space – How much sun is available? How much is shaded?
• Drainage – Does water pool up or does it drain off too fast? Just right?
• Soil Amendments – What do you need to do to your soil as a result of your drainage observations? How much compost will you need?
• Type of Vegetable – What do you want to grow and how much space and light does it need?
• Additional Space – Do you have additional separate space you want to utilize? Do you need more space generally? Should you supplement with some containers?

You should think about whether you want to grow one type of vegetable like lettuce and tomatoes or if you want multiple varieties of any vegetables like head and romaine lettuce and roma and beefsteak tomatoes.

Make a list of the vegetables, fruits and herbs you want to plant and find out the space and light requirements of each, then compare it with the garden space you have. This should give you an idea of where you want to plant certain plants in your space.

Choose your Gardening Method

There are three basic vegetable gardening methods and they are: rows, raised bed gardens and potager style.

The rows style is traditional, and requires planting seeds in a row which could either mean planting one type of seed in a row or different seeds in a row. This method is very labor intensive requiring tilling the soil, and it does not make maximum use of available space. If you are very limited on space, you may not want to choose this method.

The raised bed garden, as advocated in Mel Barthalomew’s Square Foot Gardening, is an increasingly popular and very effective method. This style allows access to the plant beds from the exterior of the garden, or as you walk through the garden path instead of coming from inside of the plant bed between the rows as in a traditional garden. This is particularly convenient to avoid stepping on the beds which tends to pack in the soil and makes it difficult for seeds to grow as the earth compacts. A raised bed garden is a great way to maximize space and you can even use raised beds on tables for easy gardening.

The most decorative style of layout is the potager which means kitchen garden in French. This layout is described as geometric which allows you to layout your garden in circles or arrange plants by color or even food type.

If you want to have the best chance of increasing your results, square foot gardening is recommended. You can maximize the use of your space, and you can make your own soil, giving your plants a superior growing environment.

Consider Companion Planting

The idea behind companion planting involves planting different kinds of plants together so that they help each other grow and/or control pests for each other. A perfect example of this is planting beans, corn and squash together, which was commonly done by Native Americans. The corn gives the beans a place to climb, the beans gives its two companions nutrients in the soil, and the squash provides shade at the roots of the plants beside it. This not only prevents weeds from growing, it also saves on water.

Onions repel slugs and aphids and can be beneficial to plant near plants that are prone to slugs and/or aphids. Tomatoes grow well with carrots and basil, which improves the taste of tomatoes. Another example is horseradish and potatoes which when planted together give your potatoes protection from disease.

When you take the time to consider all these aspects and how they function together, you will find that your unique vegetable garden layout will produce optimally for you, and you may be surprised at how satisfying a successful gardening project like this can be.

Creating a Raised Bed Garden

Posted by admin on April 8, 2010

Original post from Urban Homesteading Today

If your current planting goals involve plants that require good water drainage, you may know how frustrating it is to have a yard that just won’t cooperate. Some plants can handle the excess water that comes about from being in an area that doesn’t drain properly. In fact, it might just cause them to bloom more lushly. However, other plants don’t cope as well, and it will cause them to die a gruesome, bloated death. You should always find out about the drainage required for every plant you buy, and make sure that it won’t conflict with any of the areas you are considering planting it in.

In order to test how much water your designated patch of soil will retain, dig a hole approximately ten inches deep. Fill it with water, and come back in a day when all the water had disappeared. Fill it back up again. If the 2nd hole full of water isn’t gone in 10 hours, your soil has a low saturation point. This means that when water soaks into it, it will stick around for a long time before dissipating. This is unacceptable for almost any plant, and you are going to have to do something to remedy it if you want your plants to survive.

The usual method for improving drainage is to create a raised bed garden. This involves creating a border for a small bed, and adding enough soil and compost to it to raise it above the rest of the yard by at least 5 inches. You’ll be amazed at how much your water drainage will be improved by this small modification. If you’re planning to start raised bed gardening, your prospective area is either on grass or on dirt. For each of these situations, you should build it slightly differently.

If you want to start a raised bed garden in a non grassy area, you won’t have much trouble. Just find some sort of border to retain the dirt you will be adding. Typically there is nothing that works quite as well as a few two by eights. After you’ve created the wall, you must put in the proper amount soil and steer manure. Depending on how long you plan to wait before planting, you will want to adjust the ratio to allow for any deteriorating that may occur.

If you’re trying to install a raised bed garden where sod already exists, you will have a slightly more difficult time. You will need to cut the sod around the perimeter of the garden, and flip it over. This may sound simple, but you will need something with a very sharp edge to slice the edges of the sod and get under it. Once you have turned it all upside down, it is best to add a layer of straw to discourage the grass from growing back up. After the layer of straw, simply add all the soil and steer manure that a normal garden would need.

Planting your plants in your new area shouldn’t pose much difficulty. It is essentially the same process as your usual planting session.

Once you have plants in your new bed, you’ll notice an almost immediate improvement. The added soil facilitates better root development. At the same time, evaporation is prevented and decomposition is discouraged. All of these things added together makes for an ideal environment for almost any plant to grow in. So don’t be intimidated by the thought of adjusting the very topography of your yard. It is a simple process as you may have realized, and the long term results are worth every bit of work.

If you’re planting food, you can’t go wrong with a raised vegetable garden. While the above is true, there is an easier way to do raised bed gardening, and it is adaptable to any size garden. The method is called square foot gardening and works very well, with a lot less effort once your raised bed has been made.

Depending on your budget, you can purchase everything you need, even down to the grids, or you can be creative. With diligence the building materials may even be scavenged. It’s up to you.

One advantage to square foot gardening is that you can water each square individually, which may help save some water. But if you don’t have the time or ability to water regularly, installing a drip watering system can be a life saver, for you and your plants. You can pick up drip irrigation supplies at your local big box store, but know that you are likely to make several trips because inevitably you will need more parts or different sized parts, it’s just they way it goes.

If you prefer to try to be more organized and have the funding, it might not hurt to choose one of the following garden watering systems:

Basic Drip Irrigation Kit for Raised Bed Gardening

Standard Raised Bed Drip Irrigation Gardening Kit

Deluxe Raised Bed Drip Irrigation Garden Kit

Premium Raised Bed Drip Irrigation Garden Kit

Ultimately you need to decide what works for you, just make sure that you do something, whatever it is that is within your ability and resources, to start making a better life for yourself on your journey to an urban homesteading lifestyle.