Planning is very important to the success of your organic garden. When you plan ahead you can utilize space properly. It will help you to decide what plants to grow and where to put them.
Remember to make a list of vegetables that you and your family like, before planning. Take into account your local climate and soil. Make a choice of whether you will plant out seeds or transplants. This will depend on the length of your season and what you are growing. Some plants are more successful with seeds and others are better grown from transplants.
There are several reasons that you should plan ahead when gardening.
How much space do you have?
When you have a plan laid out for your garden you can then use all the space that you have available. You will need to have a rough measurement of your garden so that you will know how many plants you can fit it.Which way is your garden facing?
How much sunlight your garden will have is very important. Most vegetables will need at least six hours of sunlight to grow well. You should have a garden facing south or southwest to accommodate this. In areas where you have very strong sunlight and heat in summer you can have a garden facing east, so that your plants will not have the searing heat and sun after 12 noon.Size of plants
The size of the plants will make a difference to the number of plants you can fit into your garden. If you have limited space it is wise to stake plants and let them grow upwards rather than sprawl on the ground. This will save you a lot of space. Make sure you stake them early and give strong supports.How high will they grow?
This is important to estimate, as you want to position your plants so the tall ones will not shade the smaller ones. Positioning of the sun will be an important factor in this decision.However you should also utilize tall plants to shade those that don’t like too much heat and direct summer sun. For instance tall plants like corn will shade vegetables like lettuce.
Utilize fences and walls of buildings if possible. These are useful for attaching trellises; these can look quite decorative and enhance your house or garage. Some plants climb quite high and do well on fences, especially metal mesh ones, as these allow the tendrils to attach themselves.
Companion gardening
One of the key points of organic gardening is letting plants grow naturally as nature intended. Companion gardening is planting different plants together so that they will help each other grow. Be careful to have a chart for this as some plants will grow well together and others don’t like each other. For example peas and spinach do well together as do beetroot and onions but cucumbers don’t do well with onions.
Draw a couple of diagrams and decide which one you want to try. Draw more than one plan so that you can give yourself a choice. You can try different shapes for your garden beds. The common ones are rectangle, square and circular. Sometimes it is better to see your plan on paper, as it will help you visualize it better. Graph paper can be useful as you will be able to gage the measurements of your garden better.
Be extra careful when planning an orchard, as it is hard to gage the height of a full-grown tree. You can get miniature trees to accommodate smaller gardens. Types of fruit trees will depend on weather conditions in your area. However you can also get around adverse weather problems by planting fruits in containers.
Let your garden-fantasy work and you might get some great ideas for planning and executing your own organic garden. Visit
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