Vegetable gardening guides
Straight answers to the questions gardeners actually ask about spacing, timing, companions and rotation, each ending with how to turn the answer into a real planting plan.
How to plan a vegetable garden layout
Most failed vegetable gardens were lost in March, on paper. Here is the order to make the decisions in, and the four mistakes that cost people a harvest before they plant anything.
Read the guideSquare foot gardening spacing chart
Square foot gardening reduces all vegetable spacing to four numbers: 1, 4, 9 or 16 plants per square. Here is the full chart, the logic behind it, and the crops that break the rule.
Read the guideWhat to plant with tomatoes
Basil next to tomatoes is the most repeated advice in gardening. Some of it holds up, some of it does not. Here is which companions earn their square, and why.
Read the guideWhat not to plant together
Most bad-neighbour charts are folklore copied between websites since the 1970s. Roughly a dozen pairings genuinely cost you yield. These are those, with the mechanism for each.
Read the guideWhen to plant vegetables in your zone
Zone 5 and zone 8 are six weeks apart in April. Any planting advice that names a month instead of a frost date is wrong for most of the people reading it.
Read the guide4×8 raised bed garden layout plans
A 4×8 bed is thirty-two squares. Here is exactly what to put in each of them, in three plans for three different goals.
Read the guideCrop rotation plan for a vegetable garden
Rotation is not about crops, it is about families. Radishes are brassicas, tomatoes and potatoes are the same family, and alliums need longer off than anything else in the garden.
Read the guideWhen to start seeds indoors
Every indoor sowing date is one subtraction from your last frost date. Get the number of weeks wrong and you get leggy, root-bound seedlings that never catch up.
Read the guideA beginner's vegetable garden plan
First gardens fail for four predictable reasons, none of which are difficulty. Here is a first-season plan built to avoid all four.
Read the guideSmall backyard vegetable garden layouts
A small garden does not need a smaller plan. It needs a denser one: vertical, intensive and worked three times a season instead of once.
Read the guideCompanion planting chart for vegetables
Here is the chart. But a chart tells you about pairs, and a bed is a two-dimensional arrangement, which is why most people read one and plant nothing differently.
Read the guideKeeping a garden journal (and the app that does it)
The difference between a second-year gardener and a first-year gardener repeating themselves is a written record. Here is what is worth recording, and what is not.
Read the guideGarden planner apps that work offline
Gardens are outdoors, often at the end of a long garden or on an allotment with one bar of signal. Most garden planners are websites, and websites do not work there.
Read the guideUSDA hardiness zones explained
Your hardiness zone answers exactly one question: how cold does it get here in an average winter. It is the most quoted number in gardening and the most misread.
Read the guideBest garden planner apps for iPhone in 2026
Five apps worth your time, what each actually costs, and the one question that decides between them: do you need your plan in the garden, or at a desk?
Read the guide
Every guide ends in the same place: a plan.
Niwa turns spacing charts, frost dates and companion tables into a garden layout you can actually plant. Free on iPhone, works offline.
Download Niwa free Free on the App Store · iOS 18+ · Works fully offline · No tracking