Planning A Vegetable Garden In New England

By Todd Fratzel on Gardening

Garden Vegetables

I just finished building our raised bed vegetable gardens for the coming growing season. So we’ve started trying to plan what vegetables we’ll be growing in the new gardens this summer. My wife and I have a pretty good list going and our 4 yr old son thinks we should grow every vegetable known to man!

Plant Selection

Garden VegetablesWe’ve pretty much settled on the following list of vegetables for our garden:

  • Tomatoes – We bought 3 varieties this weekend which we’ll keep in the window in the garage will the threat of frost passes. I try to buy a small grape tomato, an early tomato and a larger steak type variety.
  • Green Beans – We eat lots of green beans in this house so these are a must.
  • Onions – Sweet onions are a cooking staple for us so we’ll definitely use these when they are ready to harvest.
  • Zucchini – We love to grill zucchini and also roast it in the oven. Zucchini is one of the easiest vegetables to grow and just two plants are more than enough for even the hungriest family.
  • Cucumbers – As far as I’m concerned you can never have enough cucumbers for great fresh salads.
  • Herbs – We’ll probably also grow some basil, cilantro and oregano.

When To Plant Seeds / Seedlings

Here in New England it’s really not safe to plant your vegetables until after Memorial Day. The risk of frost and cold soil temperatures makes it hard to grow your plants much sooner. We typically buy tomato plants that are 6 to 8 inches tall (seedlings) so they already have a good leg up on the growing season.

This spring has been warmer than most so we’ll probably start planting some of our seeds around the second week of May this year. I’ll hold off on the tomato plant seedlings until the end of May just to be safe.

About the author

Todd Fratzel

I'm full time builder for a large construction company in New Hampshire. I run their design-build division that specializes in custom homes, commercial design-build projects and sub-divisions. I'm also a licensed civil and structural engineer with extensive experience in civil and structural design and home construction. My hope is that I can share my experience in the home construction, home improvement and home renovation profession with other builders and home owners. I'm also the Editor-in-Chief and Founder of Tool Box Buzz. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, suggestions or you'd like to inquire about advertising on this site.

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4 Comments

  1. gaiuswey says:

    http://vegetable-garden-design.blogspot.com/ – vegetable garden sites for the home gardener, vegetable garden sites for the small farmer, vegetable garden sites for the produce, seed, and gardening equipment distributor. If you’re into gardening–and vegetable gardening in particular–come see these sites!

  2. Josh at Nashville Mortgage says:

    In 2010 we grew several different kinds of vegetables and herbs in urns on a back porch due of the bad soil quality in our neighborhood. When doing this you need to be sure the containers are large enough for given plants potentiall root growth and you will probably need to water them almost twice as much as the soil tends to dry out.

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