10 tips for a delicious & productive vegetable garden in the Pacific Northwest

by Lorene Edwards Forkner

1.    Plan and plant for our climate.  Limit warm season crops to just ½ of your available planting space.  Face it – it’s a fact of gardening life that the PNW is perfect for cultivating cool season crops.  Learn to love Kale!!!

2.    Embrace organic gardening principles and mix edibles and ornamentals.  If Rule #1 makes you feel like you don’t have enough space take a closer look at your ornamental planting areas.

3.    Right plant right place.  Group veggies with similar requirements.

4.    Choose varieties wisely.  Shop for locally produced plant starts and seed that has been bred for local conditions.

5.    Master the time/space continuum and know your vegetable’s “days to maturity”. 

Catch Crop: planting fast-maturing vegetables in the space between slower-maturing ones that will later spread.

Double cropping or succession planting: plant another crop as soon as you’ve harvested the previous one to keep your garden in constant production.  This is greatly enhanced by using transplants.

6.    Give preference to continuously bearing vegetables.

7.    Go UP!  Employ trellises, teepees, fences, poles, arbors, etc. to take advantage of the growing space above your beds and add a pleasing vertical element to the garden at the same time.  Plant tall crops such as corn or sunflowers on the north end of the garden so they don’t shade

8.    Always include herbs and perennial food plants.

9.    When all else fails – look for “Found” garden space.  Pocket of soil by the alley, an unused parking space, parking strip, p patch, garden share, neighbors, divide and conquer.

10.  Wherever you garden harvest daily to maximize your garden’s production and not waste food.