Friday, July 13, 2012

Garden Vegetable Layout


There is nothing better than tasting your own homegrown vegetables that have been freshly picked from your garden. There are a lot of home vegetable growers that can testify to this. But there are different types of garden vegetable layouts. Before you consider what you will be going to use for a vegetable layout, you will need to know what the surface are that you plan to use, the available space for you to plant your vegetables, and the type of vegetables and fruits you will be going to plant.

Choose the Place for your Garden
You will need to look at your available space and decide where you want to put your garden. Your garden must be in a place where there is direct sunlight in order for the plants to flourish and thus you will need to choose a location that would get a lot of sunlight.
You will also choose a place where there is no excess water in the soil. Most plants prefer moist soil but too much water is a bad thing because water in the soil that does not drain will soon rot the roots of your vegetable plants. In order to test this, you can dig a hole (about 5 or 6 inches) in your soil and put water in it. If the water does not drain from the hole immediately then you need to choose another place for your garden. You need water during the summer since the heat can wither your vegetables, so it’s good if you can plant your garden near a water source so that you can immediately get water.

Choose your Layout Plan
Choosing the place for your garden is important and so is choosing the layout plan for it. You need to decide whether your vegetable would be planted in rows or raised beds. There are different advantages and disadvantages for this and you will need to consider each of them.




Traditional Vegetable Garden Layout
The normal layout for vegetable gardens is to plant it in rows where each row will have different a type of vegetable. The seeds are planted from north to south in order to have the full benefits of the morning sun. In order to make sure the seeds in a straight line, use a stick or string as a guide. There should be enough space between each row since you need to walk in between them to collect the vegetables when they are ripe. Also, the space should be enough so that you can take care of your vegetables while they are in the process of growing.

An advantage of this traditional way is it can make it easier for you to distinguish between the vegetables and weeds. Watering is also easier since you can just leave your water hose on one side and the water would flow through the other side of the row. This layout will also give the garden enough air for circulation since it is open and therefore there will be less fungus and mildew growing after rainfall.

This type of layout is not ideal for a smaller yard since spaces between each row are needed. Because of the space, there are fewer vegetables that can be planted. Frequent walking in the space provided can compact the soil there thus making it difficult to rearrange its vegetable layout. There is also a higher tendency for pest attacks since the same vegetables are planted in rows.

Raised Bed Layout
This is very effective if you only have small space for your garden. An example of which is square foot gardening whereby the plants are planted in blocks rather than in rows. They are planted closer together compared to the traditional garden layout. These beds should be narrow enough in order to be able to plant, weed, or harvest. A good width is about 3 to 4 feet. You can use recycled woods, concrete blocks, bricks or stones just to pile up the soil on top of the ground.

This type of layout will make the soil drain much quicker so it improves soil drainage. Even if you have poor soil, this type of layout could transform a barren patch into a generous harvest. This would also solve the problem of tree roots competing with your plants for water and nutrients.

These two layout are the easiest and simple way of making your garden. There is also a lot of different layouts that you can choose from with a different variety of designs. All you need is the space, the idea and a bit of flair to make a successful vegetable garden.