It is late May on the Front Range. Time to plant our vegetable garden. Every good project, starts with a plan. And planting a garden is very similar to executing a project. Now that I can dedicate more time to gardening, I am able to more effectively plan and implement my gardening plan. Listed below are some of the things I consider when planning for my spring planting. Hopefully, you will find them helpful for you to create your own Garden Planting Plan.
What to Plant
- What do you, your family or your friends like to eat? Growing food no one will eat is not a good use of your garden.
- Do you want to try something new? If space allows, consider trying something new and different. Variety is the spice of gardening!
- How much will the garden yield over the season? Do you have time to harvest, prep and store the harvest? A extended harvest duration increases yields per square foot and brings more value to your gardening. (Think green beans, peas, and tomatoes versus broccoli, corn and cabbage).
- If you are space limited, you may consider limiting selections to garden fresh plants that taste much better than the store purchased option. (For me tomatoes, sweet corn and potatoes fall into this category.)
Where to Plant
- Consider using a online garden planning tool to assist in laying out your garden space. Or, simply draw a sketch of your garden space. Locate tall, vining and climbing plants on the north side of your garden. Place the small plants on the south side. Evaluate and understand the shade conditions, if any, of your garden space. Plants that produce leaves or roots for eating can tolerate some shade. Plants that produce fruit for eating need more sun.
- Make use of a vegetable compatibility chart to maximize use of space. Add broccoli between rows of vining crops like cucumber, peas or pole beans, or grow melons in your corn patch.
When to Plant
- Chart and understand the time to plant (days before or after last frost) and the days to harvest for each vegetable variety you plan to plant. Planting long maturing plants in a short growing season climate can be a waste of time.
- When growing long maturing plants from seed, versus buying transplants, understand the best transplant age from sowing to transplant. For example, I like to start my broccoli from seed and transplant into the garden in mid May. Optimal transplant age for broccoli is 4-5 weeks. So, I sow my broccoli seeds 5 weeks before mid May. Here is a link to a paper on transplant age. (The paper list tomato transplant age at 5-7 weeks. I use about 8 weeks for mine as I like to get as early a harvest as possible.)
- Seek opportunities to grow two crops in one season. (Early season, cool weather loving peas, can be followed with heat loving string beans or cucumbers in the same patch.)
Record Your Plan
Record and save your plan. This makes it much easier to: make changes; remember in future years, what you did this year; and utilize as a starting point for next year’s plan. An easy way to record your plan is to have a separate “old school” paper calendar. Mark it up with your dates for sowing and planting.
I actually use a excel spreadsheet, shown below, as my garden planting plan. The sheet is a great way to record and adjust the dates of when to sow, transplant and plant. I refer to it often. And it makes it easy to adjust and edit year over year. But that’s just me!
Making and saving a garden planting plan will take a lot of guess work out of what, where and when to plant. Making your gardening less stressful and more fun!
I hope you found the items discussed helpful. And best of luck in building your own plan!
