9 Tips For Deciding What To Plant In Your Vegetable Garden

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Don’t get overwhelmed when planning your garden! Use these easy steps for deciding what to plant in your vegetable garden and enjoy growing your own food.

It’s that time of year when we are pouring through seed catalogs and everything just seems so tempting to order, doesn’t it?

But if your not careful you can end up with 20 or more types of tomato plants. Yup, I really understand! We’ve over-ordered seeds and bought too many seedlings before too.

As fun as it seems it can actually cause added stress when you’re trying to fit many plants into your garden.

If you are starting your first garden, or starting a garden in a new area you might be feeling unsure of what to plant in your garden.

With these simple garden tips, you can narrow down your list of vegetables to grow and have a successful garden that isn’t overwhelming.

Deciding What To Plant In Your Vegetable Garden

1. What Do You Like To Eat?

The very first thing you should think about when deciding what to plant in your garden is what you like to eat. Make sure you also take into consideration what other people in your family likes, or dislikes too.

Start by thinking about what you often buy from the grocery store. What vegetables do you normally eat each week?

Do you make a lot of salads? What vegetables are your favourite to use in salads? Do you have a favourite type of lettuce?

Start thinking like this and make a list of all the vegetables, fruits and herbs your family loves. Don’t worry if this is a long list you can narrow it down as we move on. You really wouldn’t want your first garden to be to big and overwhelming.

2. What Growing Zone Are You In?

Do you know what growing zone you live in? If you are a new gardener you may not have heard of growing zones before. That’s ok it’s easy to understand, but very important to know.

You can look at this zoning map if you live in the USA or this one if you live in Canada.

Zoning maps beak up areas of the country into numbered groups. The higher the number the warmer your growing season is.

Knowing what your growing zone is will help you to narrow down your list of plants to grow. Not everything you like to eat will be able to grow easily where you live.

For example, I love oranges, but they would never survive our zone 5 winters! We can grow peaches here but it’s a risk because an extra-strong winter like we had in the polar vortex winter a few years ago killed off our peach tree.

But if you are in a really warm growing zone you won’t be able to grow hardneck garlic because it needs a cold spell to start growing (grow softneck garlic in warm areas!), rhubarb would be hard to grow for you too.

Knowing what growing zone you are in is so important when planning your garden.

3. What Is Easily Bought Locally?

It’s a good idea to think about what local produce is easily available to you in grocery stores and farmers markets too.

This is especially important if you are growing a garden in a small space.

You’ll want to make sure you are growing vegetables that you really enjoy and that are harder to find locally or saving you a lot of money.

If carrots are really cheap to buy at your local market but tomatoes are expensive then it could be a better decision to grow more tomato plants instead of lots of carrots.

4. What Vegetables Will Give Me The Best Return?

Think about what vegetables will give you the biggest yields for your time.

Some vegetables like pie pumpkins might be fun to grow but they take all season to produce something you can harvest and eat in the fall.

Since pie pumpkins can also be bought pretty cheap in the fall it might be a better investment to grow other vegetables that mature quickly.

Plants like radishes, turnips, and leafy greens are all fast-growing plants. Planting a few types of lettuce can mean months of harvesting lettuce leaves, while radishes grow so fast you can plant them every few weeks to enjoy all season.

5. How Much Time Do You Have To Garden?

Ok, this is actually a big one. Gardening can take up quite a bit of time.

I love it and wouldn’t want to give up my gardens for anything but to care for them properly is a lot of work.

Putting aside the wedding, and watering that needs to be done think about how much time you will have to harvest and put-up your food.

Some vegetables like carrots can stay in the ground for weeks after they have matured and still be fine to eat. Whereas radishes can split open, get tough tasting and go to seed if left too long.

If you’re growing your first garden or just know it’s going to be a busy season in your life try growing just a few plants that are easy to grow and can stand in the garden for a few days to weeks before they need to be harvested.

6. Do You Want A Fresh Eating Garden Or A Food Preservation Garden?

Knowing what your end goal for having a garden is so important!

We grow our gardens for fresh eating, food preservation and for market gardening and the needs of each are very different.

If you would like to have a kitchen garden so that you have fresh vegetables for your family each week throughout the growing season you’ll want to grow vegetables that produce all season long, or that can be succession planted.

This could include indeterminate tomatoes, slicing cucumbers, pole green beans, lettuce, and herbs.

But if you really want to grow a garden to can your own food to feed your family you’ll want to plan things a little differently.

For canning, you would want vegetables that produce a large harvest in a shorter time.

For example, you might prefer to grow determinant (bush) tomatoes because they set their fruit over a few weeks. This can make having enough tomatoes to make homemade tomato sauce much easier.

For our market garden, we do a mixture of both.

We need produce that is ready to harvest every few days throughout the season. So we love vegetables with a long harvest time like vining tomatoes and a short number of days to harvest like radishes and lettuce.

7. What Growing Conditions Do I Have?

Ok, you already know what growing zone you live in but take a good look at your yard too.

Is it:

• Shady
• Sunny
• What direction does it face?

If your garden area is very shady you might want to skip trying to grow peppers and focus on crops like lettuce, spinach, kale, radishes, and snow peas that will love the cooler shade.

Shade can actually be a benefit in the hot summer growing season and there are many vegetables that grow in shade well.

If your yard gets full sun, then peppers and tomatoes will probably do very well for you.

Knowing the growing conditions in your yard will help you to cross some vegetables off your list.

8. Do You Live In A Drought Prone Area?

Living in an area that doesn’t get a lot of rainfall doesn’t mean you can’t grow a great garden. But you will really want to take watering needs into consideration when planning your garden.

If you live in town you could be dealing with local water restrictions on what days that you can water your garden, or a lawn and garden water ban.

If you have your own well, you’ll still need to know how much water your well can give for watering your gardens.

Some vegetables like cucumbers and zucchini need a lot of water. So if you want to grow these in a dry area make sure to mulch well and follow these tips for watering during a drought.

Then plants like beans adapt well to dry growing conditions. Tomatoes and squash can also do well in dry growing conditions as long as they get enough water early in the season to develop deep roots.

9. Talk To Local Garden Friends

Make sure to reach out to your gardening friends that live in your area too. If they have been gardening for a while they are a great source of information as to what plants grow best in your local growing zone.

If you don’t know anyone who loves to garden then try reaching out to local garden clubs for help. Gardeners are a great bunch and love to help others get started!

I hope that these tips have helped you decide what vegetables to plant in your garden this year!

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