Plan for succession plantingĪ lot of new green thumbs don’t realize that the veggie planting season doesn’t end when you plant your heat lovers, like tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons. Some of my faves include alyssum, marigolds, and nasturtiums. Sneak in some flowers to attract pollinators and combat plant pests. Mad Hatter peppers are a fun, sweet variety grow. *Use tomato cages around bush varieties of cucumbers that will use the structure to climb. You could also plant your squash in front of the peas… once they’re done, the same trellis can be used to train the squash. If you plant, say a winter squash in your raised bed, it could easily take up the entire garden! However, a compact variety won’t be as much of a hog, and if you strategically plant it, it will cascade over the side. They may have been bred with containers in mind, but they’re also perfect options for raised beds. *Choose compact varieties of plants that sprawl. It grows to be nice and high, doesn’t get lost in the shade of the tomatoes, and makes a LOT of pesto! Of course there are lots of great varieties of basil to discover. *I always plant columnar basil near some of my tomatoes (I included it in my grocery list plan). I’m very careful about planting shorter varieties now.
Well the answer is three to four feet tall! Which means they cast a bit of shade on the veggies behind them at certain points throughout the day. For some reason I didn’t read how tall they would get. A packet of Pastel Dreams zinnias seemed like the perfect flowers to plant them along the front of my one raised bed. I learned this lesson the hard (funny?) way years ago. *Assess which direction the sun comes from and make sure that you don’t plant tall crops in front of shorter ones. It’s a helpful way for beginners to get organized. So that might mean one tomato or several carrots. Then you follow his plan for how many plants or seeds should be added to each square.
In your raised bed, you divide the space into a grid of 1- x 1-foot squares. Many gardeners find Mel Bartholomew’s square foot gardening method helpful. Intensive planting means you can fit more plants and more plants = more food (and less weeds)! You do want to keep an eye on your garden and thin plants as they grow to maintain air circulation, which helps prevent diseases. This also helps keep the weeds down and can reduce the need to water as often. Keep in mind one of the benefits of raised garden beds is you can plant veggies more closely together (this is called intensive planting or gardening), rather than in rows, like a traditional in-ground garden. They should provide the height and width of mature plants, as well as spacing recommendations. Read your seed packets (or plant tags) carefully. What to do with any extra seedlings you have? Don’t let them go to waste! Tuck them into a perennial garden or a pot. That’s why my raised bed collection and assortment of pots has increased over the years. I always seem to end up with more seedlings and seeds than I have space for.
While it’s easy to get carried away and want to grow all the things, you only have room for so much. It’s fun to watch it grow and then give it a taste test at the end of the season. I also recommend planting at least one new-to-you veggie. And I often grow way more than I need-any extras get frozen for winter meals.
So tomatoes are always on my list to plant. They just can’t compare to the ones you grow yourself (or get at the farmers’ market in the summer). But that’s not because I don’t like them. One thing that doesn’t show up often on my grocery list are tomatoes. What items show up week after week? For me, that means lettuce and other greens, like spinach, Swiss chard, kale, and baby bok choy, cucumbers, onions, a variety of herbs, peppers (I usually plant at least one hot pepper to make habanero jelly, and a variety of other sweet peppers), the odd root veggie, like beets and carrots. I like to recommend starting with your grocery list. I ended up creating a couple because I had fun planting all those virtual veggies!ĭeciding what to plant in a small vegetable garden layout How do you figure out how much to grow? I thought I would put together a 4×8 raised bed vegetable garden layout to show how much can be planted in a raised bed. You’ve built your raised bed in a space that gets at least six to eight hours of sunlight a day, and filled it with soil. You’re excited to grow a vegetable garden.
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