My garden is going to be a bit bigger this year, so it will take a little bit more planning. Even if you only have one container of veggies you can do a little bit of planning.  There are some vegetables that work well together, and some that just don’t. There are some vegetables that will help keep certain bugs away and some that will attract them.

I am planning to get a garden diary this year so I can keep track of my vegetable garden plan for this year as well as know what I planted where for next year. I love the idea of being able to keep track of my gardens from year to year, take notes so I know what worked and what didn’t. You think you will remember, but so much goes on and I have found I can barely remember where I had things planted from one year to the next, with an even bigger garden this year and a toddler to chase after I bet it gets even harder.

Planning where you want to put your plants, how many you’re going to need based on the amount of space you have, where you planted things last year these are all important parts of a vegetable garden plan.

I have found some great books that help me with my plan the two I use every year for my garden are Square Foot Gardening and Lasagna Gardening.

Square Foot Gardening is an amazing book. It is easy to understand and this method uses raised beds, just like I like. He does use a very specific mix for his “dirt” which was a little more than I wanted to mess with. Which brings me to Lasagna Gardening~ this is where you basically build a compost bin within your raised bed and then just plant.

Square foot gardening will show you how you can plant a huge garden in a very small amount of space. It will show you exactly how much space each plant will need, how many plants you can put in a square foot, how long each will take until harvest, and which plants you can plant before and after. You will end up having produce the whole season through using this method, and you will have next to NO weeds to deal with.

It’s a very good plan, and the book is well worth the small amount it costs.

That being said, I still didn’t want to mess around with all the ingredients I had to buy to make his “dirt” when I had tons and tons of compostable materials all around here. Lasagna Gardening shows you how to use your compostable materials and build a raise vegetable garden in no time flat that you can plant in right away. So I ended up mixing the two for a hybrid garden, a lasagna square foot garden.

It’s been working for me quite well for the last couple years and I look forward to planning more beds this years, and expanding the vegetables I’ve been growing as well.

Make sure when you’re making your vegetable garden plan to add in a row or a square foot for your local food bank.