Garden Plant Planner: One Line per Crop

What a garden plant planner line holds

A garden plant planner works one crop at a time. Each crop gets one line, and each line answers five questions.

How far apart do the plants grow? How many fit in the space you have? When do they go in? When do you pick? How much will you get?

The line above is bush beans. The spacing, count and yield come from two extension tables, and the dates come from a sample sowing day you replace with your own. The next sections show where each number comes from.

Every crop on your list takes up room, and the room is the first thing a plan has to count.

Spacing: turn inches into a plant count

Start with the space, because space is the limit you cannot negotiate. A 4 by 8 foot bed is 32 square feet.

A Cornell Cooperative Extension table from 2017 lists the inches between rows and the inches between plants for each vegetable. Multiply the two and divide by 144 to get the square feet one plant needs. Divide 32 by that and you have a plant count.

The spacing figures are Cornell's. The last two columns are arithmetic on those figures. For example, 48 by 18 is 864 square inches, which is 6 square feet, and 32 divided by 6 is 5.3. The count ignores paths and edges, so round down.

You can also work backward from the eaters. A Kansas State University guide lists an approximate planting per person: 3 to 5 tomato plants, 5 to 10 feet of carrots and 15 to 16 feet of bush beans. Write that number first, then check it against your bed.

Dates: count forward from sowing day

Every line needs a date, and the date needs a starting point. For seeded crops the starting point is the day you sow.

The same Kansas State guide, revised in February 2023, gives days to first harvest. Bush beans take 50 to 60 days. Carrots take 54 to 80 days. Add those to your sowing day and you have a harvest window.

Sow bush beans on May 10 and the window runs from June 29 to July 9. Sow carrots on April 20 and it runs from June 13 to July 9. Those sowing days are examples. Your own come from your last frost date.

Tomatoes need a different rule. The Kansas State table puts its tomato figures in brackets, and a note says brackets mean seed started indoors, with 4 to 8 weeks to allow. Write on the line whether you count from seed or from a transplant.

For indoor starts, count back from your last frost. A University of New Hampshire Extension post gives six to eight weeks before the last frost as the window for starting tomato seeds indoors. Picture a May 8 last frost: that window opens March 13 and closes March 27.

Yield: write a range, because guides disagree

Yield is the number gardeners trust least, and the tables show why. Two extension guides give different amounts for the same row.

Beans, carrots and beets differ by a few pounds. Tomatoes differ by a factor of seven at the low end. The two tables describe different gardens and different tomatoes, so neither is wrong. Your own soil, variety and summer decide.

Put a low and a high figure on every line. For tomatoes that means 10 pounds and 70 pounds per 10 feet until your own harvest says otherwise.

Choose crops for your climate and your table

Climate decides the crop's frost tolerance and the window. The Kansas State guide gives every crop a frost-resistance label, and peas are hardy, bush beans tender and cucumbers very tender. It also says its planting windows may need to move earlier or later with weather, variety and location. Put the label on each line and sort the lines by it, so tender crops wait until after your last frost.

Appetite decides the amount. Keep only crops your household eats, and use the per-person figures above to size each line.

Fill the sheet for your own crops

Pick five crops you actually eat. Fill one line each from the tables above or from your own state's extension publication. Then check the total plant count against your square feet.

Use pencil. The first plan is a draft, and the planned and actual boxes exist so that you can correct it.

Mid-season fixes go on the same line. If plants come up crowded, thin them to the line's spacing, because the University of Maryland says failure to thin seedlings will stunt plant growth and reduce the harvest. If a crop ends early, a University of Maryland page describes succession planting as planting seeds or transplants in spots vacated by spent plants. Add a new line for the replacement and write its sowing day.

If you would rather not look up the numbers yourself, The Garden Year bundle has a master chart of 41 crops already filled in, with a harvest record beside it.

What a plant sheet cannot show, and when to skip it

A plant sheet tells you how many and when. It does not show where, so you also need a map of your beds drawn to scale.

You may not need to buy anything. If your county extension office publishes a planting calendar that fits your garden, copy its dates onto your own sheet and stop there. If you grow a few tomatoes in pots, a sticky note holds the plan. Free extension tables also hold the spacing and yield numbers used above.

The kits suit gardeners who want the lines, the maps and the harvest record in one file. In winter you read the Winter Plan's 41-crop master chart and fill the grow list. At each sowing you use the Season Record's planting log, and at each picking its harvest tally. In fall, its yield-against-plan page compares pounds with your low and high guesses, and The Garden Year bundle holds both kits.