Dreaming of a lush, productive vegetable garden but not sure where to start? You’re in the right place! Planning your garden might seem overwhelming at first, but breaking it down into manageable steps makes the garden planning process simple.
Whether this is your first time gardening or you have a few seasons under your belt, having a clear, actionable plan will help you make the most of your garden space and resources.
Vegetable garden planning is one of my favorite tasks to do in winter when spring is just a dream and the cold and snow seems like it will never end.
I typically take a few days to look through my seed stash and seed catalogues and draw, redraw, and redraw again my garden layouts!
I really enjoy the garden planning process, and I hope that after sharing my process with you, you’ll find it fun, too!
Let’s go through all the garden planning steps below.
5 Easy Steps to Plan Your Dream Vegetable Garden
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In this guide, we’ll walk you through 5 easy steps to plan your vegetable garden:
- Find Your Growing Season
- Figure Out What to Grow
- Design Your Garden
- Schedule Planting Days
- Shop for Seeds and Supplies
As we go through each vegetable garden planning step, I recommend grabbing a planner or calendar, along with a few sheets of blank paper or a notebook, to jot down your thoughts and ideas.
Planning is an ongoing process, and it’s important to keep track of your decisions. Personally, I use a sketchbook and a Google Sheets spreadsheet to plan my garden, and that works really well for me.
However you decide to record your plan is up to you. Do whatever works best for you!
Ok, now let’s make sure your dream garden is set up for success from the start. Ready? Let’s dig in!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you buy through my links, I could earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only discuss products that I love and think you’ll love, too. I’m glad you’re here and thanks for reading!
Garden Planning Step 1: Find Your Growing Season
The biggest question we need to answer before we can start planning our garden is: When can I plant?
It’s important to know when your plants can grow best! Most places have two growing seasons: cool and warm.
To find your growing seasons, we first need to find your last and first frost dates and the high and low temperatures for each month of the year wherever your garden is located.
Finding Your Frost Dates
Let’s find your two frost dates:
- Last Frost Date
- First Frost Date
The last frost date is a date in the spring where, historically, your area will no longer have a hard frost ( below 32°F or 0°C).
Your first frost date is the date in the fall (or late summer for some northernmost zones!) where you could get your first hard frost of the cold season.
In between these two dates is your main growing season!
If you want more guidance on this, you can read this post about knowing when it is safe to plant in your zone.
Right now, google these two crucial dates and write them in your notebook or planner.
We’ll be referring to these dates frequently, so you’ll want to keep them handy as you plan your garden.
Finding Your Cool and Warm Growing Seasons
Next, look up the average high and low temperatures in your area for each month of the year.
I used weatherspark.com search for my town, and they give me a chart of all the temps for each month.
Use the averages to determine whether each month is cold, cool, warm, or hot season.
- Cold Season: below 34°F or 1°C
- Cool Season: 65°–35°F or 18°C–1°C
- Warm Season: 85–65°F or 29°–18° C
- Hot Season above 85°F or 29°C
For example, here are the WeatherSpark temperature averages for my town in Indiana.
Using this information and my own personal experience, I can determine that:
- my cold season is from December to February,
- my cool season is March–May and September–November,
- and my warm season is from June to September.
I don’t have a hot season, although sometimes temperatures get in the mid-90’s F in July!
Record your cold, cool, warm, and hot seasons (if any) in your planner or notebook beside your last and first frost dates.
Garden Planning Step 2: Figure Out What to Grow
Now that we know when our growing seasons are, we can determine what to grow during these seasons!
It’s up to you how to decide what you want to grow. For your first garden, I would recommend choosing a three or four vegetables, herbs, or annual fruits that you and your family eat frequently.
If you’re looking to increase the variety of what you grow, try selecting at least one item from each of these categories:
- greens (spinach, kale, lettuce, bok choy, etc.)
- fruits (tomatoes, peppers, beans, melons, okra, etc.)
- herbs (rosemary, basil, thyme, chives, etc.)
- roots (carrots, potatoes, radishes, beets, rutabagas, garlic, etc.)
- flowers (zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, calendula, sweet alyssum, etc.)
This way you’ll have a good balance of all the different kinds of plants your garden can grow. You can check out my master list of easy vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers to grow in annual vegetable gardens here if you want to see more options.
I’ve also made planting plans for specially themed small vegetable gardens in this post. Take a look if you need some ideas of what you’d like to grow in your garden this year.
You also can take a look at seed catalogues and try new varieties of a vegetable your family already enjoys. For instance, if you like cucumbers, try growing round Lemon cucumbers or white Silver Slicer cucumbers for a change. They both taste like cucumbers, but look a little different than the traditional green ones.
There are a number of online seed companies that offer free seed catalogues, and of course you can browse their websites to find seed varieties right away.
My favorite catalogues are: Botanical Interests, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
There’s plenty of useful growing information in the seed catalogues as well, including a planting chart in the back of the Botanical Interests catalogue.
Once you’re done browsing and dreaming, make a final list of all the vegetables, herbs, and flowers you want to grow in your garden.
Sort Plants by Growing Season
Once you’ve made a list of all the plants you want to grow in your garden this year, sort them by growing season.
Remember when we found your frost dates and growing seasons? Sort your plants by when they grow best: cool, warm, or hot season.
You can refer to my list of plants for annual vegetable gardens here if you need help, or simply google the plant name and add “growing season” to find the information.
Garden Planning Step 3: Design Your Garden
Now we have an idea of when to plant, what to grow, and we just need to know where to put plants and how much to grow!
In this step, we’ll figure out how much space you have and how many plants you can grow in that space.
If you’re planning to build a brand-new garden, you may want to read my post on finding the best location for your garden.
Sketch It Out
Make a rough sketch of your garden space. Include measurements of the garden beds where you’ll be planting.
Looking at your list of plants, decide how to arrange them in your garden beds. Generally, taller plants should go on the north end of a garden and shorter plants on the south end so that they don’t get shaded out.
You may need to create multiple sketches of your garden to show the different layouts for each planting season: cool, warm, and hot.
On your rough sketch, draw and write where you plan on putting each type of plant in your garden.
Here’s an example of how I’ve planned the layout of my 2025 garden.
I’m growing in six 8-foot by 4-foot raised beds with three arch trellises connecting the beds. So each bed has 32 square feet of growing space and with six beds, I have a total of 192 square feet of garden.
Taking my list of plants, I typically start designing my garden by drawing my six beds and determining where I want my plants to be. I don’t worry too much about how many plants I need yet, I’m just trying to pair plants that grow well and look good together and squeeze in everything I want to grow.
This is the rough sketch I started with.
And because this is my favorite part of the garden planning process, I also created a “pretty” version of my rough sketch on Canva. But this part is totally optional!
How Many Plants to Grow
As you can see in the picture of my garden layout, I also listed what varieties I’m growing and showed how many of each plant I can put in each section of my raised beds. This is the next step in designing your dream vegetable garden.
After you’ve done a rough draft of your garden layout, figure out how many plants you can grow in the space you’ve allocated for each type of plant.
You’ll have to do a little bit of research to find the space requirements for each plant you want to have. Most seed packets will have this information on the back, or you can also do a quick search on the Internet for the specific plant variety you have.
On your rough sketch, write how many plants you’ll need for your garden in each season that you’re planning for.
As you plan your ideal number of plants, here are a few considerations to keep in mind.
- Greens like lettuce and spinach, herbs, and fruits (tomatoes, beans, etc.) generally produce multiple harvests throughout the growing season.
- Roots only produce one harvest per plant and will not keep growing once harvested. (i.e. one carrot plant = one carrot to eat or one potato plant = one harvest of multiple tubers)
- Vining crops like cucumbers and pumpkins can be grown vertically on a trellis to save space. Similarly, you can arrange them to spill out of a raised bed to also save space in the raised bed.
- Caging or staking tomatoes also helps to save space.
- How many people will you be feeding from your garden? Make sure you’ve planted enough to feed them all!
- Some crops like lettuce, radishes, and arugula grow very quickly and can be harvested and replanted again in one season. Look at the days to maturity for the crops you want to grow and see if you’ll have enough time in the season to grow the crops again.
Make any changes you need to until you are happy with the number of plants you have and the layout of your garden.
Feel free to make a pretty final draft of your garden layout if you wish!
Are you interested in seeing more planting plans like mine that would also include a seed starting schedule and growing information? If so, sign up for this waiting list to be notified when these detailed resources are available.
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Garden Planning Step 4: Plan Planting Days
You’re nearly finished planning your dream vegetable garden, and step four is planning out your planting days. I find this step to be so helpful to stay organized in the chaos of spring.
Another nice thing about these dates is that they will never change from year to year. So once you’ve done this step, save the planting dates! You can use these same planting dates next year!
Let’s start by planning outdoor planting dates, since you’ve got your frost dates and growing seasons figured out. Here are the dates you will need to find for your garden:
- Cool Season (Spring) = 45 days before your last frost date
- Warm Season = Last Frost Date
- Hot Season (if applicable) = date where average highs are 90°F or 32°C and up
- Cool Season (Fall/Winter) = 60 days before your first frost date
Write these dates in your planner or calendar, or write them on your garden layout sheet.
Remember to check the weather as you get close to these outdoor planting dates and adjust accordingly. You may need to push back planting if the weather is bad.
If you have more than 180 days of warm season, you can squeeze in two warm season planting dates. Divide the season into two 90-day blocks and schedule your second warm season planting date after the first block of 90 days.
Make a note on your calendar to also add compost and/or slow-release granular fertilizer to your garden at the time of planting for each planting date.
Seed Starting Indoors
Once you’ve finalized your outdoor planting dates, it’s time to consider indoor seed starting.
Some plants need to be started indoors to give you a head start on growing them in the garden. These include long season fruiting plants like tomatoes and peppers. I also like to start cool season plants indoors to get the fastest harvest in the spring and also to get seeds to germinate consistently for the fall.
For most plants, you’ll start around 6 weeks before outdoor planting time. Check the back of your seed packet to see exactly how long seeds should be grown before planting out. Write your seed starting dates in your planner or calendar.
Of course, you can always buy started plants at your local nursery, but seed starting will give you the opportunity to plant multiple times in one season and also offer you the widest array of plant types and varieties to grow.
Before you head to the nursery however, read my post on 17 plants to never buy as seedlings!
Lastly, don’t forget to harden off indoor-grown plants before planting them outside. Hardening off is a process of slowly acclimating plants to the harsh conditions of living outdoors. This crucial step takes about 5-7 days. If you skip this step, you could lose the seedlings you spent so much time caring for.
Garlic Planting
The last date you should schedule is garlic planting. Garlic bulbs are typically planted in the fall a few weeks before first frost. You can pre-order garlic online and have it shipped to you in time for fall planting or schedule a day to go to the local nursery in late summer to buy garlic.
I also wrote a post about growing garlic here if you want to know more.
Garden Planning Step 5: Shop for Seeds and Supplies
The final step in garden planning is to shop for seeds and supplies. You made a list of plants to grow and determined how many of each plant you will need in the previous steps.
Now it’s time to buy seeds and other supplies you will need to make your dream vegetable garden is a success this year!
I get most of my seeds online, but I also do a little impulse shopping when I’m shopping in stores as well!
A few of my favorite online seed companies include:
- Botanical Interests
- High Mowing Organic Seeds
- Pinetree Garden Seeds
- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
- Hoss Tools
- Park Seed
You’ll also want to have some good seed starting equipment like these:
- seed starting pots
- seed trays and humidity domes
- grow lights or LED shop lights
- seedling heat mat
- high-quality seed starting mix or light, fluffy potting mix
Lastly, get all the gardening tools you need to succeed throughout the gardening season.
Along with good gardening tools, have a watering system or plan in place. Garden in Minutes is an easy drip irrigation system to set up.
I also like to keep a supply of slow-release all-purpose organic fertilizer like Garden-Tone and a liquid fertilizer like Neptune’s Harvest.
Additionally, it can be helpful to have frost fabric for cool season gardening as well as insect netting to protect your tender plants organically.
I’ve listed more of my favorite garden supplies and recommendations on this page and try to keep it updated as I discover new favorites.
Your Dream Garden Is Just Five Steps Away
And there you have it! With these 5 easy steps, you’re well on your way to creating the vegetable garden of your dreams. We found your growing seasons, picked the perfect plants, scheduled your planting days, and got the supplies you need to have a successful garden.
Planning a garden can seem like a daunting task when you first try to do it, but it does get easier every year. I’m in my fifth year of gardening, and quite honestly, I’m just repeating what I’ve done the past couple years with minor tweaks and adjustments!
Remember, gardening is a journey, not a race—so don’t worry if things aren’t perfect right away. Each season is an opportunity to learn and improve. The more you plan now, the more you’ll enjoy the fruits (and veggies!) of your labor later on.
So grab your planner, start sketching, and get excited! Your dream vegetable garden is within reach, and it all starts with a little planning. Before you know it, you’ll be harvesting fresh, homegrown veggies right from your own backyard.
If you ever feel stuck or need some inspiration, just revisit these steps and adjust as needed. Gardening is flexible, and with a little creativity, you can always make it work.
Happy gardening, and here’s to a season of bountiful harvests and lots of garden fun!