Planning the Spring Edible Garden

Before you dig in—before you sketch out your garden beds, before you even think about ordering seeds—there are a few things worth sorting out first. A little planning goes a long way when you're starting a spring edible garden.

Time: Life outside the garden shifts from year to year, so take a hard, honest look at how much time you can really devote to planting, tending, and picking. Overcommitting is the quickest path to a neglected garden—or worse, a bumper crop you can't find time to harvest. I've been there, and watching good food go to waste in the garden is heartbreaking.

What do you really eat? It's dangerously easy to stroll through the produce section and imagine everything growing in your own backyard. Turnips, potatoes, carrots, chard, berries—and the lettuce varieties alone could fill a catalog! Sure, it all looks delicious, and you probably could grow it all, but would you actually eat it all? Do yourself a favor and make three lists: what you eat regularly, what you eat occasionally, and what you rarely touch. Use those lists to guide your planting. Toss in one or two new things to stretch your kitchen repertoire, but stay modest. Grow what you can eat or share—waste not.

Space: Now that you've got a realistic plant list, look at the space you're working with. Here's my best advice: during those cold, dark winter days, sit down and draw your garden to scale. Estimating from memory how much room you have never works—trust me on this one. I've squeezed way too many plants into too little space more times than I care to admit.

Growing Indoors: Your window ledges—no matter how sunny and roomy—probably won't cut it for all the seedlings you're starting. If you want sturdy, healthy transplants year after year, bite the bullet and invest in grow lights and a shelving setup. Yes, it costs a bit upfront, but those lights and that rack will serve you for years, and your plants will repay you with strong, stocky growth instead of leggy, stretched-out seedlings reaching for the window.