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Garden Basics

Vegetable Garden Basics

Starting a garden usually means answering three questions at once: where the beds should go, how much room each crop needs, and when to plant. Work through them together and you can get from a blank backyard to a layout and planting schedule that holds up.

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What you'll find here

Plan the beds, the spacing, and the planting dates as one decision.
Settle spacing and access before the beds fill in and you are stuck working around them.
Treat planting dates as a weather question, not a fixed date on the calendar.
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Open the page that matches what you need next

Start with the main question, then move into the guides, fixes, and tool pages that are most likely to help next.

Raised garden beds planted with healthy vegetables under summer netting.
Beginners

Guide

How to Start a Vegetable Garden: 5 Practical Steps

Starting a vegetable garden? Use five beginner steps to choose the site, size the first bed, prepare the soil, and pick manageable crops.

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Vegetables growing across organized raised beds in a backyard garden.
Layout

Guide

Vegetable Garden Layout for Beginners

Plan bed width, crop grouping, and walking space so the garden stays workable once the season gets full and leafy.

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Young green onion plants growing upright in garden soil.
Timing

Guide

When to Plant Onions

Plant onions early enough to use cool spring growth, but not so early that cold stress pushes them into seed-stalk problems.

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Fresh green carrot tops growing thickly in a garden bed.
Timing

Guide

When to Plant Carrots

Plant carrots when the bed is loose and ready, the soil has warmed enough to germinate, and the season still favors steady root growth.

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Fresh green lettuce leaves growing densely in a garden bed.
Timing

Guide

When to Plant Lettuce

Plant lettuce in cool-season windows that favor fast growth, good texture, and less bitterness before summer heat pushes it to bolt.

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Freshly dug potatoes with roots and soil resting on dark garden earth, green foliage behind them.
Timing

Guide

When to Plant Potatoes

Plant seed potatoes about 2 to 4 weeks before your last spring frost, once the soil holds above 45°F and drains well enough that seed pieces sprout instead of rot.

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Runner bean vines with green pods and open orange flowers among large leaves.
Timing

Guide

When to Plant Beans

Sow beans once soil holds above 60°F and frost has passed, then plan the planting so the pods set before the summer heat that shuts flowering down.

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Pea seedlings just up in a dark spring bed, with purple and white flowers and young pods on the bamboo trellis behind them.
Timing

Guide

When to Plant Peas

Sow peas on ground you can work, tell the frost a seedling takes from the frost a flower does not, and count a fall sowing back from your first hard frost.

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Young vegetable seedlings growing through a straw-covered garden bed.
Planning

Guide

Vegetable Planting Calendar by Zone: When Each Crop Goes In

Zone charts stop at the month. This calendar dates seven crops from nineteen half-zones of NOAA station records, then leaves the last check to your soil.

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