Any gardener will tell you that gardening is one of the most absorbing and rewarding occupations you can undertake. Any gardener will also tell you — probably loudly and at length — that gardening requires patience, resilience, hard work, and a lot of planning. Paperwork is probably the last thing you have in mind when you think about growing your own vegetables. More likely you see yourself leaning contently on your spade as all sorts of lush, healthy plants shoot up in front of your eyes. The fact of the matter, though, is that gardening begins not with seeds and a spade but with paper and a pencil.
A successful vegetable garden begins with a well organized plan of your garden space. Drawing a plan
may not sound as exciting as getting outdoors and planting things. But if you don’t spend the necessary
time planning what to grow in your garden and when and where to plant it, you may spend the rest of
the growing season correcting the mistakes you made because you didn’t have a plan. It’s a lot easier to
erase a bed when it’s a few lines on a piece of paper than when it’s an expanse of soil and plants.
Vegetable Garden Encyclopedia
