Planning your vegetable garden - part 4

Another consideration in picking out the spot that is to yield you happiness and delicious vegetables all summer, or even for many years, is the exposure. Pick out the "earliest" spot you
can find, preferably a plot sloping a little to the south or east, that seems to catch sunshine early and hold it late, and that seems to be out of the direct path of the chilling north and northeast winds.

If a building, or even an old fence, protects it from this direction, your vegetable garden will be helped along wonderfully, for an early start is a great big factor toward success. If it is not already protected, a board fence, or a hedge of some low-growing shrubs or young evergreens, will add very greatly to its usefulness. The importance of having such a protection or shelter is altogether underestimated.

There is, however, one other thing you must look out for in selecting your garden site, and that is drainage. Dig down eight or twelve inches after you have picked out a favorable spot, and examine the sub-soil. This is the second strata, usually of different texture and color from the rich surface soil, and harder than it. If you find a sandy or gravelly bed, no matter how yellow and poor it looks, you have chosen the right spot.

Planning your vegetable garden - part 2

Once you've got an idea of the vegetables you want to try in your vegetable garden this year then the next thing to do is to look at the space you've got available and plan it out. You can either use a rotation system in big sections or if you're just growing in borders then you can plant in rows from front to back with small vegetables like lettuce, radishes, dwarf beans at the front and big vegetable plants like runner or french beans at the back.

This will give you a range of sizes, flower colour, leaf types and provide you with a good selection of vegetables for the pot. You should also watch out for harvesting times and try and make sure that you're not going to disturb the soil around still growing vegetables when harvesting others. In a dense vegetable garden where you're trying to crawm as many different vegetables in together, usually in vegetable borders around a lawn in the middle, you should plant your root vegetables in a row with easy access from the front and avoid disturbing other growing salad or vegetable plants

Also bear in mind that some plants need support when growing like peas and beans. Vegetables like these need light and air around them to pollinate so you can't grow them on trellis against your fence. Beans do grow well in a wigwam shape using canes.

Soil type is another consideration, nearly all vegetables like free draining loam soil so if you've got thick clay or very sandy soil then you've got your work cut out.