Families often lay a lot of expectations on a backyard. How is a garden integrated? Here are some complementing garden designs for your backyard to get you motivated!
In addition to serving as a space for producing fruits, vegetables, and flowers, a backyard can also serve as a location for recreation, relaxation, alfresco eating, and play areas for kids and dogs.
Given that the garden must be used for a variety of purposes, it’s important to think about ways to shield plants from things like errant footballs, rowdy dogs, and trampling!
Generally speaking, it’s ideal to grow edible plants in a separate space.
Raise beds and/or well marked routes will assist kids and pets distinguish between the raised bed and standard in-ground rows, while you can plant in both.
Extra protection may be provided by low-level garden bed edging composed of wood, wicker, or looped wire.
Basics of Vegetable Garden Design
The primary factor in designing a vegetable garden is location, just like it is when choosing any other piece of real estate. You can then choose the ideal garden’s dimensions and design for yourself.
Location: In order to yield nutritious fruit, most veggies need full light. Choose a spot for the plants that gets six to eight hours of full sun per day, next to a water source that has good drainage. You’ll have healthier plants if you can easily offer watering and the plants are located in an area with good drainage.
Type of soil: Vegetables prefer dry roots yet require an abundance of water. What kind of soil do you have in your yard if you want to plant straight in the ground? Will the garden’s soil require significant amendments before you can plant?
Size: Take into account the amount of outside space you have available, the kinds and quantity of vegetables you wish to grow, and the size of your household.
Type of Garden: You might think about growing vegetables in raised beds or containers if your yard is rocky or the soil will need to be tilled and amended a lot to make it healthy enough to grow veggies. Raised beds are simpler to plant and maintain and come in a variety of sizes. Patios, balconies, and little yards are ideal locations for container gardening.
How to Lay Out a Vegetable Garden
Make a plan based on your goals, your surroundings, and the speed at which you wish to begin. Sketch it out on paper by hand or ask for assistance with a computer program.
Think on the planting surroundings: When choosing what to plant, consider all the maintenance aspects of your garden, including soil type, location, sun exposure, and water requirements. Additionally, decide if you want to create a container garden or planting beds.
Starting from seed or nursery seedlings: Whether you are starting from seeds or nursery starts will have a big impact on your plan. Although they cost more, nursery beginnings are more dependable. Plants grown from seeds must be started indoors, usually as soon as the ground warms up and before the last frost. This vegetable garden will need more maintenance for a longer amount of time and take longer to establish.
Select the veggies you desire: Radishes are simple to grow, but that doesn’t mean you should if you don’t like them and won’t ever eat them. In the same way, make sure you have complete sun exposure if you wish to grow tomatoes. What you can grow will depend on your surroundings. Make sure you begin early enough so that your vegetables have enough time to mature before the first frost is predicted or the weather changes.
Creating a plan: After deciding which plants to cultivate, use graph paper or internet gardening resources, such as garden design software, to create a plan on paper. Additionally, don’t forget to plot the areas that require comparable amounts of fertilizer and watering, and record certain dates and hours. The rain will require you to modify your watering schedule.
Advice Designing a garden is made simple with the help of apps. The iOS and Google Play app stores offer a wide selection of free or inexpensive software for desktop, mobile, and tablet use. Vegetable gardens and full-service home landscaping are compatible with these apps. Add details about the landscape, size, and shape. A lot of them already have templates loaded, so you may enter your specifications and receive a suggestion for your area.
Ideas for Vegetable Garden Layouts
These design choices are ideal for yards of all sizes.
Garden Beds on Raised Surfaces
A raised garden bed structure, composed of wood, metal, or plastic, is positioned above the ground and filled with soil for planting. If you reside in a location that is rocky, has poor soil, gets a lot of rain, or has poor drainage, this is the ideal growth habitat.
They are especially helpful in regions with short growing seasons since the soil in the bed warms up faster in the spring, which is ideal for peas, lettuce, and strawberries.
Because you won’t be stepping on the soil when harvesting root vegetables, the beds are easy to weed, especially for people with restricted mobility.
Gardens in Square Foot
A square-foot garden is an elevated bed that is divided into squares to allow for the planting of specific crops in a limited area. To access each growing area, the squares can alternatively be constructed independently as 12-by-12-inch pots with mulched walkways in between.
Any vegetable can be planted in a square foot garden, but it’s best to go with varieties that don’t get very big or spread out.
Select cherry tomatoes over larger beefsteak kinds, and fingerling potatoes over russets. Because they can be harvested early and replanted frequently during the growing season, lettuce and herbs make excellent selections for the square-foot garden.
Vertical Landscapes
Compared to other garden designs, a vertical garden is typically less expensive to create and is ideal for limited areas. As crops grow, it is also simple to access and replant.
The building can be a commercial growth tower (typically made of plastic) or a homemade one made of wood or landscape fabric. For the veggies to grow, the garden needs enough sunlight and healthy soil. A vertical garden’s drawback is that it needs to be watered frequently—often twice a day.
Compact vegetable kinds such as salad greens, baby kale, dwarf peas, bush beans, and herbs are ideal for planting in a vertical garden. These plants grow swiftly and have shallow root systems.
Gardens in Four Squares
Four raised beds connected by pathways make up a four-square garden. The phrase “four-square” was first used in early English cottage gardens, which were typically separated into four rectangular plots by two crossing walkways.
The beds are ideal for producing a variety of veggies while allowing access to each one, and they can be made to match your area. They only need to be 6 to 8 inches deep; they don’t need to be too high off the ground.
Every season, some gardeners add veggies to their raised beds and place a fruit tree or trellised vine in the middle. Herbs can be tipped over the sides of the vegetable beds, which can be sown in patterns like diamonds.
Growing Vegetables in Rows
A tiny backyard can easily accommodate a row garden. Tilling the ground is necessary to ensure that the dirt is loose when picked up.
Although fall is the ideal season to prepare the ground and add soil additives for a row garden, you should do this at least three weeks prior to your intended spring planting date. For a tiny row garden, pick fruitful plants like snap beans, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, turnips, onions, greens, carrots, and peppers.
Household Gardens
A farmhouse or big in-ground garden is great if you have a large family or enjoy canning, freezing, or drying produce. A quarter to an acre is the minimum size for most household gardens, and many of them cover more than that.
Similar guidelines apply to row gardening: Give your plants healthy soil, choose vegetable cultivars that provide a lot of fruit, keep weeds under control, plant in full light, and give them regular moisture.
Planning a large vegetable garden will require the use of many instruments and techniques, which will facilitate and increase productivity. After plants are planted, a gas-powered tiller can assist reduce weeds by breaking up the soil. In order to help prevent plant diseases and rot, a drip irrigation system will keep plant roots moist but keep water off the foliage and fruit.
Minimal In-Ground Gardens
You can quickly grow enough vegetables for a small family in a 10 by 10 foot sunny space. Start with healthy soil and adhere to row-gardening guidelines. Whether you plant root crops or leafy greens, it all depends on what you like to grow. By planting in the spring and fall, you can increase your yield. Here’s an illustration of what you could grow in the summertime:
Three indeterminate tomato plants on trellices or in cages, or two indeterminate tomatoes and one cucumber plant
Four eggplants
Five chili plants
Twelve bush beans
Gardens with Partial Shade
Some veggies can grow in partial shadow whether they are planted in the ground, raised beds, or containers if you don’t have a site that receives full light. Vegetables that are leafy, including Swiss chard, collards, leaf lettuce, and kale, can be grown well in locations that receive three to four hours of sunlight. You can also grow radishes, kohlrabi, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli in part shade.
Plant Selection for Vegetable Gardens
The design of your garden will be influenced by the vegetable seedlings you decide to buy or grow from seed. Start by considering the kinds of vegetables your family will want to consume, the climate in your area, the duration of the growing season, and the size of the mature vegetable plants.
Corn, for example, requires a lot of space to grow; most tomato varieties result in huge, sprawling plants, similar to melon. To keep the vegetables off the ground and disease-free, stake some beans and peas.
Additionally, avoid planting different veggies near to one another. Vegetables that aren’t compatible with one another can grow slowly, attract bugs and illnesses, and taste bad. Onions and beans, for instance, ought to be kept apart. Onion-derived chemical that inhibits bean development.
Tomatoes and potatoes, on the other hand, are related to nightshades and draw similar pests and illnesses. You can anticipate that the other crop will be highly vulnerable if pests or disease overwhelm one.
Advice
With one possible exception, plants grown in containers will require the same growing conditions as those planted in the ground. Because containers heat up faster and water evaporates or absorbs more quickly than in-ground plants, container plants frequently need more water than in-ground plants.
Planting Vegetable Companions
When space is limited, companion planting is an excellent idea to give different veggies the best growing conditions, just as some plants shouldn’t be planted together.
Basil and other herbs go well with tomatoes, while carrots, cucumbers, and squash make a great three-way companion combination. Rotating your crops is also essential to prevent pests and illnesses from being established in the soil and from coming back year after year.
Herbs, such as parsley, are also excellent companion plants for vegetables since they can either attract pollinators and other beneficial insects to boost biodiversity in the garden or trap or repel pests.
Incorporate flowers into your vegetable garden as well, as bees and other pollinators aid in the dissemination of pollen, which promotes the growth, reproduction, and fruit and vegetable production of vegetable plants.
Zinnias, sweet alyssum, daisies, sunflowers, and cosmos are plants that attract pollinators.
Here is a brief illustration of how to companion plant with some common vegetables:
Onions, celery, carrots, parsley, oregano, and basil are Tomato Friends.
Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, cabbage, fennel, potatoes, and kale are enemies of tomatoes.
Cucumber Allies: Broccoli, radish, peas, beans, marigolds, lettuce, onions, corn, and cabbage
Cucumber enemies include melons, potatoes, and aromatic herbs like sage and mint.
Cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, squash, carrots, asparagus, basil, and Swiss chard are some of the pepper friends.
Brussels sprouts, fennel, beans, cabbage, and broccoli are pepper enemies.
Beets, strawberries, carrots, and radish are friends of lettuce.
enemies of lettuce: parsley, bean
Tips for Designing a Vegetable Garden
Regardless of the layout you decide on when designing your vegetable garden, following these guidelines will help ensure a bumper crop.
For information on vegetable plant varieties and planting schedules specific to your growing region, contact the Cooperative Extension Service office in your community.
Avoid crowding plants. Vegetables may appear small, but growing them too close together will result in illness and worse yields.
Good soil is the first step towards a good yield. Organic matter should be abundant and the soil loose.
Rotate your crops every year to help ward off disease and nutritional loss.
To help weeds that compete for moisture in the garden be less, mulch the area.
By choosing resistant cultivars and distinguishing beneficial insects from harmful ones, you can reduce pests and illnesses.
FAQ
Which crops are too different to grow close to one another?
When specific veggies are planted together, the plants suffer. Vegetables that are incompatible can have stunted growth, attracted pests and diseases, and tasted bad. Never plant the following veggies next to one other: There should be no peppers next to cabbage, no eggplants or cucumbers next to potatoes, and neither corn nor cabbage next to tomatoes.
What design is most common for a vegetable garden?
Planting in vegetable rows is one of the most popular garden designs. You can also plant companion plants close to one another or designate a square block for each type of plant with square block plantings.
Which vegetable garden layout is the most productive?
The most productive vegetable garden concept for tiny places is square foot gardening.
Which way should I plant my garden rows: north to south or east to west?
To maximize the amount of sunlight that plants receive, garden rows should be oriented north to south.