How to plan a vegetable garden in four steps
- Draw your beds. Start with a 4 × 8 ft raised bed or set any size up to 24 × 24 ft. Every square on the grid is one square foot.
- Pick a plant and paint it in. Click a square, or drag across a row to plant several at once. The planner fits the right number into each square: one tomato, four lettuces, sixteen carrots.
- Check the neighbors. Red marks show pairs worth separating. Click a plant to see what grows well beside it, and why.
- Get your dates and print. Type your ZIP code in the Calendar tab for sowing and planting dates, then download a PDF of the plan and calendar.
Square-foot spacing, done for you
Square-foot gardening divides a bed into a grid of one-foot squares and plants each square at a fixed density instead of in long rows. It packs more food into a small raised bed and makes planning simple arithmetic. The planner uses those densities for all 55 of its plants and keeps a running plant list, so you know how many seedlings to grow or buy.
Climbing crops such as cucumbers, pole beans and peas use the square-foot numbers only when they grow up a trellis, so put them along the north edge of a bed where they won’t shade everything else.
Companion planting, graded honestly
Most companion planting charts repeat old garden lore as if it were proven. We grade every pairing: research-backed (for example radish as a flea beetle trap crop beside cabbage), mixed (works in some studies but not others), practical (light, space, timing or a shared disease, such as tomatoes and potatoes both getting blight) or tradition only. Browse them all in the companion planting chart.
Planting dates from your ZIP code
Hardiness zones describe winter cold, not when spring frost ends, which is why zone-based planting tables often disagree by weeks. The planner uses the average last spring and first fall frost for the nearest of over 7,000 NOAA weather stations to your ZIP code, then counts weeks before and after for each crop. Look up yours on the frost dates page or see a full planting calendar.
Raised bed layout ideas
- Tall at the back. Trellised crops and tomatoes along the north side; low greens and roots at the south edge so nothing is shaded.
- Mix families. Spreading each family across beds slows pests that specialize, like cabbage worms and cucumber beetles.
- Flowers in the corners. Calendula, zinnias and dill draw hoverflies and parasitic wasps that eat aphids and caterpillars.
- Fill gaps with quick crops. Radishes and lettuce are harvested before slower neighbors need the room.