How do I plan a year of growing vegetables?

Sequencing sowings, rotating crops and planning for a spread of harvests rather than one glut.

Difficulty: intermediate
Time: 1 hr 30 min
Read: 2 min

Short answer

Work out your last and first frost dates, then plan backwards from when you want to harvest. Sow small amounts every two or three weeks rather than everything at once — successional sowing is what prevents a glut followed by nothing.

Two things separate a productive plot from a frustrating one: sowing in succession rather than all at once, and rotating crop families so soil problems do not build up. Both are planning decisions made once a year.

What you'll need

Paper or a notebook (optional)
Frost date information (optional)
Seed packets (optional)

Step by step

Find your average last spring frost and first autumn frost.These two dates define your growing season and every sowing decision follows from them. Local data is much more useful than general advice.
Decide what you actually want to eat.Grow what you buy regularly and what tastes noticeably better fresh — salad, herbs, tomatoes, beans. Not what fills a seed catalogue.
Work backwards from harvest to sowing dates.Each packet gives days to maturity. Counting back from when you want it tells you when to sow, which is more useful than following generic month advice.
Sow successionally in small batches.A short row of salad every two weeks rather than a whole packet at once. This is the single most useful habit in vegetable growing.
Rotate crop families between beds each year.Brassicas, legumes, roots, alliums, potatoes. Moving them prevents soil-borne pests and diseases accumulating, and takes advantage of what each leaves behind.
Plan for the gaps.When one crop finishes, something should follow. Fast crops like radish and salad fill gaps between slower ones.
Include something over winter.Garlic, broad beans, overwintering onions and hardy greens all occupy the ground through the quiet months and crop early.
Write down what you did and what happened.Varieties, sowing dates, what worked. Next year's plan then rests on your actual conditions rather than general advice.

Tips

Start smaller than you think. A well-managed small plot produces more than a large neglected one, and it is far more encouraging.
Buy plug plants for anything that needs a long start indoors, if you lack space or light. It is not cheating and it works.
Note your microclimate. A sheltered south-facing spot can be weeks ahead of the same garden's shaded corner.

Common mistakes

Sowing a whole packet at once — Everything is ready in the same fortnight and then there is nothing. Successional sowing spreads the harvest across months.
Growing the same crops in the same place every year — Soil-borne pests and diseases build up. Rotating families between beds prevents most of them.
Following month-based advice from a different climate — Sowing dates depend on your frost dates and soil temperature. Work from those rather than a calendar written for elsewhere.

Questions people ask

What is successional sowing?

Sowing small amounts of the same crop every two or three weeks instead of everything at once, so the harvest is spread over months rather than arriving in a single glut.

Why should I rotate vegetable crops?

Growing the same family in the same soil repeatedly lets specific pests and diseases build up. Moving families between beds each year breaks that cycle.