Urban Garden Planning Guide for Beginners-How to Easily Create Your City Garden Now

Calling all urban garden newbies! Here we’ll knock out garden planning for beginners with tips to easily create your city garden including but not limited to space/area, sun and shade, types of gardens, seeds, transplants, watering, and more! Grab a cup of joe, tea, or water bottle, and let’s jump in!

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1st Step in Urban Garden Planning

Decide if you’re going to start from seed indoors right now or start with transplants a little later on. I only say this because if you want to start with seeds indoors, you’ll want to work through this article and your planning a tad more aggressively to make sure you get the jump on planting. There’s not a hard date to start by but it takes some prep work, ordering, or shopping, and it’s not as in-your-face when there’s snow on the ground. So make that decision first and then move on to the next most important step!

Frost Dates

Whether you’re starting from seed or purchasing transplants, learning your area’s or zone’s frost dates are very important. There are 13 zones and the average first frost date varies from February through May, so first determine your zone and then your first frost date. Gather a few opinions on that if it seems early or late. Here in the Midwest, my grandma always said between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. I try to get all my plants in between those days. 

Find Your Sunshine

Hopefully, you were able to observe the sunniest areas in your yard last planting season, but if not, don’t sweat it. You can still make a good guess. Most vegetables need 6-8 hours of full sunshine, meaning no trees, fences, or houses are blocking the sun. This could be anywhere in your yard. If it turns out to be on a hill, that’s ok, you can terrace it or put in garden boxes to keep the soil in place. 

Water for Your Urban Garden

This might seem like an obvious task on the list. But if you have a larger yard than the standard city plot, you’ll need to make sure you can get water out to your sunny area. You don’t want to be hauling buckets of water. Measure how many feet of hose it will take to reach your garden or how far your sprinklers can reach. If you have a sprinkler system, easy peasy. If you’re planning a rooftop garden, ask the same question: how will I water it? (Actually, ask your landlord just to be safe.)

However, consider some plants don’t much like sprinklers and prefer soaker hoses to keep from getting leaf mold. In addition to that, if you sow any seeds directly into the ground, you’ll want to water gently at first to keep from washing the seeds away. 

Assess the Area of Your Urban Garden

Along with the previous steps you’ll want to assess the following characteristics of your urban garden area

Size of Space

How much space do you have to plant? Do you have a 30×30 plot? I’m jealous! Or maybe a few 4×4 plots? Perfect! Or maybe you have 10 buckets or containers on your patio? No sweat! Just total up the square footage for later on.  I like to draw out my space on graph paper to help measure in between plants. You can keep it simple, wing it, or nerd out on it. I tried it all. Either way, you end up with a wonderful bounty!

Terrain

As mentioned above, you may be gardening on a hill, on flat lands, or clearing out boulders. You’ll want to take this into consideration when looking at root depth, which plants like wet feet and which don’t, or if other styles of gardening might be better options like containers, hay bales, or vertical. These are also great options if you have trouble kneeling down or bending over.

Find out if you’ll need a tiller, and what size tiller. I made the mistake of using a smaller tiller on a larger plot thinking I wouldn’t be strong enough for a larger tiller. Big mistake! The tiller wasn’t strong enough for my top layer of soil and I ended up extremely sore in my hands and arms that night because I’d tried forcing the tiller and going over the ground multiple times. You can buy or rent or borrow a tiller. If renting or borrowing, get it scheduled ahead of time.

Soil

Right along with terrain, soil quality is important. There are test kits for ph levels if you’re unsure. It’s possible some of your plants will fair well in your soil, but others will need extra plant food, compost, or additives to thrive. And it’s ok to have a few containers lining your garden plot to give those plants precise soil mixtures. 

Pests

Some pests you can’t avoid no matter where you plant your garden. That’s a whole topic of its own. But deer, rabbits, voles, and moles are a different story. Chicken wire, fencing, and gadgets can help out. Plan ahead so that your hard work doesn’t go to their bellies.

Types of Urban Gardens

I list and describe a dozen types of gardens in Creative Ideas to Grow Your Own Food and Promising Benefits but I’ll bullet them here again to give you a snapshot:

Foods you like

• Salsa garden
• Salad Garden
• Italian Garden for Sauces
• Traditional Chinese Garden
• Culinary Herb Garden
• Tea Garden

For You Growing Zone

For Your Space (as mentioned above)

• Rooftop Garden
• Backyard Garden
• Wall or Fence or Vertical Garden
• Container Patio Garden
• Microgreens Inside

Medicinal Garden

Her Garden for Menstruation, Pregnancy, or Menopause

Self-Care Garden for facials, lotions, deodorants, baths/soaks, or hair care

Energetic Garden

First Aid Garden

Gardening for colds, digestive problems, aches & pains, or allergies

Starting Your Urban Garden

Ok, so now you have an idea of what you want to plant and where you’re able to plant it. Now we can get our hands dirty!

Starting Your Urban Garden From Seed

This can be as simple or as complicated as you want. The easiest way to start could be by purchasing a kit from your local hardware or garden store. It will come in a plastic tray with a lid and small round dirt pellets. Total up the number of plants on your list to decide how many pellets you need. Add in extra for multiple plantings that weed out later once you see which seedlings make it. You might prefect to purchase empty trays and fill them with your own soil mixture. Lots of people also recycle containers of all kinds, fill them with potting soil, and plant their seeds. Of course, once, the ground is ready, you can sow directly (see Frost Dates above).

Purchase your seeds separately

This can be the best part! Or at least a respite from the dreary cold days where you dream of flowering plants, juicy tomatoes, and the warm sun on your face…I digress. Do you have a local garden shop with pockets full of seeds?! If not, there are amazing seed catalogs! The hardest part might be sticking to your original list and not going overboard and filling your cart. That’s why we covered all the previous stipulations first.  Readers recommend Bakers Creek and Annie’s Heirloom Seeds

Labeling

Again, you can keep this simple or be quite creative. I’ve seen people label seeds with a plastic spoon sticking out of the dirt or a popsicle stick, and store-bought markers. You can also purchase some really cute garden markers like these. Either way, label the seeds so you’re not guessing what’s sprouting and what’s not. I also draw a graph or diagram on paper just in case a curious child pulls my markers out. 

Add germination dates to your diagram so that you’re also not guessing when sprouts will appear. Some seeds take much longer to germinate than others and I’ve previously thought that plant wasn’t going to grow, but it just starts out later. Notes are a wonderful thing!

Lighting

If you have sun-facing windows, you can line all your seed pots up in front of them. If you’re not sure your windows will let in 6-8 hours of light, you can choose from a variety of grow lights. 

Or simply replace a few light bulbs. 

I haven’t tried these yet, but look very popular, are efficient, and don’t require suspension.

Spread Out Your Planting

You may not want to harvest all your veggies at once. Starting seeds (of the same plant) a week or two apart, or early spring and early fall will give you more than one harvest.

Starting an Urban Garden from Transplants

Ask Your Friends

If you’re planning to start your urban garden from transplants, you can pick up transplants just about anywhere. But since you have created a rather thought-out list, you can ask a friend two things: Do they have any seedlings they are weeding out that are on your list? Do they have a favorite nursery they shop from? This can be online or in person. I prefer in person because I like to look my plants over. But I’ve also ordered online when my local nurseries weren’t carrying what I needed.

Stick to Your List

It’s super easy to walk into a nursery like a kid in a candy store! So I speak from experience. How many times have I  purchased more transplants than I can get into the ground before I burn out on planting (it happens to the best of us) or bought more plants than I have room for? I can’t tell you. Every year I say I won’t do it. I only want what’s on my list. But then I see a plant I’ve never heard of or that I forgot about, and oh, just like puppies, I”m smitten! It’s true, you might find a treasure. Take home one or two, but avoid buyer’s remorse by mostly sticking to the list.

Get Started on Your Urban Garden

So now you can get started on your urban garden! You’ve planned out how you’re going to start your plants, what resources you have available in regards to sunshine and water, assessed the area where you want to plant, decided what type or types of garden(s) you’d like to plant, and gotten a jump on how you’re planting. Isn’t this so exciting!

Keep it simple at first so as to not overwhelm yourself. Start small if you want with a few plants and watch your garden space grow larger each year as you become more experienced. Most importantly, have fun!