9 Steps to Choosing The Best Vegetable Garden Location

When it comes to choosing your perfect garden location, knowing what you need and what is figureoutable makes a big difference.

Before you get to your garden location, you need to assess what your garden goals are, both right now and in seasons to come.

Right now you may be getting your feet wet with producing a few crops, and your future goals may be to ultimately grow enough food to last your family a year, for many crops. Each has it’s own needs.

• What kind of gardening are you open to doing right now?
• Are you looking at square foot raised beds or in-ground no-till?
• Do you have any physical limitations you need to plan for?  

You can certainly have plans to expand. I don’t know a single person who has kept the garden they first started with, as is. Every year you change things, upsize, downsize, change your style, etc.

Don’t feel like you need to have your ideas set in stone before you start. Having a rough idea of what you think you might like in years to come and what you are willing to handle or tackle this year will make choosing your garden location easier.

RELATED: How to Set Manageable Goals For Your Homestead  

In choosing your perfect garden location, know that sometimes not all of these boxes can be checked easily. That’s ok!

Go ahead and choose the best location based on the majority of this list. The rest you will be able to figure out.

And if you don’t think so, let me tell you about my inherited garden… a full acre, over 100 feet from the house with no water except to string 3 hoses each time I want to water. Oh, and it’s in the middle of a wind tunnel.

It’s figureourable.

And no, I did not create it, it was here when we moved in!

9 Steps To The Best Vegetable Garden Location

1. Sun

You’re looking for an area that gets at least 6 hours minimum of sunlight a day. Most plants love having more than 6, up to 10 hours.

If you’re not sure on what sun your area gets, put stakes where you want your garden to go and then make notes on when the sun is full coverage and when the shadows creep in.

You can do this even in the winter, just remember that the winter sun rises late and sets early.

Now, if your whole selected garden arwa doesn’t get the 6+ hours a day, you will need to alter the size and shape, position, or location to suit.

Although you may be tempted to put your garden up against the house, leave about 10 feet so you get minimal house shadows. This will also help with air flow.

If you live in a heavily wooded area, consider clearing trees if you can, and if you can’t, focus on getting the morning sun. Use the tree trunk, branches and leaves to make  Hugelkultur beds.

2. Water

If you don’t have water, you won’t have a garden. Every season I learn this. If you have to drag a hose(s) around to water each time, you’ll quickly either invest in a better solution, or neglect the garden to grow on rain alone. (Newsflash, it never rains enough when you want it to!)

Choose your location close to a water supply, or where you can easily drape a hose and leave it for the season (preferably covered or buried to keep it cool and not scalding water).

You have have plans for a watering system or self-watering beds but unless those are imminent, choose your location wisely.

3. Good soil

Nice, well-drained nutrient rich soil. A growing plant’s dream!

You probably won’t know off the hop if your soil is good so take a soil test. Most deficiencies can be corrected over time but why not start on a good foot if you can.

There are a few simple soil tests you can do to see what kind is soil you’re working with.

To see if your soil is well-drained, drench the area with water and let it stand for a day. Note: if this is a grassy area you’ll be turning into an in-ground garden, remove the grass in a small area for this test.

The next day, grab a handful of soil and squeeze hard to compress it. If the soil falls apart gently like a delicious brownie, you have good soil. If it crumbles immediately, it’s too sandy.

You can also do the Mason Jar Soil Test. Fill a quart mason jar half with soil, half with water. Shake vigorously and leave it to sit for 24 hours. From the resulting layers you can see your soil composition. Refer to the handy graphic from Gardner’s Edge.

In order to understand the nutrient value of your soil, you can pick up a handy soil test kit from any hardware store.

Before you jump to using any amendments, consider strategically planting crops to improve the soil web makeup, and using natural amendments like compost and aged manure.

4. Well-drained, flat land

Choose a flat area, or one that you can easily make flat. If your area isn’t flat, water will sit in the low spots and starve the roots of oxygen (aka drown the poor things). Too much water creates a haven for disease and mold. On the flip side. The higher areas can experience drought with the water running away from them.

Peaks and values can also cause frost pockets at the beginning and end of the season. Killing tender shoots and not-quite-ready plants.

5. Air

Airflow is another thing to consider when choosing your ideal garden location. Plants need to feel wind but too much can be overkill- literally.

While a gentle breeze helps harden seedlings and keep the mould and mildew away, creating a garden in wind tunnel will damage your plants and strip the moisture from the soil.

If you only have a wind tunnel to plant in, then plant fast growing trees or bushes to protect your garden from the strongest winds. For your first few seasons you will need some kind if a barrier to divert the wind upwards, or minimize it, to protect your crops.

This could be anything from using pallets, or erecting fencing. Many things that can add to your garden as a climbing wall or add a bit of shade for those cooler loving plants.

6. Call Before You Dig

This is especially important if you have a smaller property or are placing your garden between your house and another structure. You don’t want to be hitting any power or water lines if you’re digging up soil, nor covering them if you may need access at some point.

You can find the ‘call before you dig’ number for your local area by going to your city or municipality’s website.

They will come out and let you know what’s where. It’s an easy thing to do and pays off in spades if you find out the spot you’ve been selected is the grand central station for underground powerlines for your house!

7. Convienence

If it’s not easy for you to access and see, you will quickly find yourself forgetting and neglecting your garden. The location should be close to any tools or storage you need, and be accessible for a wheelbarrow or trucks (for soil drop offs if you need).

Ideally, you can easily see it from a frequent window in the house. That way it will call to you to be weeded, watered or picked. Having to trek 100+ft to your garden entrance is not going to make it very appealing so the convenience factor is a must-have.

8. Animals

Hungry wild (or domestic) animals are something to consider when planning out your garden. You don’t want to be attracting all kinds of wildlife with your delicious eats.

While hungry animals will come for a snack if they want to, there are some planning steps you can take to mitigate this.

Keep your garden away from the treeline. And take note of the natural walking path of the animals, like deer. You don’t want to give them a walk-up buffet.

If you do have wild animals roaming your property (especially deer!) keep in mind that you will need to erect some kind of fencing or barrier to keep them out completely.

9. Toxic areas

Don’t plant on a septic field or near any other place you know could be toxic.

As lush as the grass may be on your septic field, it is not a good spot for your garden. Not only is fresh human waste toxic, but root vegetables and bushes can damage the system, causing you tens of thousands of dollars in replacement costs. It’d be really shitty if that happened to you.

Now if you’ve got another area on your property where you know some fool dumped toxic hazard waste, do not use that location either, or anything downhill that will have water runoff in the soil.

Consider excavating the area to remove the toxins. You’ll want to consult a specialist first.

The Best Vegetable Garden Location Awaits

There ya have it! 9 steps to take when selecting your ideal garden location.

Now remember that many of these do have workarounds. The goal is to get as many of them as you can, without having to do any work (ie. Cut down trees).

The only thing that doesn’t have fixit is convienence. If that garden is too far away, passion for growing will only take you so far… especially in the height of summer!

I wanna know…

How has your garden location morphed over time?