Before you do your home vegetable garden plan

Do you want seasonal salads? Maybe lots of root crops, tons of tomatoes, or a bit of everything? Could be you are a backyard all-you-can-grow spud person, or aspire to rich asparagus beds?
Hello! Earth to gardeners, hold on a mo. Hard as it is not to just get out there and muck around... do yourself a favour and plan your home vegetable garden layout first.
For example, to feed a family of four all year round, you will need to plan a vegetable garden that is about 100 sq meters (1076 sq ft) of growing area, not including paths.
And remember if you live in a cold climate, that will put the kybosh on growing all year round. So you may need to be planning a vegetable garden that is larger than normal and then make preserves.

Before you do your home vegetable garden plan — where do you live?

One of the best vegetable gardening planning tips you should follow is to take into account your climate. Whether it's so hot your trowel melts, or so cold that you stub your toe on a clod of earth, climate can roughly be broken down into three basic categories... cold, temperate and tropical/sub-tropical.
Obviously there are many shades of climate in these categories and only you can determine exactly what fits into the mix depending on where you live. Here's our useful sowing guides for specific information on what vegetables will do well in your area, which is a great help when deciding on your vegetable garden plans.
Once you've decided what to grow and where in your vegetable garden layout, here's a host of links to information on this website to help you further:

• You need to identify a good quality source for your seeds. Order seeds well before your growing season starts, especially if you live in a cold zone with a short growing season.
• No Dig Gardens use organic gardening methods and it's often better to germinate your seeds separately, then plant up as seedlings.
• Use this germination guide to work out what kind of head start to give your plants. If you are planning big plantings of some things, consider staggering seed germination so they don't all mature at the same time.
• If you are living in a cold climate, or even a temperate one, it is worth considering starting seedlings indoors, using a cold frame or greenhouse, if the growing season is short or there is a danger of frost.