I have always liked math puzzles that are not too hard or too easy. That's probably good because even a moderately sized vegetable garden poses a math challenge when we try to fill it year-round with vegetables in the amounts a household wants and can use. And every year in March, the problem becomes acute.

"What will we plant?" "Where?" and "How much?" are difficult to figure because of doubts such as "If you do, can you still plant okra, basil, eggplants and sweet potatoes come May?" and the sheer number of delicious possibilities.

Annual plants are seasonal. They respond to certain temperatures, so we constantly are planting, harvesting, cleaning out old plants and planting again.

For planting vegetables and other annuals, we now have very detailed and fairly accurate planting schedules, but to get maximum production (and minimum weeds) from our often-small gardens, the gardener needs to quickly replace a decrepit crop with a new one. To do this, we need three other lists (or schedules).

First, we need a square-footage list for favorite vegetables telling how much we would like to grow if we could. This "desirability list" of course depends a lot on tastes and eating patterns. At our house, we always want to grow more cantaloupes and sweet corn than we have room for in our eight raised beds of 1,081 square feet.

Second, we need a square-footage list of what we plan to grow given the size of the garden, and what else will be in it for the next few months. This "feasibility list" will in many cases reflect more of this and less of that. And such a list may lead to a larger garden. This year for example, we decided not to grow strawberries, but have expanded our globe artichoke production.

And third, we need a "vegetable plant compost schedule." This lists the month the plant will be torn out and mulched or composted, thereby creating new planting opportunities.

Together with a rotation plan (see yearroundgardening.me/2013/01/24/a-possible-8-bed-vegetable-garden-rotation-scheme), these lists provide a way to map out what will be in each raised bed in each month of the year.

The easiest way to set up a plan is with a spreadsheet or table. The left column lists the vegetable or other annual to be planted, and the other columns are for each month of the year. I like to have the first month column begin in November because nearly all warm-weather crops finish then, but any month could be the first column as long as you have 12.

The rows of the table are for each raised bed in your garden. So for example, one of our eight beds is 118 square feet and is called "The Gate Bed."

In my table, the November 2012 "Gate Bed" had 70 square feet of spring 2012 planted peppers and eggplants, 10 square feet of multiplying onions and 38 square feet of November 2012 planted lettuce. So in the table, there is a row titled "Gate Bed," and rows under it for each crop to be in the Gate Bed during the 2012-2013 November to October year.

Ten square feet of the chiles remained alive this winter, as did all the lettuce.

In March, we composted dead peppers and eggplants and three-quarters of the lettuce and planted 30 square feet of additional mild chiles. In late March or early April we will plant 78 square feet in tropical pumpkin squash. Those will stay until November.

By creating a plan such as the one I am suggesting, you can use much more effectively whatever garden and gardener resources you have.


Bob Randall, Ph.D., is the retired cofounder of Urban Harvest and is author of "Year Round Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers for Metro-Houston." Contact him at yearroundgardening.me and BobInTheGarden@urbanharvest.org. Urban Harvest produces this column. Learn about gardening classes, community and school gardens, farmers markets, fruit tree sales and more at www.urbanharvest.org.