The sunniest spot in your yard is the best place to stake out your plot. Most vegetables need a minimum of six hours of sun daily.
Because vegetables like plenty of moisture, site your plot near a water source. But take note: Vegetables hate standing water. Keep them away from any low spots and rain runoff, where water can collect.
When preparing a new bed, skim off the top 2 inches of soil or sod and add it to the compost. Removing this topmost layer will eliminate weeds for years.
For maximum results, give vegetables the best possible home while they live their short, intense lives. Each year, till or spade 2 or 3 inches of compost or rotted manure about 8 inches deep into the soil until it is loose and friable. Work in a complete fertilizer and, if necessary, amend the soil pH to around 6.0 to 7.0.
Rows or beds? Decide what kind of plot you want. Rows are easy to tend and allow air to circulate but are less efficient than beds in their use of space. Beds, on the other hand, permit intensive planting and therefore higher yields. A disadvantage is that beds take more time to prepare, are more awkward to tend, and have poorer air circulation.
To make tending beds easier, keep them no wider than the spread of your arms—about 4 feet. Design a main path wide enough for a wheelbarrow, allowing about 3 feet, and add footpaths about a foot wide between beds. To suppress weeds and provide a clean place to walk, keep paths covered with straw, chopped leaves, boards, or bricks.
If space is limited for a separate plot, combine vegetables with your flowers. Some veggies, like ruby chard, purple broccoli, and scarlet runner beans, are handsome enough to hold their own.
Leave room for blooms. Flowers in the vegetable garden not only make it a more pleasant place to work but also have their uses. Many types attract beneficial insects like bees, ladybugs, and lacewings, while others may repel pests. Try butterfly weed, French marigolds, or fennel. For a bonus, plant edible flowers like nasturtiums and violets.
Small-garden strategies: Plant vertical crops, like pole beans and squash, which take up little ground space. Or plant dwarf varieties, such as ‘Tom Thumb Midget’ lettuce and ‘Tiny Dill’ cucumbers. Or create a patio garden, using the dwarf varieties specially bred for containers: tomatoes, cabbages, cucumbers, melons, and more.
Deciding how many plants to grow depends on how you use your garden. If you’re keen on canning and freezing, add more plants than you would need for eating fresh. But be careful not to overplant any prolific producers, like summer squash and tomatoes.
Expand your horizons. Look for a few unusual vegetables, including imported and heirloom varieties, to add to your mainstays. Be adventurous and try out a new cultivar each year—particularly with tomatoes, which come in countless varieties.
Consider your conditions. In areas with short growing seasons, buy fast-maturing or cold-tolerant vegetables. In warm and hot climates, buy heat-tolerant varieties so that you can enjoy cool-weather favorites like lettuce. Also buy plants that are resistant to diseases common in your region.
For maximum sun, try laying out rows east to west, following the sun’s transit. Plants in north-to-south rows may get too much shade as the sun passes over.
For high yields, use space wisely. After harvesting a cool-weather crop (peas or spinach, for example), replant the space with a warm-weather vegetable (green beans or summer squash). Interplant quick growers (radishes) with slower ones (tomatoes); the short-term crop will be up and out before the slow grower can crowd or shade it.
With poor keepers, such as lettuce, don’t plant all at once. Instead, plant short rows at one-week intervals. Doing so means you’ll have fresh pickings throughout the season.
Reserve the north end of your garden for perennial vegetables, such as asparagus, and tall, shade-casting plants, like corn. The rest of the space will be freed up for its yearly soil preparation and stay sunny through the growing season.
Crop rotation is essential for preventing a buildup of harmful soilborne microbes that prefer certain plants. For this reason, don’t plant a vegetable or a member of its family in the same place year after year. Instead, divide the garden into sections and move the plants from one area to another. As a general rule, a plant should be replanted in its original spot only every three or four years.
Another advantage: Rotate crops to help balance soil nutrients between light and heavy feeders. An example: The first year, plant peas, which fix nitrogen in the soil. The next year, follow with nitrogen lovers such as cabbage and broccoli.
Vegetables can’t tolerate competition from weeds. Monitor the garden weekly to pull up any invaders and mulch the soil well to suppress them.
Vegetables need an inch of water per week, whether from rainfall or watering. Moisture needs are most critical for leafy crops as they approach maturity, for fruiting vegetables as they set blooms (but not as the fruit ripens), and for root crops as the roots start to expand. Water young vegetables lightly but frequently, never letting their soil dry out completely.
Slow-maturing vegetables often benefit from a supplemental feeding halfway through the growing season. Side-dress lightly with a complete fertilizer, water with manure tea, or spray with a foliar food such as kelp extract.