A Home Vegetable Garden Plan for areas of all sizes

For optimum productivity, a good home vegetable garden plan makes a good starting point. The art in producing food from the garden is making the best use of every square inch available. This doesn't mean you have to tear up the whole garden (although don't let me stop you if that is what you had in mind), but it does make it vitally important to prepare a proper plan.

The first thing to consider in developing your home vegetable garden plan is garden aspect. Put simply - Where is the sky? Vegetables need a lot of sun and a fair amount of water so you are looking for an aspect that faces the sun.

If you have a good place, you should now spend some time working out what open garden area you have to work with, as this will help you work out the productive capacity of the garden and even which vegetables to focus on.

If not, or you're not sure don't worry, sometimes it helps to find a different starting point and then come back to the tricky stuff later.

Instead, let's start with some vegetables in pots and other containers first. These tend to dry out more quickly, so for these a cooler and perhaps slightly less sunny spot will do fine.

In fact, its probably a good idea to keep an eye out for places to use for container gardening anyway - why waste the space? It also makes a good place to start if you think an in-ground vegetable garden seems like too big of a job just now.

To help make the most of your vertical space, you may also find some useful information here.

However, a simple way to begin is to build a raised vegetable garden. This can be quite quick, but there are some pitfalls to be aware of.

Now all that remains is to work out the best vegetable garden layout that will make the most effective use of the open garden area you have available.

Although the information here is still fairly general, there are some useful links for additional reading below and we will soon be adding some more tips and ideas to help you develop your own home vegetable garden plan. To keep in touch with these developments, why not subscribe to our Free email newsletter? - The Food Gardener

Further reading & useful links

Improving garden soil
This involves more than just digging in a bit of compost.

Organic vegetable gardening
This explains what organics is really about and how you can achieve it in your garden.

garden ecology.
This is a broad field covering things like pests and weeds, crop rotations or companion planting.