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Garden Planning

Start in the Kitchen

Most garden plans start with the soil and hope the kitchen sorts itself out later — we do it backward. Before you measure a single bed, know what you actually want to eat, because that's what should drive the size, sun, and layout decisions below, not the other way around.

As a chef and former produce manager, I've seen too many suburban gardens sized and planted for a harvest nobody ends up using.

Here's how to plan a garden that earns its place at your table, not just in your yard:

Start With Your Plate, Not Your Plot

Before you think about season, spacing, or companion planting, answer one question: what do you actually cook? Not what sounds good to grow, not what's trendy on a seed packet — what ends up on your cutting board every week. That list is your starting point, not an afterthought once the beds are already planned.

This is where a chef's eye and a produce manager's judgment change the outcome. I'll tell you plainly if something isn't worth your space — a crop that eats a full bed for a yield you could buy for two dollars a week at the store isn't a win just because you grew it yourself. The goal isn't a garden that looks productive. It's one that replaces what you'd actually buy, with what you'd actually cook.

Once you know your plate, everything downstream — season, spacing, companion planting, layout — gets easier, because you're no longer designing a garden and hoping it's useful. You're designing a kitchen's supply line.

Measure Your Garden Area

Grab a tape measure and get the real numbers — length and width, no eyeballing it. Sketch what's there: fences, patios, walkways, anything that eats into usable space. Garden's an odd shape? Break it into smaller chunks and measure each one. You can't plan a layout around a guess.

Identify Existing Structures and Obstacles

Walk your space and take stock of what's already fighting for the same sun and soil. Trees and shrubs? They're casting shade and pulling nutrients your vegetables need. Walls, fences, buildings? They reflect heat, block wind, and quietly reshape the microclimate around them. Don't fight these features — use them. Shade-tolerant crops go where the light's thin. Walls become vertical growing space or a heat trap for crops that want it.

Observe Sunlight Patterns

Sunlight is non-negotiable — most vegetables need 6-8 hours of direct sun a day, no exceptions. Spend a full day watching how light moves across your yard. Note what's full sun, what's partial shade, what's shaded out completely. Mark it all on your sketch — this is what decides where each crop actually goes. And don't stop at summer: check your southern exposure, because the sun's angle shifts hard between winter and summer, and a spot that's perfect in July can be shaded out by October.

Evaluate Soil Quality

Soil is where most gardens quietly fail before a single seed goes in. Dig a small hole and check the texture — sandy, clay-heavy, or loamy. Loamy is what you want; anything else needs work. Grab a soil test kit and check pH and nutrients. Most vegetables want it slightly acidic to neutral, 6.0-7.5. Poor soil? Amend it with compost, or skip the fight entirely and build raised beds filled with quality soil from the start.

Drainage matters just as much. Standing water rots roots fast. After the next hard rain, walk the garden and look for puddles — that's poor soil telling you exactly where it'll fail your plants later. Work in organic matter to help water move through, or go raised bed, which drains better by default.

Design a Layout That Serves What You'll Actually Cook

A garden you can't reach easily is a garden you'll stop tending. Design for the person who has to water, weed, and harvest it — not just for how it looks on paper. Work through this before you commit to a layout:

  • Is there a water source nearby, or are you hauling it in?
  • What's your irrigation plan?
  • Enough room to maneuver a wheelbarrow or cart?
  • Are the beds at a height you can actually weed and plant without wrecking your back?
  • Which planting style fits your space and what you're growing?
    • Raised Beds - small spaces, full control over soil quality
    • Row Planting - larger gardens, room to spread out
    • Square Foot Gardening - tight, efficient use of compact space
    • Container Gardening - patios, small footprints
    • Vertical Gardening - makes use of walls and structures you already have

Who Am I ?

I'm Kevin — a software engineer who debugs code for a living and, it turns out, needed to debug my own diet to stay healthy.

Before any of that, I trained as a chef. I learned to cook the way professionals do — reading an ingredient by touch and smell, knowing the difference between produce that's actually good and produce that just looks good on a shelf, building a dish around what's actually in season instead of a recipe card.

Later, I spent years managing produce for a major nationwide grocery chain, which taught me the other side of that same coin — how produce is priced, sourced, and judged for quality at scale, and just how much of what's labeled "organic" or "fresh" is really more marketing than meaning.

Between the two, I learned to tell the difference between food that's actually worth growing and food that's just worth buying.

Garden Planning

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Got a Garden That Isn't Earning Its Keep?

Tell me what you're working with — the space, the mess, the 'why won't this grow' - and I'll tell you honestly what's worth fixing and what's not. No generic advice, just a straight answer from someone who's cooked it, priced it, and grown it.

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