Plan what goes where
Choosing varieties, spacing and plant counts, how much to grow for a household, tall crops on the north side, and grouping crops by family for rotation.
- Start here: the essentials
- Understand: start from the variety
- Spacing and plant counts
- How much to plant for a household
- Tall crops north, trellises and paths
- Crop families, rotation and companions
- See it: two plans, checked
- Practice: draw the bed plan
- Your garden
- Check your work
- Knowledge check and scenario
Start here Essentials
This module asks you to turn your crop list into a drawn plan with one row per crop. Everything marked Go deeper is optional on a first pass.
- Name a variety for each crop. Write its days to maturity, whether that counts from seed or from transplant, and its habit (determinate or indeterminate, bush or pole). Start from the variety.
- Find each crop's spacing in the equidistant table. Use the wider end if your soil or fill is new. Spacing.
- Count the plants. For a bed, round down length (ft) x 12 / spacing, times width (ft) x 12 / spacing, or use the plant calculator. For containers, give each large crop its own pot, as Module 4's size table does.
- Put tall and trellised crops on the north side. Mark north with a compass. Tall crops north.
- Write each crop's family and group families by bed or section, so next year's plan can move them. Crop families.
Minimum time: about 45 minutes. Done when: the crop plan sheet has one row per crop, with its bed, spacing and plant count.
1. Start from the variety, not the vegetable Understand
By now you know the space (Module 4), the light (Module 2) and what is in the soil (Module 3). This module turns a crop shortlist into a drawn plan: which variety goes in which bed, how far apart, how many plants, and where each plant family sits so that next year's plan can move it. Every number in the plan comes from a named extension publication, and every one of them is a planning convention, not a forecast.
"Tomato" is not a plan. A seed catalog lists dozens of tomatoes, and they differ in the three things that matter most to a plan: how long they take, how big they get, and which diseases they resist. You choose a variety first because the variety sets the spacing, the support and the timing.
Days to maturity
Days to maturity is the number of days a seed company or extension service gives from planting to the first harvest under typical conditions. The number counts from one of two starting points, and the difference matters. Convention Colorado State University Extension's planting guide (GardenNotes #720) marks tomato, pepper, eggplant, broccoli and cabbage figures with a T, meaning the count starts on the day the transplant goes into the garden, not the day the seed was sown. Its tomato figure is 65T: about 65 days from a transplant, plus the five to seven weeks the transplant spent indoors. Bean, carrot and squash figures count from direct seeding.
Treat the number as a comparison between varieties, not as a date. Cornell Cooperative Extension's Rockland County planting guide says days to maturity vary by cultivar and by site and weather from year to year, and tells gardeners to keep track over the season and let experience guide them. A 55-day bean and a 65-day bean sown on the same day in the same bed will usually come in roughly ten days apart; neither number says what date your first bean is ready. Module 6 uses this number in the fall planting formula, and Module 7 shows where it sits on a seed packet.
Disease-resistance codes, F1 and AAS Go deeper
Catalogs end many variety descriptions with a run of capital letters. University of Illinois Extension's "Catalog Code" article explains them: a disease-resistance code is an abbreviation saying the variety was bred to resist, or tolerate, a named disease. Tomato descriptions carry V, F, N and TMV (Verticillium wilt, Fusarium wilt, nematodes, tobacco mosaic virus); cucumbers carry CMV, CVYV, PM and DM (cucumber mosaic virus, cucumber vein yellowing virus, powdery mildew, downy mildew). Illinois notes that some basil varieties now list only intermediate resistance to basil downy mildew, a different strain from the one on cucumbers, and says to read carefully.
| Code | Meaning | Seen on |
|---|---|---|
| V | Verticillium wilt resistance | Tomato |
| F | Fusarium wilt resistance | Tomato |
| N | Nematode resistance | Tomato |
| TMV | Tobacco mosaic virus resistance | Tomato |
| CMV | Cucumber mosaic virus | Cucumber |
| CVYV | Cucumber vein yellowing virus | Cucumber |
| PM | Powdery mildew | Cucumber |
| DM | Downy mildew (a separate strain affects basil) | Cucumber, some basil |
| F1 | First-generation cross of two known parents | Any hybrid variety |
| AAS | All-America Selections: performed well in trials at test sites across the United States | Any crop |
An F1 hybrid is a first-generation cross between two known parent plants. Illinois says an F1 hybrid can outperform either parent in yield or disease resistance, and that almost every improved hybrid carries some level of disease resistance. Heirloom and open-pollinated varieties are bought for character, texture and flavor; Illinois's advice is that a garden with a history of soilborne disease does better with resistant hybrids, because those diseases cannot be treated once a plant has them. Preference Whether an heirloom's flavor is worth that risk is your choice; we make no taste or nutrition claim either way.
Read the code as what it is: resistance to the named diseases, not to every problem. A tomato coded VFN can still get early blight, which is not on the list. Convention An AAS designation means the variety did well in trials at test sites across the country; it does not predict how it does in your bed. Your own records (the harvest log in Module 11) are the only test of that.
Determinate, indeterminate, bush and vine
Size is the second thing a variety sets. Illinois's article defines the two tomato habits. A determinate tomato limits its own size: it grows to a set height, sets its fruit and slows down. An indeterminate tomato keeps growing taller through the season and keeps producing fruit all summer. In a plan, an indeterminate tomato needs a tall stake, cage or trellis and a spot where its height will not shade other crops; a determinate one needs a shorter cage and gives its crop over a shorter window, which some households want for preserving and others do not.
Vine crops have a parallel. Illinois notes that a catalog's bush type label on a cucumber, squash or melon means a compact plant that does not run. Beans come as bush or pole types: bush beans stand on their own; pole beans climb a support. The habit changes the spacing, the support and the plant count, which is why the plan starts here. The University of Missouri's planting calendar (G6201), for example, lists staked tomatoes at 18 inches apart in the row and tomatoes left on the ground at 36 inches.
Spacing and plant counts
Spacing decides how many plants fit, how much light each gets and how much air moves through the leaves. Extension publications give it in one of two forms, and mixing them up is the most common way a first plan goes wrong.
Row spacing
The older form gives two numbers: the distance between plants in a row and the distance between rows. The rows are wide because they were designed for walking or a tiller between them. The University of Missouri's G6201 gives most crops a 24-inch or wider row for hand cultivation and 42 inches or more for a tractor implement; K-State Research and Extension's planting guide (MF315) gives bush beans 3 to 5 inches in the row and 36 inches between rows. In a long in-ground garden with paths between rows, these numbers work as written.
Equidistant spacing
In a raised bed you do not walk between rows, so the between-row space is wasted. Virginia Cooperative Extension's "Intensive Gardening Methods" (426-335) describes the alternative. Equidistant spacing sets every plant the same distance from all its neighbors, so the center of one plant is the same distance from the centers of the plants around it. Virginia says to stagger the rows in beds more than two rows wide, so each plant sits between two in the next row, and gives a table of intensive distances for each crop. The goal, in Virginia's words, is plants spaced so their leaves just touch at maturity, forming a canopy that shades the soil, keeps moisture in and holds weeds down. It also warns against crowding to the point where disease or stunting follows.
Convention Colorado State's GardenNotes #720 gives its spacings the same way, and adds a condition: the closer end of each range is for improved soils with 4 to 5 percent organic matter. A bed of fresh fill with little organic matter is a reason to use the wider number. Colorado State also describes beds or blocks 2 to 4 feet wide with 2-foot walkways between them.
| Crop | Spacing (in) | Crop | Spacing (in) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomato | 18 to 24 | Kale | 15 to 18 |
| Pepper | 12 to 15 | Cabbage | 15 to 18 |
| Eggplant | 18 to 24 | Broccoli | 12 to 18 |
| Potato | 10 to 12 | Radish | 2 to 3 |
| Bush bean | 4 to 6 | Carrot | 2 to 3 |
| Pea | 2 to 4 | Onion | 2 to 4 |
| Lettuce (leaf) | 4 to 6 | Garlic | 5 |
| Spinach | 4 to 6 | Cucumber | 12 to 18 |
| Beet | 2 to 4 | Summer squash | 18 to 24 |
| Sweet corn | 15 to 18 | Winter squash | 24 to 36 |
| Basil | 6 to 12 |
Virginia's table gives head lettuce 10 to 12 inches; the 4 to 6 above is leaf lettuce. Garlic's 5 inches is Illinois Extension's spacing for a stand planted in all directions; basil's range is from the University of Minnesota. The crop guide carries the same figures.
Counting plants per bed
Once you have a spacing, the count is arithmetic. Physical principle On a square grid, each plant gets a square cell as wide as the spacing. A bed holds as many whole cells along its length as fit, times as many as fit across its width:
Plants per bed = floor(length in feet x 12 / spacing in inches) x floor(width in feet x 12 / spacing in inches)
"Floor" means round down, because half a cell holds no plant. For a 4 x 8 ft bed of tomatoes at 24 inches: 8 x 12 = 96 inches, 96 / 24 = 4 cells along the length; 4 x 12 = 48 inches, 48 / 24 = 2 cells across. 4 x 2 = 8 plants, each centered 12 inches from the edges of its cell. The same bed of leaf lettuce at 6 inches holds 16 x 8 = 128 plants. The plant calculator does this for any bed and spacing and shows a 4 x 4 ft square for comparison.
The square grid is a deliberately simple count. Virginia's staggered layout sets alternate rows closer together, because each plant nests between two in the next row, so a large bed can hold somewhat more plants at the same spacing. The calculator does not count that gain. For a small bed of large plants the two layouts often hold the same number; for a bed of small plants at close spacing the staggered layout holds more. Test it If you want the exact staggered count, draw it on graph paper to scale.
Interplanting Go deeper
Virginia's 426-335 defines interplanting as growing two or more crops in the same place at the same time, for example a row of peppers beside a row of onions. To space two different crops next to each other, Virginia adds the two spacings and divides by two: radishes at 2 inches next to beans at 4 inches go 3 inches from the beans. It suggests that beginners alternate rows within a bed, because that is the easiest version to manage, and lists what to weigh: how long each crop grows, how tall it gets, whether it grows above or below ground, its season, and its light, water and nutrient needs.
How much to plant for a household
A plant count says what fits. It does not say what a household eats. For that, several extension services publish amounts per person, and they are useful as long as you read them for what they are: one state's planning conventions for a typical season, given in feet of row or plants.
Convention K-State's MF315 gives an approximate planting per person: 3 to 5 tomato plants, 3 to 5 pepper plants, 15 to 16 feet of row of bush beans, 10 feet of leaf lettuce, 1 to 2 hills of cucumbers. Virginia's planting guide (426-331) gives plants per person per planting, with tomatoes at 2 to 4 and peppers at 3 to 5, and adds that children may need about half the amount an adult does. The University of Missouri's G6201 splits each crop into two columns, fresh use and processing: tomatoes at 3 to 5 plants per person for fresh eating and 5 to 10 for processing, bush snap beans at 10 to 15 feet of row fresh and 20 to 30 for processing.
| Crop | K-State MF315 | Virginia 426-331 (per planting) | Missouri G6201 fresh / processing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomato | 3 to 5 plants | 2 to 4 plants | 3 to 5 / 5 to 10 plants (staked) |
| Pepper | 3 to 5 plants | 3 to 5 plants | 2 to 3 plants |
| Bush bean | 15 to 16 ft of row | 10 plants, up to 4 plantings | 10 to 15 / 20 to 30 ft of row |
| Cucumber | 1 to 2 hills | 2 to 4 plants | 2 to 3 / 3 to 5 hills |
| Sweet corn | 10 to 15 ft of row | 15 to 20 plants | 15 to 25 / 30 to 50 ft of row |
| Winter squash | 1 to 3 hills | 1 to 2 plants | 3 to 5 hills |
The three tables disagree, and the disagreement is informative. Virginia counts per planting and expects some crops to be sown several times; K-State and Missouri give a season's amount. Missouri separates fresh eating from preserving, and the processing column is often double. None of the three says what a "person" eats, how a household feels about zucchini, or how good the season will be. K-State's guide also says that a 100-square-foot garden can produce a good portion of the vegetables for a family of four. We quote that as K-State's statement. It depends on the crops, the season and the gardener, and we do not repeat it as ours.
Row feet do not convert directly to a bed. To compare, use the same publication's own plants-per-row figure where it gives one. K-State lists 30 bush bean plants per 10 feet of row, about 3 per foot, so its 15 to 16 feet per person is roughly 45 to 48 plants per person. That is our arithmetic on K-State's two columns, and it shows why a small bed rarely holds a full "per person" amount of every crop at once. The plan picks; the table only says what a full amount would look like.
The Lindqvists (fictional; their frost dates are invented) want to preserve. Missouri's processing column gives sweet corn at 30 to 50 feet of row per person; for two people that is 60 to 100 feet. At Missouri's 36-inch hand-cultivated row spacing, 60 to 100 feet of row takes about 180 to 300 square feet, a third to a half of their 600-square-foot garden for one crop. Seeing that number before planting is the point: they decide how much of the garden preserving gets, rather than finding out in August. How they preserve is outside this course; for canning and freezing they use the USDA's and their extension service's food preservation guidance, which have safety rules of their own.
Per-person amounts and plant counts are planning conventions from named extension services. Actual harvest varies with weather, variety, spacing, soil and care, and this course does not estimate yield in pounds. The amounts tell you the size of the question; your own harvest log, kept from Module 11 on, answers it for your household. For children, Virginia's "about half" is one service's rule of thumb, not a nutrition guideline.
Tall crops north, trellises and paths
Physical principle In the continental United States the midday sun is always in the southern part of the sky, so a tall plant casts its shadow to the north. Clemson Cooperative Extension's "Planning a Garden" (HGIC 1256) turns that into a planning rule: put tall and trellised crops on the north side of the garden so they do not shade the shorter ones. Convention In a bed, that means tomatoes, trellised cucumbers, pole beans, peas on a fence and sweet corn at the north end, with lettuce, beans, peppers and roots stepping down toward the south.
Shade is not always a loss. Virginia's 426-335, in its section on vertical gardening, warns that a trellis casts a shadow and suggests putting shade-tolerant crops near it to use that shade. Clemson says crops grown for their leaves or roots can grow in partial shade, while fruiting crops such as tomatoes and peppers need full sun, so lettuce is the usual choice for the trellis's shadow. Where summer afternoons are hot, a little afternoon shade on lettuce is something to try and record. Test it
Trellising
Virginia describes vertical gardening as using trellises, nets, strings, cages or poles to hold plants up, and names cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and pole beans as the obvious candidates. A climbing plant uses less ground. Virginia notes that yield per plant may or may not drop, while yield per square foot of ground rises, and that vertical plants are more exposed, so they dry out faster and may need water more often. The faster drying of the leaves is, in Virginia's account, an advantage against fungal disease.
The spacing changes with the support. Colorado State gives cucumbers 6 inches apart when trellised and 24 to 36 inches untrellised; Missouri gives staked tomatoes 18 inches in the row against 36 for tomatoes on the ground. A trellis is a structure. If you rent or garden in a shared plot, a trellis attached to a fence, wall or railing is something to ask about in writing first; Module 4 covers who answers that.
Paths and reach
A plan has to leave room for the gardener. Colorado State's 2-foot walkways between beds, and Clemson's narrow beds of about 3 to 4 feet so you can reach the center without stepping in, are the starting points. Mark on the plan where you stand to harvest each crop. A tomato at the back of a bed against a fence is reachable only from the front; a 4-foot bed against a fence is a 4-foot reach.
Crop families, rotation and companions
A crop family is the botanical family a vegetable belongs to. Plants in one family share many of the same pests and diseases and tend to use soil nutrients in similar ways. Tomato, pepper, eggplant and potato are all in the nightshade family; cucumber and every squash are in the gourd family; cabbage, kale, broccoli and radish are all in the mustard family. The family, not the crop, is what you track.
Crop rotation is moving each family to a different part of the garden each year, so the same family does not return to the same soil for several years. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach explains the reason: many disease organisms live in the soil and can persist there for several years, and growing their host family in the same spot year after year keeps them supplied. Moving the family breaks the cycle by removing the host. Convention Iowa State's guidance is to leave 3 to 4 years, or 5 or more if possible, before a family returns to the same spot. University of Illinois Extension gives the same 3 to 4 years.
| Family (current name) | Older name you may see | Course crops |
|---|---|---|
| Solanaceae (nightshade) | Tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato | |
| Cucurbitaceae (gourd) | Cucumber, summer squash, winter squash | |
| Brassicaceae (mustard) | Cabbage, broccoli, kale, radish | |
| Fabaceae (pea) | Bush bean, pea | |
| Amaranthaceae (amaranth) | Chenopodiaceae (goosefoot) | Beet, spinach |
| Amaryllidaceae (amaryllis) | Alliaceae (onion) | Onion, garlic |
| Apiaceae (carrot) | Carrot | |
| Asteraceae (sunflower) | Lettuce | |
| Poaceae (grass) | Sweet corn | |
| Lamiaceae (mint) | Basil (University of Minnesota) |
Family names change as botanists revise classifications. WSU Extension's Snohomish County rotation article, written in 2015, puts beet and spinach in the goosefoot family (Chenopodiaceae) and onion and garlic in the onion family (Alliaceae); Iowa State's and Illinois's current pages use Amaranthaceae and Amaryllidaceae for the same crops. The crops have not moved; the names have. When two sources disagree on a family name, check whether they list the same crops.
Rotation in a small garden Go deeper
Iowa State says the easiest way to rotate is with separate beds: four raised beds let each family come back to the same bed once every four years. It adds that dividing one in-ground plot into zones works less well, because digging or tilling the whole plot at once mixes soil between zones and carries soilborne problems with it. For gardens too small to rotate properly, it suggests growing the most disease-prone crops in containers, setting up small plots in other sunny spots, or trading with a neighbor who grows different families and switching next year.
WSU says the same 3 to 4 years is hard in small gardens, and that even changing the family in a spot from one year to the next helps. Iowa State adds that weeds and cover crops belong to families too: nightshade weeds host some of the same problems as tomatoes, and a cover crop of oats or rye is in the grass family with sweet corn. Count them when you map families.
Group small families with larger ones. Iowa State suggests that families with only one or two crops in your garden (basil, corn, carrot) fill gaps or share a rotation section with a larger family. What matters is that each section's mix of families changes from year to year, and that you write down what grew where. The rotation sheet holds one row per bed per year for that reason.
Rotation reduces the buildup of some soilborne pests and diseases. It does not prevent every disease: airborne diseases, insects that fly in, and problems carried on seed or transplants arrive regardless of where the family grew last year. Rotation also cannot fix a problem already established in the soil. If a soilborne disease is already present, Module 10 covers identifying it, and the extension diagnostic service is the place that confirms it.
Companion planting Go deeper
Garden books and websites carry long lists of plants that are said to help or harm each other: basil with tomatoes, marigolds against nematodes, onions against carrot pests. Some pairings have research behind them and many do not. Preference This course labels companion advice as preference unless a source shows an effect.
Two parts of the idea do have extension support. Virginia's 426-335 says mixing families in a bed avoids large patches of one pest-preferred crop, which can keep early pest damage within a small area and give you more time to respond. That is an argument about spreading families out, not about any particular pair. Virginia also names allelopathy, where a plant releases compounds that affect nearby plants, and gives sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes as examples of plants with that effect on neighbors. Beyond those, if a pairing pleases you, plant it and record what happens. Test it
Square Foot Gardening
Square Foot Gardening is one practitioner's method, now kept by the Square Foot Gardening Foundation. The foundation's method page describes a 4 x 4 ft box over weed mat or landscape fabric, a lattice laid on top to divide it into squares, and a fill called Mel's Mix of equal volumes of coarse vermiculite, sphagnum peat moss (or coconut coir) and blended compost. Each square holds a set number of plants by crop.
We do not cite per-square plant counts. The foundation's method page does not publish them in its text, and we have not been able to check them against a source we can link. If you use the method, the counts are the foundation's. The course uses Virginia's equidistant spacing instead, and the arithmetic in section 2 gives the equivalent. A 12-inch square at 6-inch spacing holds floor(12 / 6) x floor(12 / 6) = 4 plants; at 4-inch spacing it holds 9; at 3-inch spacing, 16. A crop spaced wider than 12 inches takes more than one square.
Product-specific Mel's Mix is a recipe from one method, not a general rule for filling a bed. Module 4's fill guidance from the University of Maryland and Oregon State is the course's reference for bed fill.
2. See it: two plans, checked See it
Both cases are fictional. Their frost dates and soil results are invented for the examples and are not lookups for any real place.
The Okafor garden: two 4 x 8 ft beds for four eaters. Ada and Chidi Okafor have two new cedar raised beds, 4 x 8 ft and 12 inches deep, filled with 2 parts screened topsoil to 1 part compost over landscape fabric. Their crops are tomato, pepper, bush bean, lettuce, cucumber and basil.
- Known: 64 sq ft in two beds; 7 hours of direct sun measured in May; a maple shades the east bed after 4 pm from July; four eaters, two of them children aged 6 and 9; about 3 hours a week.
- Assumed: the beds' long sides run north to south (from their yard sketch; Ada checks with a phone compass before planting). The fill is new and its organic matter is unknown, so they use the wider end of each spacing range where the number of plants allows.
- Open: whether the maple's afternoon shade cuts the tomato harvest (settled by their own harvest log at season end); whether two beds give enough rotation (settled over several seasons by their rotation sheet and problem log).
Amounts. Virginia's note that children need about half makes the household about 3 adult portions (2 adults + 2 x 0.5). K-State's 3 to 5 tomato plants per person would be 9 to 15 plants; Missouri's fresh-use column is the same. A 4 x 8 bed holds 8 tomatoes at 24 inches. They decide on 4 tomatoes and accept that the table describes more tomatoes than the beds can hold.
East bed (nightshade and mint families). North half, 4 x 4 ft: tomatoes at 24 inches, floor(48 / 24) x floor(48 / 24) = 2 x 2 = 4 plants, staked, at the north end so they shade nothing but the path. South half: a 30-inch strip of peppers at 15 inches, floor(48 / 15) x floor(30 / 15) = 3 x 2 = 6 plants; then an 18-inch strip of basil at 12 inches, floor(48 / 12) x floor(18 / 12) = 4 x 1 = 4 plants. 48 + 30 + 18 = 96 inches, the full bed.
West bed (gourd, pea and sunflower families). North end, an 18-inch strip: a trellis along the north edge with cucumbers at 12 inches (the close end of Virginia's 12 to 18), floor(48 / 12) = 4 plants. Middle, 36 inches: bush beans at 6 inches, floor(48 / 6) x floor(36 / 6) = 8 x 6 = 48 plants. South end, 42 inches: leaf lettuce at 6 inches, floor(48 / 6) x floor(42 / 6) = 8 x 7 = 56 positions, sown in weekly batches (Module 6) rather than all at once. 18 + 36 + 42 = 96 inches.
Check against amounts. 48 bean plants is close to one person's K-State amount (about 45 to 48 plants), not three. They write that down as the expected gap rather than squeezing beans to 4 inches in a new bed. Six peppers sits inside the household's 3 to 5 per person only for one or two people; they accept it.
Rotation. Families are grouped by bed: nightshades and basil east, everything else west. Next year the beds swap. That is a two-year cycle, short of Iowa State's 3 to 4 years. They record it as a known shortfall, and note Iowa State's options for later: tomatoes in a container one year in three, or a third bed. The swap also moves the tomatoes out of the maple's afternoon shade, which turns next year into a comparison for the open question above.
Plot 14: a 10 x 20 ft community plot in clay. Dale Whitcomb and Ruth Asante share an in-ground plot. Their crops: potato, onion, bush bean, winter squash, garlic, kale.
- Known: 200 sq ft, heavy clay, pH 7.4 and lead under 63 ppm from the association's test (fictional); no synthetic pesticides; plots cleared by November 1; Ruth finds kneeling hard.
- Assumed: the plot is dug by hand zone by zone, so soil mixes less between zones than it would under a tiller (Iowa State's concern). This is their assumption; it depends on how carefully they dig.
- Open: what grew in the plot before they had it (settled, if at all, by the garden coordinator's records); whether garlic planted in fall may stay past the November 1 clearing rule (settled by the coordinator, in writing, before they plant it; Module 6 covers garlic timing).
They split the plot into four 10 x 5 ft zones and group families: A, potato (nightshade); B, onion and garlic (amaryllis); C, bush bean and kale (pea and mustard, two small families sharing); D, winter squash (gourd). Winter squash at 36 inches: floor(120 / 36) x floor(60 / 36) = 3 x 1 = 3 plants, which matches K-State's 1 to 3 hills per person for two people only at the low end. Potato at 12 inches would fill zone A with floor(120 / 12) x floor(60 / 12) = 10 x 5 = 50 plants; K-State's 50 to 100 feet of row per person shows why potatoes take so much ground. Each year every family moves one zone, so each returns after four years, inside Iowa State's 3 to 4. Garlic complicates zone B: it goes in during fall and stays until the next summer, so next year's plan must leave B for the onion family until the garlic is out. Ruth works the zones nearest the path, and they write the zone map in the rotation sheet so the cycle survives a lost notebook.
- Virginia Cooperative Extension, Intensive Gardening Methods (426-335): equidistant spacing with a staggered-row illustration, the intensive spacing table, interplanting and vertical gardening.
- Iowa State University, Crop Rotation in the Vegetable Garden: family lists for vegetables, cover crops and weeds, and rotation options for small gardens.
- University of Illinois Extension, Catalog Code: what the letters after a variety name mean, F1, AAS, and determinate versus indeterminate.
- K-State Research and Extension, Vegetable Garden Planting Guide (MF315): amounts per person, row spacing, days to harvest and frost resistance in one PDF table.
3. Practice: draw the bed plan Practice
Minimum: Name varieties, find north, draw each bed, place crops by family and tall crops north, count plants and fill in the crop plan sheet; skip the amounts comparison. Time: about 90 minutes, plus a few minutes outdoors with a compass. Materials: your crop shortlist from Module 1, your bed or container sizes from Module 4, graph paper (or plain paper and a ruler), a pencil, a phone compass, and the seed packets or catalog pages for the varieties you are considering.
- Name a variety for each crop. For each crop on your shortlist, write the variety, its days to maturity and whether that number counts from seed or from transplant, its habit (determinate, indeterminate, bush, pole or vining) and any disease codes. If you have not chosen yet, write two candidates and the difference between them.
- Find north. Stand at each bed with a compass and mark north on your drawing. Note any fence, wall or tree that will shade part of the bed (your Module 2 sun map has this).
- Draw each bed to scale. One graph-paper square per 6 inches works for most beds. Mark paths and the side you reach from.
- Group by family. Write each crop's family next to it (the table in section 5, or the crop guide). Decide which families share a bed or section. Aim for each section's families to change next year.
- Place tall and trellised crops north. Put them on the north edge of the garden or each bed, and the shortest crops to the south. Mark where each trellis or stake goes.
- Count plants. For each section, apply floor(length x 12 / spacing) x floor(width x 12 / spacing), or use the plant calculator. Write the count on the drawing.
- Go deeper Compare with amounts. Multiply one source's per-person figure by your household (children at about half, per Virginia), and write it next to the count. Note the crops where the bed holds fewer or more than the table, and decide whether to change the plan or accept the gap.
- Record it. Enter each crop, variety, bed, family, spacing and plant count in the crop plan sheet, each bed in the beds sheet, and this year's families per bed in the rotation sheet. Photograph or keep the drawing with your garden notebook.
4. Your garden Your garden
5. Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Does every crop on the plan have a named variety, or two named candidates, with days to maturity and its starting point (seed or transplant)?
- Is every spacing traceable to a source, and did you use the wider end where the soil is new or low in organic matter?
- Does each plant count match the formula for the section's actual dimensions, rounded down?
- Is north marked, and are tall and trellised crops on the north side of each bed or the garden?
- Can you name each crop's family, and is the plan arranged so families can move next year?
- Where the plan holds fewer plants than an amount table suggests, did you write down that you chose that, rather than squeezing the spacing?
- Is the plan entered in the garden plan sheets?
Worked example
The Okafor plan meets the criteria. Every count is the formula applied to a measured strip, and the strips add up to the 96-inch bed length. Tall crops (tomatoes, trellised cucumbers) sit at the north end of each bed. Families are grouped by bed, so the swap next year moves every family. The gaps against amount tables are written down as choices: 4 tomatoes against a table's 9 to 15, 48 bean plants against about 135 for three adult portions. One weak point remains: the two-bed rotation is shorter than Iowa State's 3 to 4 years, and the plan says so rather than hiding it. A plan that met every table's amount would not have fit in 64 square feet.
Common mistakes
- Using row spacing in a bed. A 36-inch between-row figure in a 4-ft bed leaves room for one row. If your count looks very low, check whether you used the row spacing instead of the equidistant figure.
- Rounding up. 48 / 15 = 3.2 is 3 plants, not 4. A fourth plant at 15 inches does not fit; it crowds the others.
- Planting the whole lettuce count at once. 56 lettuce positions sown on one day mature together. Module 6 covers sowing in batches.
- Tracking crops instead of families. Moving tomatoes to where the potatoes were is not a rotation; both are nightshades.
- Treating an amount table as a target. The tables describe a full season's eating for one state's typical household. A first garden that grows a smaller amount well has done what it set out to do.
- Forgetting the trellis's shadow. A 6-foot cucumber trellis on the south edge of a bed shades everything behind it.
What is still unresolved
The plan cannot tell you how much you will harvest; your harvest log does that, starting in Module 11. It cannot tell you when to plant each section; Module 6 dates each crop from your frost dates, and lettuce and beans get succession intervals there. Whether your spacing was right for your soil shows only in midsummer, when leaves either touch, crowd or leave bare soil: record what you see in the plan sheet's notes. And a rotation proves itself only over several years of records, which is why Module 12 starts next year's map from this one.