For years I planted my vegetable garden with little thought of preparing a plan. That worked fine when I had two 4’x4’ beds and only grew tomatoes and cucumbers. As the size of my garden expanded to 400 square feet, I realized that planning would not only be beneficial but was needed. In my first attempt at planning, I started the planning process when I transplanted seedlings in the garden. While that was better than nothing, I quickly realized that I needed to start planning well ahead of the transplant date. I developed the process below by speaking with and listening to farmers/gardeners and based upon my own trial and error. Planning will make you feel more confident and make your garden more manageable. Let me share my process.
Define your garden layout and the size of each bed. In the picture above, you see a drawing of my garden. I first drew this on graph paper and then drew in Microsoft Excel. Graph paper is great because each square can represent one square-foot which makes it relatively easy to layout a garden. Considerations for this step:
Define what you will grow and where it will be placed in the garden. In the picture above, I have defined what I will be planting and in which bed each plant will be located.
If you have seeds, organize and take inventory of what you have and the age of your seeds. Seeds vary in how long they can be stored. As seeds age, their germination rate will decline. When storing seeds, keep in a cool/dry location. I keep mine in the refrigerator. Colorado State University has put the following fact sheet together on seed storage. Oregon State University has a method for testing seed germination that you can read about at the following link.
Define where in your garden each vegetable/herb/flower will be grown. This is important because it enables you to calculate how much of each vegetable/herb/flower you will be able to grow based upon the size of the bed. For spacing requirements of popular vegetables, see my blog on Five Steps to Starting Your Vegetable Garden. For example, tomatoes take a lot of space. In my garden plan, I have two 4’x8’ beds for tomatoes. My plan is to plant three tomato plants in each bed because of the space requirements for tomatoes. I will also complement the tomatoes with planting basil in bed 1 and dill in bed 2. When companion planting (e.g. planting tomatoes with basil) it is important to understand the basics of companion planting.The University of Delaware has a good overview of companion planting.
Gardener’s Supply Company has a free ‘Kitchen Garden Planner’ based upon square foot gardening techniques that can be useful. I will use the tool when I have no prior experience with a vegetable. Their tool is aggressive in defining how much can be planted in a square foot. I will generally reduce, by up to 50%, what is stated in their tool based upon my own experience. Experience is the best teacher.
Create your plan. Once you know how many beds you will have, the size of each bed and what you will grow, you can put a crop master plan together. I start all my plants from seed and plan based upon four phases listed below. If you purchase transplants, then you can still use this plan but will only have two phases (Transplanting and Harvesting).
Let me share another tool that I have found helpful. The Farmer’s Almanac planting calendar allows you to enter your zip code and provides recommendations for when to start seedlings (by vegetable) and when to transplant. Guidance is based upon estimated frost dates for your USDA Zone as determined by zip code. There is also an option to print out the calendar. Prior to getting into planning, I would start seedlings all at the same time and generally much too early. Now I have good target dates for everything I grow based upon experience and the tools that I mentioned.
I created the Crop Master Plan above and have attached a copy in both Excel and pdf. I originally created this in Microsoft Excel because of two key Excel features, the ability of Excel to automatically calculate dates and the ‘pivot table’ feature of Excel to create different views of the information. While the information is still useful if you do not use Excel, the layout is optimized for Excel. I will describe the crop master plan and then describe what you can do if you have Excel available.
Master Planning Sheet Description by column name:
By using Excel, the following is possible
Weekly planning by phase and by crop. This view (pivot table) displays exactly which seedlings need to be started in any given week, what needs to move outside for hardening off, what needs to be transplanted and what is ready for harvest. By looking at the weekly calendar, I see that March 17 is a date when I will be starting 11 seedlings and looking down the column I see exactly what needs to get started. The pivot table also allows for filtering on a date range. This is helpful to look at 4-8 weeks at a glance. Note, that this view was automatically created based upon the Crop Master Plan discussed above.
Summary by category calculates exactly how many plants of each category (e.g. flowers, herbs, vegetables) will be available for the season. This schedule can also be used to cross check that you have enough seeds (or transplants) based upon the crop master plan. For example, when I ran this summary, I saw that I had planned for 384 radishes during the season (multiple successions). When I checked my seed inventory, I found that I did not have enough seeds and had to purchase additional. Again, this view was automatically created based upon the Crop Master Plan.
The key is the Crop Master Plan. If you complete this, then you can manually calculate the rest, Excel just makes it easier. I have attached a pdf version and the excel version (created using Microsoft Excel for Office 365, 32 bit). Good luck!
Download PDF Download EXCEL 
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