Fresh vegetables from your own garden are healthy, save a lot of money and in terms of taste, beats what is available in the supermarket by far. Once you have tasted a crunchy salad, aromatic Brussels sprouts and tasty home-grown tomatoes, you won’t regret a minute of the work that goes into creating a vegetable patch. With a well thought-out planting plan and the right preparations, the healthy diet can be harvested all year round.
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A planting plan provides an overview
The range of vegetables that are grown in private gardens is huge. With the help of a planting plan, even the beginner hobby gardener always has an overview and cultivates precisely the varieties that he and his family like best. At first glance, creating a vegetable patch may seem child’s play that will continually produce a rich harvest. However, sustainable cultivation, which does not involve the use of any chemical agents, requires strategic considerations with regard to mixed crops and crop rotation, which will not work without a detailed planting plan. The following factors play an important role in a successful planting plan:
- Size of the bed
- position
- Soil quality
- preferred mixed culture
- balanced crop rotation
- possibly existing cold frame
- desired volume weighting
- Integration of a greenhouse
The basic requirement for a high-yield vegetable patch is a sunny to partially shaded location that receives at least 4 to 5 hours of sunshine a day. If there is already a fruit tree or a shady hedge at the planned location, the amateur gardener’s talent for improvisation is required when designing the planting plan. Ideally, the soil is loose, slightly sandy, humic and does not tend to become waterlogged.
In contrast to arable farming, in which monoculture predominates for economic reasons, the advantages of mixed culture outweigh the hobby gardening. If an optimal combination of the vegetable plants in terms of size, nutrient requirements, ripening time and root space succeeds in mixed cultivation, the soil quality is sustainably promoted. In addition, the plants protect each other from pests. Years of experience have shown that a mixed crop in combination with a 3-year crop rotation promises the greatest harvest success. The high, medium and low consumers change in the individual beds every year. In addition, you can create another vegetable patch for the cultivation of local vegetable plants. A well thought out planting plan ensures
Popular heavy consumers are:
- cauliflower
- potatoes
- Kohlrabi
- Kale
- cucumber
- Red cabbage
- tomatoes
- Saddlery
- Broccoli
The middle consumers include:
- Carrots
- Spinach
- Chicory
- Beetroot
- Onions
- Salsify
- Turnip
- Parsely
- fennel
- Boretsch
Low consumers are:
- Savory
- peas
- Garden cress
- Lamb’s lettuce
- horseradish
- Runner beans
- lenses
- marjoram
- basil
Their cultivation should be provided in the planting plan alternately every year in order to benefit from the convincing advantages of the 3-year crop rotation. The planning of a bed with local vegetables such as:
- Strawberries
- asparagus
- rosemary
- thyme
- Melisse
- Berry bushes
- rhubarb
The true-to-site varieties can be planted in the same place for several years in a row without hesitation.
After the favorites have been selected from this range, the hobby gardener determines the desired amount of cultivation for each of the three or four zones, according to which the available garden area is divided into beds.
Preparation of the beds and garden paths
Experienced hobby gardeners first create an exact floor plan of the vegetable patch. The three to four zones for the crop rotation are divided into beds, which should be 1.30 m wide. With this width, a normal-sized gardener can easily work the bed from both sides. It is of course not absolutely necessary to plan basically rectangular vegetable beds. If you want a little more variety in appearance, you can implement creative ideas, such as round beds surrounded by small box hedges. An accurate and neat look is also achieved through small frames made of wood or rounded edge stones. If the garden is regularly haunted by snails, appropriate barriers for the voracious pests should be planned, such as special snail fences.
It is also advisable to invest some time in planning the paths between the beds, because they should enable quick access to the vegetable beds and at the same time harmonize with the overall appearance of the garden. Therefore, paths made of wood or bark mulch fit better into a nature-loving hobby vegetable garden than paths made of concrete or paving stones. Paths made of turf are particularly inexpensive and ecologically sensible, but they require a certain amount of maintenance. They need to be mowed regularly and their edges staked out so that the grass does not grow into the vegetable patches. Basically, the paths between the beds should be at least 60 cm wide. If it is a large vegetable garden, a main path with a width of 80 cm should be included in the planning,
Create a planting plan
Once the ground plan for the vegetable patch has been determined, the most important part of the preparation begins, because now the actual planting plan is created. Among the vegetable varieties to be grown, the hobby gardener has already assigned the high-eaters, the medium-eaters and the low-eaters as well as the local varieties to the beds. Within these zones, a subdivision is made into the main culture, the pre- and post-culture.
The main crop includes varieties that require a particularly long growing time, such as potatoes, cucumbers, carrots or sweet corn. Pre- and post-cultures require a shorter growth time, such as leeks, kohlrabi or radishes. The planting plan now contains a combination of pre-, main and post-crop for each zone, taking into account the temperature conditions for the growth of each individual plant variety. That doesn’t only sound complicated, it also requires adequate knowledge of the vegetable plants that should thrive in your own garden.
Creating a vegetable patch is not everything. Without a well-founded planting plan, the chances of success are slim. Anyone who uses the quiet time of winter for a hobby gardener to create such a plan, their work will be crowned with success. The following example is intended to clarify the procedure:
There is a sunny garden area 7.00 meters wide and 3.50 meters long. The floor plan includes 4 beds, each 1.30 m wide and 3.50 m long, as well as 3 paths between the beds with a width of 60 cm. The hobby gardener would like to plant the following types of vegetables for himself and his family:
- Heavy eaters: cauliflower, kohlrabi, celery, winter leek, peppers, new potatoes and sweet potatoes.
- Medium eaters: lettuce, carrots, beetroot, spinach and onions.
- Low eaters: peas, garden cress, marjoram, horseradish and runner beans.
- Local vegetables: strawberries, rhubarb, various berry bushes and thyme.
In January and February no work is planned in the planting plan. Hobby gardeners who have a cold frame with a glass roof are already active from February, because here varieties of cabbage, tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers can already be preferred. The beds are numbered from left to right from 1 to 4, with the vegetable varieties that are true to the location being planted in bed 4.
Beginning of March – green manure to improve the soil in beds 2 and 3. They are available in different seed mixtures that grow in the bed until the main vegetables are planted. Then the plants of the green manure can be pulled out and incorporated into the soil or they can enrich the compost heap with their nutrients.
middle of March
- Sow carrots and spinach in bed 1 as a preculture if the weather is suitable.
early April
- 1. Beet: sowing / planting onions, carrots, spinach, lettuce and beetroot
- 2. Bed: sowing / planting horseradish next to green manure
- 3. Bed: sowing / planting onions, kohlrabi and new potatoes next to the green manure
- 4. Bed: sowing / planting strawberries, rhubarb and berry bushes in
Mid-April:
- Sowing / planting peas in bed 2.
- Sowing / planting cauliflower in bed 3.
Anfang Mai:
- Sowing / planting runner beans and marjoram in bed 2.
- Sowing / planting thyme in bed 4.
Mid May and early June:
- Sowing / planting peppers, sweet potatoes and celery in bed 3.
- Harvesting spinach and strawberries.
Mid-June:
- Harvesting kohlrabi, spinach, lettuce, strawberries, thyme and rhubarb.
Beginning of July:
- Sow garden cress in bed 2 after the green manure has been worked into the soil.
- Harvesting kohlrabi, runner beans, peas, lettuce, thyme, spinach and berry bushes.
Mid-July:
- New sowing of lettuce in bed 1.
- New sowing / planting of kohlrabi in bed 3.
- Harvesting onions, carrots, spinach, thyme, peas, runner beans, beetroot and marjoram.
Beginning of August:
- Sowing / planting winter leek in bed 3, where the onions were harvested beforehand.
- Harvest carrots, beetroot, runner beans, marjoram, thyme, berry bushes and new potatoes.
Mid to end of August:
Harvest carrots, beetroot, runner beans, marjoram, sweet potatoes, peppers, celery, thyme, on the berry bushes
Beginning to mid-September:
Harvest carrots, beetroot, runner beans, sweet potatoes, marjoram, peppers, celery, on the berry bushes
October and November:
Harvest carrots, beetroot, runner beans, horseradish, garden cress, celery, bell peppers, kohlrabi, sweet potatoes and lettuce.
December:
Harvesting horseradish, garden cress and winter leek.
This example makes it clear that you can only keep track of things here with the help of a detailed planting plan. Because in the following year, the high-eaters, medium-eaters and weak-eaters are planted in the other bed. This approach makes an additional contribution to maintaining the soil quality. Furthermore, when creating the planting plan, one should note that some plants complement each other perfectly and protect each other, whereas other plants do not get along well. Cauliflower, for example, thrives very well next to lettuce and peas, whereas it should not be placed next to broccoli or onions if possible. Some vegetables even protect each other from pests. So the onion keeps the carrot fly away and the carrot drives away the onion fly. A rule of thumb,
Conclusion
Fresh vegetables straight from the garden on the table cannot be replaced by anything that is attractively presented in the supermarket. More and more hobby gardeners are deciding to create their own vegetable patch and benefit from the numerous advantages in terms of taste, vitamin content and cost savings. There is no doubt that the creation of a vegetable patch and the maintenance are quite labor-intensive; However, if you follow a well-thought-out planting plan from the start, you will always have an overview. A good success is ensured by taking into account decades of diverse and documented experience with mixed cultivation and crop rotation, which are ideally implemented in combination. The winter time is the ideal time to develop the planting plan in peace, to collect all the necessary information in order to be well prepared for the activities in the spring. Of course, there is nothing wrong with integrating a cold frame into the planting plan so that the planting and harvesting of the vitamin bombs can take place as early as possible.
