Our Vegetable Garden Layout

When we were planning our very first BIG vegetable garden I searched high and low for a simple vegetable garden layout. I simply wanted vegetable garden layout ideas and advice.

What vegetables should I plant beside each other? What are the easiest vegetables to grow? What are the healthiest vegetables to grow?

Now, with a few years under my belt, and with our brand new house on a much bigger property, we get to do all that planning again! But with a little more experience this time. And I do mean a little. We are very, very far from experts in this vegetable gardening business. But we really love it. So I thought I would share what we do know.

I love growing healthy nourishing food to feed my family for pennies. I love all the learning that comes with that challenge. I love being outside, tending my garden, with my little ones in tow. And I love keeping it all very simple. Including our vegetable garden layout.

We use the book, “The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible” to figure out what should grow where in our garden. As it turns out, some vegetables are happier being next to other vegetables, and some really don’t do well next to each other.

I also like to grow “superfoods”. Those vegetables that are extra nourishing. This year we are doing tomatoes, broccoli, kale, spinach, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins (though our pumpkins are in a second garden).

I thought I would share our simple vegetable garden layout with you. Not because it is perfect, or because we REALLY know our stuff – but because it is the best I have right now. It is simple and it will effectively feed my family of 5 with extra to gift to any visiting friends. These plans will change every year of course, as our knowledge increases and we learn about our new land.

This year we are not doing raised bed gardens. Our soil is excellent, and thanks to our lovely ladies we will have plenty of rich manure. Instead, we are doing a great big rectangle.

In our last house, our garden was 20 feet by 10 feet (and looked like this at the very beginning of the summer)

 

And now on our farm we will be doing a huge 22 foot by 40 foot garden. (It will be here, and as you can see, A LOT of work needs to get done!)

 

The make up of this garden is very much the same as our last, just with more of things, in the hopes that we will do more canning and preserving. We will also have a small garden for corn, one for asparagus, and a pumpkin patch in other areas of our property.

And yes, I fully expect that we will be doing too much too soon, and wind up overwhelmed. That seems to be the way I roll.

For the sake of my sanity, we are splitting that rectangle up. We will be putting in two foot walkways throughout our garden. The 22 foot side will be divided into 4 sections, each 4 feet wide, with 2 foot pathways in between each one.

The 40 foot side will be divided into 3 long 12 foot sections, with 2 foot pathways in between.

This is A LOT of garden for us. And, if all goes as planned, will provide us with a ton of food. We hope it will last us all year, and plan to donate a lot to a local charity John works closely with.

For bug patrol, since we don’t really know what we will be dealing with this year, we will be using lots of marigolds around our tomatoes. We will be adding onion around most of the edges of our garden as well, which worked well for us last season.

We do not yet have a plan for our free ranging chickens. We will either be fencing off our gardens or our ladies.

When you have a look at the garden layout, you will notice a few things. I spelled a few things wrong. Because, well I did. And also, there is no number 7. Because, well there isn’t.

And without further ado, here is our Simple Superfoods Vegetable Garden Layout for the 2015 Canadian growing season!

In case the photo is tricky to read, here are the veggies:

1. carrots

2. potatoes

3. bush beans (green beans grow incredibly well for us, and we re-plant these at least once after our fist crop is harvested)

4. snap peas (these do not grow well for us at all, but we will give them a try in a teepee style this year. They are the kids favourites)

5. swiss chard

6. kale

8. tomatoes (for sauce)

9. tomatoes (cherry and slicing)

10. cucumber

11. lemon cucumber

12. zucchini

13. garlic

14. onions

15. peppers

16. marigolds (these attract spiders, and therefore help keep bugs at bay)

17. spinach

18. asparagus (this is our only hybrid, only because it spreads like crazy otherwise)

19. sweet potatoes

20. broccoli

21. cauliflower

I am so excited about our garden this year. We will be starting a few of our seeds inside in just a few weeks, more for fun than for anything else. But with the short Canadian growing season a few extra weeks certainly can’t hurt.

I will keep you posted in this space about our garden adventures, and what seems to be working best for us. Please leave comments so I can see how your garden is doing as well.

And if you are a gardener yourself, please give me your advice on how our garden is looking! Would love to hear from you. Thank you!

We have a lot to learn, but we are very excited to give it all we’ve got!

Please consider liking us on Facebook so we can share more simple living posts with you! Thank you.