5 Tips for Planning Your Garden (Notes)

Hello!

These are the notes for the video on this topic. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw8JURpbqFM

But here are the 5 things I mentioned you should consider when planning your garden:

1. Layout

  • Put your garden where you can see it from your window. This way, you can enjoy watching it grow throughout the season and monitor it for pests, water needs, etc.

  • If you’re doing rows and live in the northern hemisphere, orient your rows north to south. Plant tall plants to the north and low-growing plants to the south

  • If you can, put your garden on a south-facing slope or on the south side of your yard, house, balcony, or wherever you decide. The reason for caring about north and south and slopes is because of reason #2

2. Light

  • Most vegetable plants require “full sun”, so at least 6 hours. In the northern hemisphere, southern slopes get way more sunshine.

  • During the summer months, morning and early afternoon light is best because late afternoons tend to be much warmer and can stress a plant out. If you live in one of these areas, make sure you can provide late afternoon shade.

3. Water

  • I’m telling you now – you do not want to haul water to your garden every time you need to water it. Plant your garden where you can access it with a hose to water it. I’ve tried hauling water just a couple of hundred feet for a while and soon realized it made gardening less enjoyable.

  • Roughly speaking, your plants are going to need one inch of water per week. That works out to be about .62 gallons or 2.3 liters per week.

  • Water early in the morning, not in the hot afternoons.

  • Water heavily and infrequently to promote deep root development.

4. Soil

  • You want soil, not dirt. Soil is full of organic matter and microorganisms. Unless you are exceedingly lucky, plan on amending your dirt/soil before you start gardening.

  • I always recommending getting your soil tested. This will take out the guess work on what amendments you need to maximize your chances of a successful garden

5. Airflow

  • Plants need good air circulation for root development and disease prevention. Try to plant your garden where there aren’t too many windbreaks (trees, fences, structures, etc.)

Useful Links:

Garden planner: https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/kitchen-garden-planner/kgp_home.html

Watering Guide: https://www.almanac.com/when-water-your-vegetable-garden-watering-chart

Extension Offices can be amazing resources for these topics. Many offer soil testing. If you live in the U.S., I found this useful when searching by zip code: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/extension-search

Disclaimer about links:

Internet links can obviously change or break. I don’t always come back to a blog post I’ve published to check that links still work (but I do sometimes when I refer to them for my own use). If you come across a broken link and feel deep sorrow, send me a message and I’ll do my best to correct it.

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