Friday, February 17, 2012

More Planning

I had a few small sketches of parts of the garden on scrap paper, but hadn't really written it down. I decided with such a large garden I ought to write it down. It will help in future years to try to keep crops rotated. There is no way I can remember where I've put things in the past. So I got some large graph paper and wrote it all down.

It has things like all my rotations often written right above. In bed 3 above I was going to make it a solanum bed, but I decided to be more careful with my solanum issue. Now I just have one tomato and two peppers.

I'm still debating in bed 5 if the broccoli should be near the fence (bad fall sun) or the carrots should be there. I want my fall carrots. I have loved having my own this year. If I plant them near the fence then they will have to go in really early to have time to grow. There is no sun there in the fall.

My circle garden is getting the sweet potatoes. I figured they would have the best spot in the garden for them for the first year growing. I'm sure this is way too much space for them, but I'm going to plant that many any way. The east bed has a lot of rotations going on. I'm planting quick growing Asian greens in the spring. In June the sweet potatoes go in. Then in the fall I'm going to try to get a stand of spinach up to over winter. The west bed currently has Kale growing in it. Then it will transition to sweet potatoes in the summer and spinach in the fall. I hope it works.

Then I redid how many transplants I have to grow based on the new plan. I think I'm going to just try to grow the smaller Asian greens from seed like I do in the fall. It will require a lot less work on my part.

16 comments:

  1. Planning (whether or not it works out perfectly) is always a good idea, in my experience. Besides, sometimes thinking about gardening is sometimes more fun than doing.

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  2. I love it! Your graph paper and excel spreadsheet make me smile and remember that I, too, am part of a nerdy gardener club that has the most awesome members ever. Sketch on!

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  3. Very nice. I love graph paper for planning my garden every year. It's amazing how much space you have without the solanums. It's going to be gorgeous!

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  4. Geesh. I need to get cracking on the planning stage. Whole lottah black canvas out there to fill!

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  5. I do the same but on a much smaller scale. That way I can track year to year where the plant families were grown and rotate them. I draw out the plans and later that summer draw out the actual planting. Never quite the same.

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  6. Dont you just love planning, I sit down with the pc and make the entire garden using microsoft paint, save it every year, each little crop has a different color circle, this year I will create a brick path down the center.

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  7. I think I enjoy planning my garden as much as planting it. It keeps me busy trying to find new plants to grow along with my old favorites. Thanks for sharing your garden plans with us.

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  8. Great plan and it is fun to see what you are planning to put in. I have been using a software tool for the drawing out fo the garden plans for the past two years - finally found one I like. I do two layers - the spring/summer and the summer/fall garden layout which gives me the succession plantings. I am in the process of starting the first big wave of seedlings and the next will be just a few weeks away to get started.

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  9. I plan my garden on big sheets of paper and then spend quite a bit of time erasing as things take longer than anticipated or I decide I really need something different. It is great to have the records though because I never remember what has been in which part of the bed when. I really need to work out a system for my pots too as I recycle my potting mix and probably should rotate amongst the pots as well.

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  10. You are very organized in your approach and I can appreciate the amount of effort you put into your planning. I can't wait to see it all come together.

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  11. Looks great! Good thing my garden is small, so my graphs aren't detailed.

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  12. With such a large garden i'm sure your plans will prove invaluable.
    I have been keeping a diary since 2004(large excercise book)and record what and into which bed i plant,i certainly could never remember and its proved to be very useful in determining the most successful time to plant certain seeds/seedlings.

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  13. When we started rotating the beds, we ended realizing we didn't have enough of them!

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  14. I love the old fashioned paper and pencil planning! That's they way we did it this year too. Your grid paper is a good idea.

    Last year we had a good crop of broccoli on the north side of the house. It got only morning sunlight.Does the spot your looking at get any sun at all during a fall day?

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  15. Jody, yes it does get a bit of sun, but not in the fall. Once fall hits there is no direct sun at all. Supposedly the broccoli that I'm growing will produce here throughout the year with side shoots. I'm hoping. But my carrots are so important too. Maybe I can get them started early enough to grow. But I would so hate to not have carrots for the winter. I eat so many of them.

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  16. Nice layout. Wish I had all raised beds. I don't mind planning them out but I still have to do 2 regular gardens and the big one is a chore.

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