The Next Step: Where to Plant Your Garden
All right, you have read my last article on the 5 Beginner Steps to Planning Your Garden. Now your next question may be where to plant your garden. You have found your frost dates, the length of your growing season, you have understood what days to harvest means, and you have chosen your crops. Wow! You have been busy. If this is your first year gardening, don’t fret, learning this beginning foundational knowledge gets easier each year. Right now you’re laying the groundwork and understanding why things are the way they are in the garden. Good for you!
Now you may be excited that you know what you’re planting but confused and wondering where you will plant it all. Perhaps you have read some about companion planting and how some plants don’t do well next to other plants and other plants promote growth when planted next to other crops. It can get overwhelming but don’t let it. Plants are determined to survive; they are tough and resilient. Below I will go over things to consider when you’re first deciding where to break ground for your new garden. Then I will go over how I decide where to plant what.
Laying Out the Garden Design
When it comes to actually deciding where to plant your garden, the options are only limited by your creativity. Seriously, you are 100% free to get as creative as you want to be and plant your garden in various locations. We need to get over this idea that gardens must be in straight rows and all the rows in a perfect rectangle. I think a cottage garden is the most beautiful and natural type of all. Look at the property space you have to garden in…look at ALL of it!
I suggest drawing or sketching out each area mentioned below and adding the notes you observe onto your sketches.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR:
- Take note of the front yard, back yard, and side yards.
- Take note of any shady; sunny; dry; wet/moist/drainage; sloped; and rocky areas throughout your gardenable property.
- Take note of any wind breaks and rocky areas. Windbreaks can be natural such as trees or manmade such as buildings. Rocky areas can be natural rocks or manmade concrete.
- Take note if these windbreaks cast a shadow on the potential future garden. If so, from what time to what time does it cast a shadow?
- Take note of the direction of the sun for each area throughout the day. Note where the sun falls and how long it stays there. After sketching the area, make a note of N, S, E, and W.
- Take note of any vertical options available for growing upwards.
- Take note of how much moisture the ground retains after a rain. Go out and visit the area while it’s raining. Does the area hold water or does it run off? How much runs off?
- Take note of the soil quality in each area. Is it compacted, hard, heavy clay, or is it soft, fluffy, loamy, sandy? When you get a handful, do you notice any life in it? Smell it, seriously, close your eyes and smell it. Breathe it in deeply through your nose. A healthy soil full of life and nutrients should smell (in my opinion) rich, earthy, moist. I cannot describe it in words, but you learn to know what a living healthy soil smells like. A dead soil will have practically no smell.
- Take note if there is water easily accessible to each area.
- Take note if there are any possible pollutants that could contaminate the area. What is uphill?
- Take note of any other observations you make.
How to Use the Above to Determine Where to Plant Your Garden
The sketches and notes you take from the above can help you in various ways in deciding where to plant your garden.
- You will be able to identify microclimates in order to extend your growing season or simply find the best place to grow the right crop for the most productive harvest.
- Areas with northern exposure are best for plants that do not like to get too hot and can handle quite a bit of shade. Most annual gardens need at least 6 hours of sun each day to be productive.
- Areas with southern exposure are best for heat loving plants and usually have full all-day sun.
- Areas with eastern exposure accept the first light of the morning. During this time, the temperatures are not usually extreme, but these plants get their needed light and can also handle shade from noon on. Plants that only need ~4 hours of light each day do well here.
- Areas with western exposure usually gets the full afternoon sun all the way through sunset. This is best for plants that need a lot of sun and the higher temperatures.
- Areas that are in a valley or at the base of a slope tend to be more moist, which is ideal for plants that like more moisture, but be sure you know what type of water and pollutants are possibly draining into that area. Look and explore uphill.
- Areas that are dry and rocky do best for plants that just want to be left alone like Mullein.
- Rocky areas are great at soaking up the sun’s heat during the day and releasing it back into the ground and surrounding plants during the night. Plants that are drought tolerant and love heat do well here.
- Windbreaks are helpful to shield tender plants from strong wind gusts but note that they may cast too much shade on the annual garden.
- Do not be afraid to plant your annual vegetables in amongst your landscaping. Many garden vegetables can make beautiful ornamentals as well as edibles. Not many plants thrive under a black walnut tree though due to the amount of juglone the tree produces which inhibits undergrowth.
Things to Consider Before You Plant Your Garden
Windbreaks: We talked about shade and windbreaks, but let’s dive into that a bit more. Evergreen windbreaks such as pine and cedar trees are important to keep your young fruit trees from breaking during the strong winter winds (at least where I live). However, windbreaks can also act as shade, so if you plan on planting some fruit trees in the winter, consider how much shade any non-evergreen windbreaks are going to cast on your young fruit trees in the summer once those non-evergreen windbreaks are all leafed out. Also note that cedar trees have a certain type of fungal disease that can attack apple trees too causing CAR (cedar apple rust.)
Water:
When picking your garden or gardening spots, be sure you have easy access to water for your garden. Do you really want to carry jug after jug to water the garden? Will you wind up the water hose every day so the mower does not chop it up?
Slopes/Drainage:
If you decide to plant at the bottom of a slope or in a valley for your moisture loving plants, look uphill. Learn what is at the top of the hill. Where does that water come from that runs down the slope to water your plants? Is a neighbor using pesticides, weed killers, or chemical fertilizers; how do you feel about that? Is there a landfill uphill or a lagoon? Is there a busy highway at the top of the hill reeking with chemical pollutants? Next time it rains, go out and evaluate where the water comes from and where exactly it goes.
Space:
Make the most of the space you have. If you have a fenced in yard, consider growing some perennial canes such as raspberry or blackberries against the fence. Do you have a tall ornamental metal structure such as a decorative windmill? If so, consider growing pole beans or vining squash up the structure. When growing vertical, it can increase the amount of harvest for less ground space plus it minimizes disease such as powdery and downy mildew by allowing for better air flow. You can grow vertically by using items such as an arched cattle or hog panel fencing, an A-frame, an arbor, or regular fencing and twine.
Planning My Garden
Once you know where to plant your garden, you’ll then need to decide which crops to plant next to each other. Here’s a couple examples of what I do.
In this picture you can see one of my 4’x10′ raised garden beds. This sheet is part of my Gardening Journal. This bed is planned out for the 2023 garden season. Last year this bed was filled with green beans. Since green beans fix nitrogen in the soil, I decided to plant green leafy veggies in this bed first this year since green leafy veggies need the most nitrogen. If you downloaded my free Garden Planning Guide, you’ll see that Bok Choy doesn’t like to be planted next to any brassicas. Brassicas are cabbage, kale, broccoli, etc. You’ll also see that cabbage and lettuce do not like to be planted next to each other. This information is reflected in my garden bed layout. Another wonderful thing about this particular bed is it’s my most easternly bed and will be shaded in the afternoon by the taller crops that need the hotter sun; this is a win-win since these are my cool weather crops. This will extend their growing season.
You’ll also see that since Bok Choy and lettuce get along, they are not planted next to cabbage or broccoli. A side note here, sometimes I do plant “non-companions” together sometimes when I can’t avoid it, and I don’t recall ever having a problem, but you never know. As you continue to look at the crop layout for this particular bed, you’ll see that I have some beets and nasturtiums scattered in. Beets are wonderful allies for all plants as they help to bring up nutrients and promote vigorous growth for nearly all plants. The nasturtiums are said to attract the cabbage moth, so even though we like nasturtiums, they will be considered my sacrificial plant this year in hopes of winning the battle against the cabbage moths. For the first time last year, we had harlequin beetles on my broccoli. Once I removed the broccoli, the beetles traveled to the nasturtiums. So I’m hoping nasturtiums will also save me from the beetles. Just so you know, the little numbers inside each square is how many of that crop I am planting as I do square foot gardening in these beds as well. Another thing you may notice is that beets are the only root crop I have in this bed. My other root crops are spread around in other beds. This is because some root crops do not like to be planted next to other root crops because they tend to compete for the same nutrients. Rutabagas are one such crop.
Here’s another example of something I consider when I decide what crop to plant and where. On this raised bed layout, you’ll see I have carrots on the inside of the bed with the green beans closer to the outside of the bed. This is because the carrots will be growing longer than the beans, and I do not have to mess with the carrots. The green beans, however, I will be messing with them every couple of days. Because I need more access to the beans and not the carrots, I put the carrots inside. If the carrots were outside, it would be harder to get to the beans, and I would take a chance on damaging the carrot leaves by reaching over them. The same goes for growing onions or garlic or other long standing no fuss plants on the bed perimeter.
Here’s a little snapshot of one garden bed a couple years ago. You’ll see in this corner of the square foot garden, I have an onion or two, two lettuces, and a broccoli plant all happily growing together.
We have discussed deciding what crops to plant next to each other in terms of companion planting; the location of the crops for ease of access; and how some crops need more or less sun than others so planting with shade in mind for each individual plant’s needs. To recap in my garden, the full garden gets sun for the majority of the day. However, our garden pretty much runs north to south, so the sun “moves” from east to west over the garden. The west side of the garden gets the hotter sun as well. For my garden, I plant the cooler crops in two different places; farther on the east side so the taller plants shade the cooler crops from the hotter temps in the afternoon, and I also plant the cooler crops in the more northerly region of the garden so again they are shaded by the taller more heat loving plants in the afternoon. It is important to know when and how much sun falls on each part of your garden. With this information, plant each crop according to its needs. Simply put, if your garden was only growing all heat loving crops, then you’d simply place the taller plants in the back, so they do not shade the shorter plants that need the sun too.
Happy Gardening
I hope these recent gardening articles have helped you in understanding more about what to plant and where to plant. Enjoy this gardening year and grow healthy!
