iGrowVeg

Planning Your Vegetable Garden Part 3a – Drawing a Plan

Posted on 07. Feb, 2010 by Tracey in Plan Your Veg Garden

Welcome to Part 3a of my Planning Your Vegetable Garden Series. At the end of this part you will be able to sketch or draw out a vegetable garden plan from scratch or around whats already growing in your vegetable plot.
If you’ve missed Parts 1 and 2, please visit the Plan your Vegetable Garden Series Page.

Its easy to plan your vegetable garden if you are starting with a blank canvas. However if you are starting with winter vegetables currently growing in your plot, I’ll also be showing you how to plant your new season sowings around whats already growing.

Planning your Vegetable Garden from Scratch – On Paper

You will need:

• Graph Paper or Plain Paper,
• Ruler,
• Pen,
• Colouring pencils (optional)
• List of Vegetables you’d like to grow.

Step By Step Instructions

1. Draw out the shapes of your vegetable plots on the graph or plain paper. You can use your own scale if you wish,

Step 1 - Draw your Plot

2. Start by grouping your vegetables into types, view Part 1 – Grouping Vegetable Types to learn more. Group into Roots, Brassicas, Legumes, Potatoes, Onions and Miscellaneous.

3. Add each group into your vegetable plots, its easiest to draw blocks in rectangles to represent the rows of vegetables.

Some vegetables like cabbages, broccoli, sweetcorn, potatoes, pumpkins require more room to grow than other vegetables so leave a larger sized rectangle or block to show they need more room.

Step 5 - Write in Vegetable Names

4. If you have small plots, you can split the beds into half and add two different types of vegetables in the same plot.

5. Either use a colour code or write the names of the vegetables in the blocks or rows.

6. If preferred, you can also add sow and harvest dates onto your plan.

Planning your Vegetable Garden – Creating a Plan around winter or already growing vegetables

If you are already growing winter vegetables for a spring harvest, the only thing you need to know is your vegetable harvest dates. Then you can easily plan your spring sowings around the other vegetables. Check out my Veg Plan Template below to make creating a plan for your vegetable garden even easier.

Free Resource – Veg Plan Excel Template

Veg Plan Excel Template

Description:

My Veg Plan Template offers an easy way to plan what you want to grow by using a current picture of your vegetable garden. Then by adding vegetable names, sow and harvest dates it is easy to work out a plan to fill the gaps and start spring sowings.

Veg Plan Template
File Size: 24KB

Don’t worry if you haven’t got Excel, you can view and edit excel spreadsheets for free in Google Documents or OpenOffice.

My Veg Plot Plan Template can be re-used as the season progresses, just use a picture of your vegetable plot in July, then you can plan for what to grow where in the winter months.

What’s Coming Next? Planning your Vegetable Garden – Part 3b
If you would like to create a more colourful and detailed plan online, please view my next Part 3b – Creating a Plan Online, where after checking out what the internet has to offer in vegetable planning software, I choose and review the best out of the rest.

iGrowVeg – Planning your Vegetable Garden Series

• Part 1 – Grouping Vegetable Types and Crop Rotation,
• Part 2 – What Can I Grow?
• Part 3a – Drawing a Plan
• Part 3b – Creating a Plan Online
• Part 4 – Choosing your Seeds
• Part 5 – My Vegetable Plan and Seed List
• Part 6 – Putting Your Plan into Action
• For Free PDF’s and Templates to accompany the series, please view my Free Resources.