Planning and Designing Your Garden

Planning your garden before you begin planting offers many benefits! It allows you to place more accurate seed orders, ensures you have enough space for everything you want to plant, and helps estimate the materials you'll need. Additionally, it can help identify issues that may have impacted your yield so quick adjustments can be made for a more successful harvest in the next season. In this blog, we will cover some main points to consider when planning and designing your garden.  

Choosing Your Garden Location

Know Your Grow Zone

Knowing your grow zone is a key piece in planning for a garden's location. A grow zone refers to a geographical area where certain plants can grow based on the average lowest temperature during the winter.

Knowing your zone can help you decide when you want to start planting, how often you need to water, give you an idea of what plants will and will not survive the winter, and much more. Click here to learn more about grow zones! 

Site Selection

When choosing where your garden goes, you should be thinking less how about pretty it will be and more about how to maximize sunlight and precipitation. While where it goes for cosmetic purposes is important, you may accidentally short yourself in other areas if you aren’t careful.

Pepper plants typically require 6 to 8 hours of full sun per day growing best in a sunny location with well-drained soil. We recommend choosing a well-lit spot in a slightly higher section of ground to provide easy drainage. Though a consistent amount of precipitation is ideal, you will also want to have equally consistent drainage. Waterlogging your soil can stunt plant growth and eventually affect the overall PH levels of your soil.  

Maximizing Sunlight

There is only so much sunlight in one day so how do you make sure all your plants get the amount they need? Similarly to choosing a good spot to plant your garden, choosing where to plant specific plants is just as important.

Once you figure out where in the yard your garden will go, make note of what direction receives the most sunlight (North, East, South, West). Knowing this will help you plant accordingly.

Plants with the shortest full growth height should be positioned where there is the most direct sunlight. This will help prevent unwanted shadows from being cast on the plants at the back of a garden bed. Thus, maximizing sunlight to all the plants. This approach will also maximize air/wind flow. Hot pepper plants love plenty of sunshine and fresh air. For more information on how much sunlight pepper plants need, check out this blog.

Plant Maturity Timeline

Another key factor to consider is determining the maturity dates of different plants that you would want to cook and eat together. For example, if you wanted to cook the dish "Spicy Zucchini and Potatoes, you would want the zucchini, hot peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and bell peppers maturing approximately at the same time.  

Planning for Companion Plants

Bugs can cause a lot of damage to pepper plants in a very short amount of time if not properly dealt with. You can prevent some common bugs with companion planting.

Companion planting is a is a gardening practice where you grow different plants near, around, or in the same area as your pepper plants. This method helps your plants grow healthier, provides protection from pests, and produces higher yields. Each companion plant has its own strengths that can be beneficial to your garden needs. 

Common Companion Plants Include:

• Basil
• Cilantro
• Onions
• Rosemary
• Carrots
• Parsely
• Chamomile
• Thyme
• Dill 
• Tomatoes

Planting in Garden Beds

If you don’t want to plant straight into the dirt, there are a few routes you can take. The most common are raised garden beds, known for helping drainage. Raised garden beds also allow extra space for compost, mulch, and other soil additives. If you live somewhere that has a lot of clay in the sand, a raised garden bed might be more appealing to you. This would allow you to control the soil, additives, and proper drainage in an otherwise difficult soil type to grow in.

With all the pros that raised garden beds come with, there are things you should be mindful of when using these. For instance, because they offer good drainage if they don’t receive consistent precipitation, they can dry out easily and the materials you put into the beds need maintenance. There is no correct answer for what garden bed you should use. Build depending on your area, dedication, seed type, and soil type.  

Common Garden Bed Options:

• Flat Beds - are known for being able to hold water well and for using space efficiently.
• Sunken beds - allow the plants to have some protection from wind until they are strong enough to endure it. 
• Ridges and furrows - work well for those who farm commercially and need to use dedicated equipment to plow and till. 

Composting for Garden Beds