Sun & Plant Placement

“Full sun” means at least 6 hours of direct sunlight a day, and most vegetables want it. The fruiting crops — tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, melons, beans — are the hungriest, doing best with 8 or more hours, because making fruit is the most energy-expensive thing a plant does.

Fall short and those plants get leggy and pale, flower poorly, and give you a thin harvest. If your sunniest spot only manages 6 hours, grow fruiting crops there and put everything else around them.

Not every crop demands full sun. Leafy greens — lettuce, spinach, chard, kale — and many herbs produce well in partial shade (roughly 3–6 hours of sun, ideally morning). You’re harvesting leaves, not fruit, so they need less energy.

Root crops like radishes, carrots, and beets fall in between — they’ll take a bit of shade but size up best with more sun. A fast grower like radishes is a great way to test a shadier spot before committing a whole bed to it.

Sunlight isn’t the same across your yard, and it shifts with the seasons as the sun’s angle changes and trees leaf out. Spend a day noting which areas get morning sun, afternoon sun, or all-day light. Afternoon sun is stronger and hotter than morning sun.

Watch for shade cast by the house, fences, and trees, and remember a spot that’s bright in early spring can be deeply shaded once the leaves come in. Match each crop to the light it actually gets, not the light you wish it had.

Within the bed, arrange plants by height so the tall ones don’t rob the short ones of light. Put the tallest crops — corn, trellised tomatoes, pole beans, sunflowers — on the north side, mid-height plants in the middle, and low growers like lettuce toward the south edge.

Running rows north–south also helps sun reach both sides of every plant through the day. Give each plant its recommended spacing, too — crowded plants shade one another and trap the damp, still air that breeds disease.

HomeSown’s Plot Planner lets you lay out your beds and drop in plants so you can see the arrangement before you dig — handy for keeping tall crops to the north and giving everything proper spacing.

Pair it with each plant’s sun needs from its Library profile, and you can place every crop where it’ll actually get the light it wants.