Monday, February 27, 2012

Harvest Monday - 2012 Garden Plans

I've never been good at planning my garden ahead of time but this year I want things to be different.  I have found this great site thanks to another awesome gardener.  It's called Gardeners.com and here is the Kitchen Garden planning area of the site.

3x10
Here it is when we first put it together

This is my small west garden - just a few steps from the master bedroom.  I am planting Baby Bok Choi, Green Onions, Big Daddy Onions, Little Finger Carrots, Michihili Chinese Cabbage, Dutch Round Cabbage, Romaine Lettuce, Summertime Lettuce, and Spinach. Everything can be secured under a row cover because none of it needs to pollinate or go to seed and I desperately need to keep out the grasshoppers and cabbage loopers and shade it for a longer growing season. Now to figure out an economical way to keep out the slugs.

And here is the 4x16 foot garden
In it will be red potato, victory freezer pea (a bush pea), Utah celery, cilantro, cayenne pepper, serrano pepper, jalapeno, keystone bell, and jade bush green bean.

And this is my 16 x 40 foot row garden with the 4x16 foot square foot garden you just saw. I placed the square foot garden at the very end. 

#3 and #4 are Snow Peas and they back up to the property line.

5,6,7,8,9,10 is going to be popcorn.  I haven't had any luck with sweet corn.  So this is the last chance to see if I can be successful with corn. 

13,14, 15, 16, 19, 20 are tomatoes.  Right now the plans are for Cherokee Purple -1 , Red Beefsteak -3, Pink Brandywine - 4, and Early Girl - 8.

And row 17 & 18 is my garlic row which I planted in the fall.

Pumpkins will be added as a filler in the upper tier of the backyard flower bed.  I can't do too much with that spot this year since we are wanting to add several trees back there.  We are located on what used to be an alfalfa field and before that, sage brush and scrub maple. I might be able to tuck some of the extra cabbage I've got sprouted into the entry way flower beds. And last of all I am not sure where I want to plant the zucchini and yellow crook neck. Really, I just need to double the garden so that it's 32 feet wide and 40 feet long instead of 16 feet wide.  I dream about putting a sort of ground level cement wall around it since it is on a slope and then a fence above that.  I would convert it all to raised beds at that point.  The nice thing is that right now it's easy to just plow the row garden with a tractor.

4 comments:

becky3086 said...

I think I have screwed up my garden plan already. I don't usually do one either because I have trouble sticking to it and this year was no exception-I have started plants that weren't in the plan, sigh.

Mary Hysong said...

I'm trying to get better about planning too but I am always seeing new stuff to try out or starting too many seeds then looking for places to put them. Usually I pot up oddballs and set them on the patio; they sometimes do better than the ones in the ground...

Unknown said...

Your awesome! Someday I will have a garden :)

Andrea said...

Wow what a garden you are creating, your family is certainly going to be well fed! How is your garlic coming along?