Use these five simple steps to create a vegetable garden design for easy care that is less labor intensive and still productive without spending hours weeding among the seedlings!
Why should you think about your vegetable garden design before planting?
Thinking of your (and your family's) desires, needs, and goals before planting is the single biggest thing you can do to have a garden that won't become a burden.
I have heard SO many people tell me that they started a garden one time only to give up around mid summer when the weeds and heat became too much.
It doesn't have to be that way - I promise!
In this article I want to give you my five tips for designing a garden for easy care so that you can have success with your garden.
These are the same techniques I have used successfully for years -I want you to find the enjoyment that comes from watching what you've planted grow and then eating the beautiful, organic produce - without frustration or losing hope along the way.
How NOT to Garden (if you want easy care):
My limited experience with gardening growing up involved having to go out and weed the little tilled garden patch we had at our house.
All my sisters and I could see were a sea of weeds, but we were told there were lettuce seedlings in there somewhere. To say I dreaded this is an understatement!
So the thought of growing vegetables in the "traditional" way of tilling a large plot of land and planting in rows just kind of scared me when I thought about growing vegetables in our first house because:
- I'd never used a tiller (and couldn't afford one)
- I didn't want to wait until mid-May or later to plant (I read that you have to wait for the soil to dry out- hello? This is Oregon!)
- and most importantly, I didn't want to deal with the weeds.
If you're like me and would like an easier way to grow your own food, the following five steps are your key to a lower maintenance garden.
5 Steps To A Vegetable Garden Design For Easy Care
1. Use Raised Beds
When I first read in Organic Gardening magazine about raised beds and how they could help lessen weeds and make gardening easier, I knew they were for me!
There are so many reasons to have raised beds - and even if you like to use a tiller, I think everyone should make room on the edges for a couple of raised beds because:
- Root crops like carrots and parsnips grow so much better and are easier to harvest.
- Crops of lettuce and greens can be started earlier, as well as crops like peas.
- They make gardening tasks easier- less bending, easier weeding (when needed), planting, and watering.
- There's no need to weed the permanent paths between the beds of gravel, wood chips or pavers or even clippings or straw you place yearly. The few weeds that may sprout are easy to pull.
- When the beds do need weeding, the soil is loose since it hasn't been compacted with walking so the weeds just pull up easily.
- Using raised beds also makes it easy to use row covers for early crops like cabbage and broccoli and to give summer crops like tomatoes an early start in areas with cooler springs. (You can read more about how to plant tomatoes and get them earlier here.)
In spring before planting, I can weed a 4' x 12' raised bed in 10 to 15 minutes with just hand tools because the soil is looser than traditional tilled gardens.
After that only a few weeds appear the entire remainder of the season, and it's easy to just pull them here and there when I'm out harvesting.
I NEVER have to spend hours weeding the garden after planting.
Have I convinced you yet?
Types of Raised Beds
You can make beds out of untreated wood, cinder blocks, stacked broken concrete, or other stones - or even just raised dirt sides (though they are harder to maintain).
One other benefit for people who will see the beds from their house is that it's easy to make them look nice - even still looking neat and tidy at the end of the season with their permanent sides.
Along with raised beds, you will want to water using soaker hoses or drip systems that water only the plants and only the roots for the most efficient water use and healthiest plants.
2. Sketch Out A Plan
As you can see from my rough sketch above, it doesn't have to be fancy or well-drawn, but it should be as much to scale as possible (each square on the graph paper above equals 2 feet).
Here are the most important things to think about when sketching your plan:
- How much time do you have & how much produce your family needs. My big advice here is to START SMALL. You can always add more later. It took us 3-4 years to fully complete the plan I show above. We started with the 6 long raised beds and added from there.
- What do you want included? Just raised beds for vegetables or do you want to include more permanent things like fruiting trees and shrubs or perennial vegetables like asparagus?
- The direction of the sun. Aligning your beds north-south, for instance, minimizes shadows from rising and setting sun patterns.
Pro Tip: You can use the pages in the free Garden Success Notebook for planning as well as recording!
3. Rotate Your Crops & Keep Track of Successes and Failures
In addition to your overall garden plan, take time each season in your planner to quickly plan your garden crops, rotating them from bed to bed and keeping track of what did well and what you liked (or didn't).
Rotation of crops is a key pillar of organic gardening, since it lessens the chance of losing plants to soil-bourne diseases.
And keeping track of what worked for you means you do not spend time, energy, or money growing something again that you forgot didn't do well for your garden or family's needs.
A simple list of what you planted each year with brief notes is enough.
Rotating crops is easy when you map out what you want to grow in each bed:
It takes about 20 minutes to plan this on paper, copying from the previous year and rotating crops through them each year to lessen disease and group like plants together (i.e., tomatoes in one, broccoli and cabbage in another).
You can read more about how I plan my vegetable garden here.
4. Do Not Use A Tiller
Our previous cottage's garden had four large 9' x 20' beds with edges made from 4"x4" pieces of wood which eventually broke down to just mounded soil edges.
These were nontraditional raised beds since I did have to walk on the soil when planting and harvesting.
I used these larger beds to grow corn wee-free, potatoes, dry beans, squash and pumpkins, plants that do better in shallower, larger plots.
To be honest, I was initially tempted to till them under when we created them from rough pasture, but everything I read about tilling put me off it for good.
Basically, I learned that tilling actually PRODUCES more weeds!
Two things can happen with tilling:
- Weeds that propagate from the smallest root fragment (think dandelion and bindweed) will come back ten-fold after being cut up.
- Dormant weed seeds (that can live for years in the soil!) that need light to germinate will be brought to the surface so they can sprout anew. That's why there always seem to be more weeds after tilling - because there are!
Tilling can also damage the tilth of the soil, especially if it's done too early creating clumps of sod that never break up.
But, what do you do with the large beds that look like this in spring:
I swear, if I thought I had to deal with this, I would run screaming far, far away...to the market to buy produce, ha!
Thankfully the answer is simple and easy:
5. Use Plastic to Kill Weeds
In February or March of each year (I'm up north - adjust for your seasons) cover your larger beds with black plastic, holding it down with rocks, bricks, wood, or whatever you can find.
The plastic + the sun's power will kill all the weeds underneath in the month or two before planting.
Then it's simply a matter of removing the plastic and raking up all the debris. There are usually a few perennial weed roots like dandelion that need to be remove, but not many.
After that, add a layer of compost, rake it smooth, and plant! That's it!
You can read more details of my Easy No-Till Planting Method here and how we've used plastic to kill weeds - as well as the other natural methods we've tried here.
And you want to know the best part?
The beds pictured above never were tilled and never had any herbicides used on them.
How to Create Large Permanent Beds
To create similar beds, place your edging, put large pieces of cardboard over the grass (mowed short) in the size you want and add the edging you'd like on top of the cardboard.
Fill these areas with about 6" of manure and soil (a 1-inch layer of manure topped with purchased soil/compost mix).
Then simply plant in the soil - really. You may have to wait a couple weeks if your manure or compost mix is hot, but you can plant directly into it.
I planted corn the first year in the shallow soil above the cardboard and it grew great, never falling over since the cardboard composted as the season passed.
Using these 5 tips to design a vegetable garden for easy care has meant I absolutely DO NOT spend hours weeding my vegetable beds - and you don't have to, either!
If I could shout it from the rooftops, I would! Since I can't (won't?), I have written a lot more about my low-weeding approach that you can see here (with tips for flower beds, too).
To design a vegetable garden for easy care means you will have some planning up front and a small outlay of money for the beds, but you will save hundreds of hours of weeding and eliminate the wasteful watering of paths that occur in the "traditional" method.
PLUS, you'll be able to grow things on your timetable and not be at the whim of wet or dry spring weather determining when you can till to be able to plant.
Ready to plan your vegetable garden design for easy care?
Check out the rest of the Vegetable Gardening 101 series for more information:
- Get Started Gardening: 10 Basic Steps to Start Your Vegetable Garden
- How to Start Seeds – A Step-by Step Tutorial
- Caring for Your Seedlings at Week 1
- Caring for Your Seedlings at Week 6
- How to Plant Seedlings
- Monthly Checklist of Vegetable Garden Chores
- Planning for a Fall Garden
Within this series, the emphasis is on Easy Gardening.
You'll find the tricks and techniques I've learned to make gardening easier, from the ground up. I wouldn't garden if it involved lots of weeding and digging, so I've adopted ways to garden that minimizes these tasks that I am happy to share with you!
MORE HELPFUL GARDENING TIPS:
- Five Ways to Save Water (and Time) in Your Garden
- 21 Organic Gardening Tips to Make Your Life Easier
- 14 Must Have Tools for Gardening
- Gardening to Save Money - 10 Plants to Grow
This article was originally published in 2009, updated in 2016 and again in 2022.
charise says
Hi, just discovered your site this week and am loving going through all of the info – thank you! Have a question for you:
We moved onto an acre about an hour NW of Portland (OR) last year and this year we put in a large vegetable garden with 14 4'x8' raised beds. We put cardboard down to kill out the grass under the beds, and then purchased a dump truck load of already mixed "garden mix" – a soil/compost/bark blend – from a local compost facility to fill the beds with and planted away. All of our plants have thrived this year in the beds, BUT the weeds in the beds have been absolutely crazy. I'm talking hours of weeding each week. And it's all field bindweed (perennial morning glory), so pulling it is just to stop our plants from being overtaken, not eliminate it. It grows right back from the underground roots that are nearly impossible to fully pull out. If I miss a bed for a week the entire surface of the soil is literally covered in the stuff. So I have been thinking along the lines of doing black plastic covers all winter/early spring in hopes of killing some of it off and am super glad to find that that's an actual proven technique you use and will hopefully help us! However, we do have a large strawberry bed that I assume I can't cover without killing the dormant crowns? Wondering what you would do in that situation... Is it worth digging out all of the crowns and storing them (in a bin of damp sawdust maybe?) for a month or two to cover the bed? Or do you have another solution besides the plastic that you use on your perennial beds? Appreciate any input you might have on that!
Jami says
Oh gosh, that's terrible, Charise - I've never had that experience with raised beds!! Do you have bindweed in your ground that you covered up? If so, I guess the lesson is to kill that stuff first (it's one of my hated weeds - so hard to get rid of!!).
If you don't have it, then it had to be in the soil mix you bought and I'd talk to the company for sure.
Okay, yes, cover them with plastic and leave it on as long as possible. With bindweed, you may even want to turn the soil after a couple months to bring up any new pieces and then cover again. I'm not really sure, but I'd look up if solar heat kills bindweed.
As for the strawberries, yes, I think you need to remove them - you do NOT want their roots to be invaded by the bindweed.
Man, I hope this works for you!!
charise says
Thanks so much for your thorough reply, Jami!
We do have it in other places on our property, but not remotely as aggressively as in the veg garden. But the garden was dense lawn before we covered and planted, plus routinely mowed, so I think all of that was keeping it in check and then open space gave it free reign and the cardboard is not enough to phase it. I also thought it must have come in the soil at first, but since we had to pay a hefty delivery to get it out where we are, we ordered a full dump truck load and still have a sizeable mound of it that we've yet to use on top of a heavy tarp and gravel driveway and no bindweed has sprouted from the soil there.
At your recommendation I did just research whether solarization kills it and found this via WSU: "Soil solarization can suppress field bindweed top growth for as long as 6 weeks. Soil solarization also will reduce the number of seedlings, but field bindweed will not be eradicated totally." Goes on to say that the best course of action is 3-5 years of tilling or pulling every 14 days. So the solarization won't be a permanent fix I guess but I think I'll definitely do it since it's easy and 6 weeks without it sounds like a full lifetime of leisure at this point. Plus maybe it will come back weaker for a while after that, plus after 6 weeks in the beds our vegetables will at least be large and well established to keep putting up with it between weedings. And yes, I will dig out the strawberries too then.
The silver lining is that we only plan to stay here a few more years before buying land even more rurally, and it's a good learning to look for invasives when we begin that search! I'll be the crazy lady crouched down on vacant land plots inspecting the weeds in the lawn before putting in an offer 😀
Jami says
Oh, gosh, that's just a terrible weed to have to deal with - I feel for you!
I had a neighbor when I was just starting to garden on our city lot who only tilled for weeds around his roses on the back fence separating our yards. I had no issue with bindweed before he started, but became overrun with it after. Tilling cuts up the bindweed and it regrows from even a half-inch piece in the ground, so I don't know what they're saying about tilling!! Maybe they think you will then use an herbicide on it? Crazy.
Moxy says
What would you estimate the cost of the lumber or cement blocks, the compost, and manure, the black plastic, and soaker hoses for these simple raised bed gardens...say, one bed, four feet wide and 12 feet long?
Jami says
Gosh, that would be pretty hard because there are so many variables. For instance, in our beds we found the lumber at a recycled building place and the first couple inches of filling was free horse manure (too many weed seeds to be on the top, but it made a good base). We also have a place where we can get a load of garden compost for $20, which I know not everyone has. You may be able to find some things to build your beds on Craigslist or someplace. The soakers are about $12 and black plastic is more expensive. You can also build a raised bed without sides to save money, though there will be a bit more weeding on the sides where you can't plant because they're sloped. Hope that helps you think it through some!
I will be building a new garden from scratch at the house we just moved to, so you may want to subscribe and follow along - I'll try and list costs as we go along, too. 🙂
AndiW says
Great info. Thank you!
Noreen ONeil says
I'm sorry, I'm confusing myself here. I use black landscape cloth for the garden. Not black plastic. I did try to find red plastic mulch, but no luck. So what do I do now?
Jami says
Well, Noreen, you can do it however you want, but landscape fabric and black plastic is expensive, so I wouldn't cover the whole garden. But that's just me. (Oh, and I don't toss the plastic - I keep it in plastic garbage bins (to keep the mice from eating it) in the garden shed) The only reason to plant your vegetables with plastic mulch is to increase the temperature of the soil for warm-weather lovers - it also then keeps the soil evenly moist, but that can be accomplished with any mulch. Like I said, I would use paper and straw for water retention and to keep weeds down, but if you already have the landscape cloth and you like it - just use that. 🙂
Noreen says
How deep do I put the cow manure?
Thanks
Jami says
I'm not sure, Noreen. I just put what I have available, usually a couple inches and then scratch it into the surface. Does that sound doable?
Noreen ONeil says
Very doable and about what I figured.
I am going to do the no till. Lay down the cow manure, scratch it in and plant my plants. And then, I am not going to put anything down and see what happens. No mulch, no hay, no black plastic, not landscape cloth, just cow manure, about 2 inches thick. Maybe a little more.
By the way, I don't use soaker hose. I guess we get enough rain to keep the garden fairly hydrated. Maybe once or twice a summer, I will run my hose over if it's too dry and let it go. I also have rain barrels that help out a lot from time to time.
Many thanks for bearing with me on this.
Noreen
Jami says
That's great if you don't need to irrigate, Noreen! I wouldn't if I didn't have to, either. 🙂 Hope that goes well with you - just know that if you see a lot of weeds sprouting, you can always lay down grass clippings or hay then - there's no time limit, so it's good to experiment so you only need to do what YOUR garden needs!
Noreen ONeil says
Hello, I just have a small patch, probably 20 x 20. I don't think I can do the raised gardens. Not enough space. But I love the no till idea. I have been tilling every spring and then laying down black plastic. I then plant my tomatoes, zuchini, summer squash and tried hart covairs, but they did not do well. a few pepper plants, but no luck with them either.
Then I put mulch over the black plastic because I hate the look of black plastic. Okay, that being said, I am now ready to do no till. What is the best type of compost for me to buy? I have tilled in pnly cow manure in the past. I await your answer.
Many thanks for such a well written and followable article.
Noreen
Jami says
If I only had a 20x20 space, Noreen, I would still add a couple raised beds, either along the side or two at the front or back. Mainly because that's the easiest way to grow root crops like carrots and beets, AND because I can start planting lettuce and spinach a lot earlier. It's up to you and what you want to grow, Noreen. And you can definitely do raised beds that are just mounded soil with the lower paths mulched with straw or something. And that's how I'd do the no-till in an area like yours.
You didn't mention how you watered under the plastic. Do you use soakers? The tomatoes and peppers should've loved the warmth from the plastic - in fact my peppers right now are planted with a black plastic mulch. And I do often add straw over the top of the plastic, it looks better and keeps the sun off it, so it lasts longer.
Sorry - on to your question: Cow manure is fine, as is chicken - both need to be WELL rotted or they will grow weeds. Don't use horse, as they eat so many seed heads that it's near impossible to compost it enough at home to kill them all. I actually find it easiest to buy commercially composted barnyard blend compost - we can get the large amounts we need, it's not too expensive ($20 for a truck full), and it hardly ever grows weeds like home-composted blends. Hope that answers it!
Noreen ONeil says
Thanks for the helping. Can I come back at you? Can I also use landscape cloth rather than black plastic to go over the compost?
I tried to find barnyard compost, but Newport, RI doesn't seem to have any within easy reach. What I plan then, is to put the cow manure, which comes in bags from Home Depot on top of the soil and then place the landscape cloth over the top and start planting. Is that the way to go?
Next year I will do the raised beds.
Jami says
The cow manure from HD is fine, Noreen - that's well rotted and shouldn't produce seeds. I'm sort of confused about the landscape cloth/black plastic question, though. I only use the plastic to kill the weeds, then I lay the compost layer, plant, and use soakers to water only the plants. The only time I use a plastic mulch is for warm-weather-loving plants- tomatoes and peppers. And then it's red plastic mulch for the tomatoes (proven to increase production 20%). You don't have to use it at all. If you're wanting to cover the empty spaces, grass clippings or hay will do great - you can even lay down newspaper under the hay in paths for extra weed protection. Is that what you were wanting the landscape cloth for?
Noreen ONeil says
You're saying that you use the black plastic to kill weeds in the winter months then remove it and toss it.
I usually just plant tomatoes, summer squash, zuchini and peppers. Can I continue to use it. I can't find the red plastic mulch.
I would use the landscape cloth to cover the whole garden. After I put down the cow manure. Is that not a good way to go? Should I just not put any plastic down at all?
michelle lisica says
Where do you get the black plastic?. Love your garden wish I would have known about the tilling
Jami says
Sorry I didn't see this earlier, Michelle!! They sell all different weights of black plastic at home centers (like Home Depot or Lowes). Oh, and it's never to late to stop tilling. 😉
Rachel says
Im getting the gardening grove on in December. Thank you for your wonderful posts.
ashley says
Your huge garden of raised beds is amazing! And a great inspiration! Thanks for all the useful information.
Terese @ www.thecountrybasket.com says
Very good article, very interesting! I've been tilling my traditional garden (http://thecountrybasket.com/my-vegetable-garden-how-i-planted-and-the-results-part-1/), but doing things the way you are describing makes a lot of sense. I am planning on trying the plastic, just gotta find it. Home Depot didn't have it.
Oh, and I think the hose in your garden looks just fine; no need to clean it up, you'll just have to bring it back out again! 😉 It makes it look like an active garden in full use.
Thanks for the information!