PlotToTable · Plan the ground
Plan
Plan the garden before anything goes in the ground: why grow your own, how much to plant, what goes where, and a grow guide for every crop. Get the plan right and everything downstream is easier.
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Why grow your own6The real reasons a home garden pays off: food safety, savings, and control.
Cyclospora is a parasite, not a bacteria, and you cannot wash it off. Nearly every US outbreak comes from store produce. Growing your own removes the main way people catch it.
Romaine and bagged salad get recalled for E. coli almost every year. The cause is contaminated irrigation water you cannot wash off. Growing your own cuts it out.
Cantaloupe, cucumbers, and onions keep triggering Salmonella recalls, some deadly. The cause is contaminated water and surfaces up the supply chain. A garden skips it.
The Dirty Dozen list flags the produce with the most pesticide residue: strawberries, spinach, kale, and more. The clean fix is to grow them yourself and decide what they get sprayed with.
Listeria is the deadliest foodborne germ, it grows in your fridge, and pre-cut produce is its favorite ride. Whole and homegrown food skips the packaging that makes it dangerous.
Grocery prices jumped about 24 percent from 2020 to 2023. Some crops return far more than a seed packet costs. Here are the vegetables that pay you back the most.
Planning & layout21Size the garden, space it, and plan what goes where.
Plan a vegetable garden right in your soil: pick the spot, size the plot, space the rows, and prep the ground. No lumber, no bought soil.
Plan a raised bed that fits your space and your reach. Pick the right width, length, and depth, and know how much soil to buy before you build.
Crowded plants get more disease and grow less. Real spacing for tomatoes, beans, squash, and more, plus the raised-bed trick that lets you plant a little tighter.
Most fruiting vegetables need 6 to 8 hours of direct sun, or they grow leaves and no food. How to measure your sun and what to grow in a shadier spot.
Plant tomatoes in the same spot every year and disease builds up. Crop rotation breaks the cycle. Group crops by family and move them on a 3 to 4 year plan.
New to gardening? Start with crops that are hard to kill and fast to reward. Here are the easiest vegetables to grow, plus what to skip your first year.
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No yard or bad soil is no reason not to grow. A patio or balcony can grow real food in pots if you get the pot size and watering right.
Exact raised bed heights, ergonomic tools, and layouts for gardening without kneeling. Built for bad backs, arthritis, wheelchairs, and older adults.
Grow tomatillos, bok choy, bitter melon, callaloo, and okra in any US zone. Planting dates, short-season varieties, and trusted seed sources.
The best survival garden crops ranked by calories, drought resilience, and storage. Ten staples that feed you when the store shelf is empty.
The best crops for poor soil fix their own nitrogen or mine the subsoil. Grow these 8 in sand, clay, or depleted dirt with little feeding.
The best drought tolerant vegetables and grains that keep producing when water is short. Deep-rooted, heat-loving crops for a dry garden.
The best multi use survival plants earn their space twice. See 9 crops that feed people and animals, fix soil, and save seed.
How to store seeds long term for a survival garden: keep them cool, dark, dry, and sealed, plus a viability chart and a 10-seed germination test.
One square foot fits 36 carrots, 16 bush beans, 4 lettuce, or 1 tomato. Here is the formula, the full chart, and where the grid stops working.
Zones 3, 4, and 5 give you 90 to 130 frost-free days. How to pick fast varieties, start indoors, warm the soil, and still fill a pantry before first frost.
Rent your place? Grow a real vegetable garden with nothing screwed, dug, or left behind. Lease rules, balcony weight, wind, and what moves with you.
Which vegetables grow tall enough to shade the rest, why height depends more on variety than on crop, and where to put the tall ones so they do not cost you a row.
Asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes, horseradish, and sunchokes take years to pay off and then produce for decades. What to plant, how much, and where to put it.
Spacing and pot size for basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro, and parsley, plus why the annual herbs and the perennial ones need completely different planning.
If you have one or two beds, calories per square foot is the only ranking that matters. Here is what to grow, what to cut, and what a single bed really provides.
What grows next to what15Which pairings hold up, which are folklore, and what must not follow a crop.
Most companion planting charts are folklore. Here is what actually holds up, what to ignore, and the four basics that matter far more than any pairing chart.
Which tomato companions have real evidence, which are tradition, and the three neighbors to keep away. Plus what should never follow tomatoes.
Peppers have almost no real enemies. Here is what genuinely helps them, the one plant to keep away, and why peppers should never follow tomatoes.
Cucumber beetles are the whole game. Here are the companions with real evidence behind them, what to keep away, and why cucumbers must not follow squash.
Beans are half of the best-supported companion combo there is. What works, why onions and garlic are the real thing to avoid, and what to plant after.
Lettuce has almost no enemies. What it needs is a taller neighbor casting afternoon shade, which buys weeks before it bolts. Here is how to set that up.
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Onions and beans is the one enemy pairing with a real mechanism. Here is what to plant with onions instead, and why onion ground needs a long rest.
Basil is one of the few crops with no credible enemies. Where it earns its space, what the tomato claim really means, and the one rotation rule.
Cabbage worms are the whole problem. The broccoli companions with real evidence, what to keep away, and why clubroot makes rotation mandatory.
Onions genuinely help carrots, radishes solve the slow-germination problem, and dill is the neighbor to keep away. Plus what should never follow carrots.
Kale gets cabbage worms and heavy aphid colonies. The companions that bring in the insects that eat them, plus the rotation rule that protects the bed.
Potatoes have more real enemies than most crops, including one that is genuinely allelopathic. Here is the list, what works instead, and the rotation rule.
Never plant strawberries where tomatoes or potatoes grew. That rule matters more than any companion chart. Here is why, plus what to plant with them.
Sweet potatoes are not related to potatoes and follow different rules. The vines cover 4 feet of ground, so companion choices are mostly about timing.
Stubby, shriveled zucchini is a pollination problem, not a watering one. Here are the companions that fix it, plus the squash bug trap crop that works.
How much to plant14Match plant counts to what your family actually eats.
For a family of 4: 3 to 6 slicing plants for fresh eating, 9 paste plants for 24 quarts of sauce. Here is how to pick your exact number and skip the glut.
Work backward from jars to plants. How many tomato plants for a year of sauce, how many cucumbers for pickles, and the space each needs.
The honest answer, tier by tier. A salad garden takes 83 sq ft, real self-sufficiency takes acres. Start where the value is and size it exactly.
The question no guide answers: how many tomato plants do I actually need? Rough per-person counts for common crops, plus how to get the exact number for your family.
For a family of 4: about six 4x8 raised beds for fresh summer eating, and twelve to eighteen if you want to preserve a winter's worth. Here is the real math.
Plan on 1 to 2 bell pepper plants per person. Each gives about 4 lb over the season. Here is how to hit your exact number for fresh eating and freezing.
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For summer eating, plan on about 2 to 3 potato plants per person. For a winter storage supply, 8 to 10 per person. Each plant yields about 3 lb.
One zucchini plant feeds a family of 4. Two is plenty. Each gives about 8 lb over the season. Here is why more is the classic beginner mistake.
Salad most nights takes about 4 to 6 lettuce plants per person, but only if you sow a few every 2 weeks instead of all at once. Here is the succession math.
Beans and peas are small per plant, so counts run high: about 10 to 15 bean plants per person to eat, more to preserve. Full numbers for bush beans, pole beans, peas, and edamame.
How much do you get from one plant? A slicing tomato gives about 12 lb, a potato about 3 lb. Here is the yield per plant for common garden crops.
About 2.5 pounds per plant, which is roughly 3 to 5 storage roots. It is one dig at about 110 days, not a steady picking. Here is how to size your row.
Summer squash gives about 8 lb per plant picked over weeks. Winter squash gives about 12 lb at once. Spaghetti and acorn give about 5 squash each.
Dry beans yield about 0.2 lb per plant, so a year of pinto or black beans takes far more row than people expect. Here is the plant count and the honest tradeoff.
Crop grow guides17How to grow each vegetable, seed to harvest.
Tomatoes are the top home crop, but frost, uneven water, and weak support sink beginners. Here is the simple path from transplant to ripe fruit.
Potatoes are cheap to start and store for months. Here is how to plant them in a row or a bag, hill them, and harvest a healthy crop.
Cucumbers grow fast and crop heavy, but cold soil rots the seed and dry spells turn fruit bitter. Five steps to a steady harvest.
Peppers love heat and punish rushing. Set them out too early and they sulk. Here is how to space, water, feed, and harvest bell peppers right.
Zucchini is easy and heavy. One plant can hand a family 8 pounds of fruit. Here is how to sow, space, and pick before it buries you.
Lettuce is a fast cool-season crop, but a big spring sowing all bolts at once. Sow small every 10 days for weeks of salad instead.
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Carrots fork on rocks and rot from fresh manure. Sow them direct in loose soil, keep the seedbed damp, and thin to 2 inches for straight roots.
Green beans are an easy first crop. Bush beans crop fast and all at once, pole beans crop longer up a trellis. Here is how to pick and grow both.
Strawberries are a perennial that pays off in year 2. Here is how to pick a type, space the plants, and keep birds off the ripe fruit.
Onions are cheap to plant and store for months, but the wrong type for your latitude gives small bulbs. Here is the day-length rule and the steps.
Broccoli is a cool-season crop that bolts in heat. Here is how to time it for spring and fall, beat cabbage worms, and keep side shoots coming.
Kale is one of the easiest crops there is. Plant it in spring or fall, pick the outer leaves, and one plant keeps giving for about 16 weeks.
Basil is a warm-season herb that turns bitter the moment it flowers. Pinch it right and one plant feeds your kitchen for about 12 weeks.
Sweet potatoes grow from slips, not seed. Give them a long warm season and one plant returns about 2.5 pounds. Here is the full path from slip to storage.
Peas are the first crop of spring. Sow them 4 to 6 weeks before your last frost, give them a trellis, and pick every 2 to 3 days. Here is how to grow all three types.
Tomatillos need two plants to set fruit, more room than people give them, and picking at the husk stage. Spacing, timing, and yield for a real salsa harvest.
What a tomato plant should look like at each stage from transplant to harvest, roughly 73 days, and which lags are normal versus a real problem.
Keep going
Planting windows, soil, watering, and pest fixes.
Beds, tools, and supports worth buying once.
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