Vegetable Garden Layout
Lay out your vegetable garden to scale: beds or rows, the right spacing for each crop, plant counts, and planting dates for your ZIP code. Free.
Lay out your garden
- 01Draw your beds or rows to size. In rows mode the planner uses each crop's in-row and between-row spacing.
- 02Choose a crop and drag across the squares it should fill. The plant count updates as you go.
- 03Move beds by dragging them, or with the arrows in the bed panel.
- 04Add your ZIP code for every crop's dates, then print the layout.
A simple vegetable garden layout
- Sun first: most vegetables need 6 to 8 hours of direct sun. Leafy greens and herbs put up with a little shade.
- Tall crops on the north side, short ones to the south, so nothing is shaded.
- Group crops by family (tomato family, cabbage family, bean family…). It makes rotating them next year simple: see crop rotation.
- Keep perennials (strawberries, chives, thyme, oregano, sage) at an edge, where next year's digging won't disturb them.
Rows or square feet?
Rows suit a large dug garden: each crop gets its in-row spacing plus a path between rows [1]. Square-foot planting suits raised beds and small spaces: the paths are outside the bed, so the bed itself can be planted edge to edge. Switch each bed between the two in its panel; the plant counts change with it.
Questions
Which way should garden rows run?
North to south where you can, so both sides of each row get sun during the day. On a slope, run rows across it to slow water and soil running off.
How much space does a vegetable garden need?
A single 4 × 8 ft bed grows a useful amount of salad, herbs, a few tomatoes and beans. Start small: a well-kept small garden produces more than a large weedy one.