The first point is row orientation.  As the sun rises from the east and sets in the west a home vegetable garden plan that takes this into consideration will benefit greatly.  Rows situated north to south will ensure plants receive the most amount of sunlight during the day.

The next point to consider when designing a home vegetable garden plan is plant height.  This ties in with the first point in maximizing sunlight in the entire garden.  Ideally, taller plants such as staked or caged tomatoes should be on the east side.  Stepping down in size as you move west will prevent shading through the most intense sunlight hours of mid morning through late afternoon. 

Here is one caveat to consider: all home vegetable garden plans should include crop rotations on at least a 3 year cycle.  Crop rotation simply refers to not planting the same crop in the same location each season.  So how do you place the tomatoes on the east side each year when pests and diseases will build up if you don’t rotate?  Our solution is to split our home vegetable garden plan into three sections on a north south line.

Let me explain this third point in more detail.  The three sections are south, center, and north.  Each year we can plant our tomatoes on the east side of our garden and rotate them through the three sections for three seasons.  The non tomato sections in our home vegetable garden plan will usually have corn or vertically grown cucumbers on their east sides.  This helps us to make sure we can rotate crop families properly.

A fourth and final point to consider for your home vegetable garden plan is water.  This may seem to be common sense.  However, if you are planning a new garden, consider locating it in close proximity to your water source.  This will allow for fewer hoses, etc. to be needed.

All of the above home vegetable garden plan topics can be easily implemented.  Also, this is by no means an exhaustive list.  These are my opinion of the most critical when planning your next home vegetable garden.

Happy Gardening!

At our house they begin to arrive in middle December.  Quickly, the catalogs are piled in an out of the way spot to be accessed later.  As January rolls around, new arrivals begin to be thumbed through to provide color during the grey winter days.  By February, all of the seed catalogs are together in a convenient location.  Many also are starting to show signs of wear – dog ears, turned down pages, and the occasional note or circle in pen capturing a passing thought or idea.

Late March marks the end of our seed ordering from the catalogs.  The planning has reached its final stages.  The vegetable garden layout, meticulously diagramed on graph paper, now resides in a key seed catalog.  A newly planned flower bed, also in diagram form, takes its place in another.  Other issues have been placed in the recyle bin or lost in a fray of daily mail on the kitchen counter.

Thus goes the yearly ritual of countless seed catalogs in many gardeners’ homes.  If you haven’t started planning or haven’t recieved any catalogs, below are some resources to obtain your own copies.

Remember, spring will arrive……eventually!

• Johnny’s Selected Seeds
• Thompson & Morgan seeds available for delivery across US and Canada
• Henry Fields Seed and Nursery
• Click Here for Daily Deals at Gurneys.com