The First Steps for All Methods

Outline Your Spot

Pick a spot you think is most promising for getting the most direct sunlight, and mark out its boundaries.

To outline your prospective spot, start by marking the corners with stakes, sticks, rocks, or the like—or just rough up each corner using a hoe, a rake, a shovel, or your shoe. If you’d like your spot even more clearly defined, run lines of string, lime, or flour between the marked corners to make your spot’s exact position clearly visible, even from a distance. However you delineate it, a clearly defined spot is necessary to be accurate during the next steps.

Clearly marking out your spot allows you to focus all of your attention on the next steps and not be distracted by trying to remember “where” to do them. It also helps you not play tricks on yourself: seeing just part of your spot in sun and starting your timing then instead of waiting to see the whole area in sun or standing in the middle of the spot instead of on the edges when checking the angles of your horizons. Since a few feet can make a huge difference in terms of available light, it’s important to clearly mark your spot first.

Orient Yourself

After you’ve marked out your spot, find your cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) and ordinal directions (northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest) in relation to your spot (see Orienting Yourself). Next, find a visual reference marker in the distance (e.g. a large tree, hill, mountain, or building) for at least one cardinal direction that you can use as a starting point for finding all others each time (see Orienting Yourself). If you don’t have an obvious visual reference marker for one of your cardinal directions, find two closer existing objects that point to one of the directions (e.g. two trees or the front edge of a house and the ridge of a barn that align pointing to one north, south, east, or west) or set up some temporary markers as guides.

Pick a Method That Suits You…and Move On

When deciding which method to use to find your sunniest spot, peruse through the methods for one that suits you best, use it, and move on to the next topic of interest.

We all have different personalities. Some of us want simplicity or ease. Others want depth, details, and precision. The methods were designed with this in mind, so they’d fit a wide spectrum of dispositions—so each person can choose the method that best suits their desired level of simplicity or precision. As such, a person isn’t meant to use all of them. Doing so would likely drive that person a little crazy, especially since they’re made for very different natures. Besides, the rest of the methods will still be here for you if that one doesn’t work out or if you’re ever interested in others in the future.

Also, note that the methods are presented roughly in order, getting increasingly detailed and complex as they proceed. The most detailed method, creating your own personalized sunstick, is only meant for those who hunger for greater detail and precision. Creating a sunstick based on values I’ve already calculated to roughly approximate common heights, however, is really easy and a fast, accurate way to find the exact amount of sunlight any location gets at any time of day or year.

Again, by all means, move on once you’ve found your method of choice, and don’t let those meant for others bog you down. They weren’t meant to. 

What if You Find You Don’t Get Enough Sun?

If, after using one or more of the methods below, you realize you don’t have an area that gets at least 10 hours of direct sunlight per day, know your vegetables will never be as good as they could be with more sun and decide what to do from there. See What if You Don’t Have Enough Sun?.