Archive for category Homesteading

I’ve finished a first pass at my garden layout. You can view it here (you’ll need to click on the “layout” tab at the bottom of the page).

The beds are 30′ by 3′ each. On the spreadsheet, they’re one on top of another, but in reality, what I will have is a four-by-two grid of 30′ by 3′ rows. Hence, the first two beds, which are labeled “1 north” and “1 south” will actually be end-to-end with each other. It’d just make for a lot of scrolling to actually arrange them that way on the spreadsheet.

Coming up with the layout was pretty challenging, especially because there is conflicting advice as to what compliments what and what plants should rotate with what. I ultimately settled on an arbitrary set of advice and left it at that.

You might notice that row 1 north and south are awfully similar and likewise for row 2. Why not combine the plants into blocks? Two reasons: first, separating them might keep pests from migrating between them as easily. If pests find one batch of plants, perhaps they won’t find the other. This is an organic pest-control technique I’ve read about. Second, the south half of my yard gets more sun than the north half, and I’m curious to see the difference in planting the same or similar stuff in both halves.

The peas / corn / squash setup, I’m pretty confident about, as the Native Americans have done it that way for a long time. Usually, beans are used instead of peas, but I haven’t planned for any pole beans this year, and peas are also nitrogen-fixers, so I figure I’ll give it a whirl.

I read that onions can cut down on squash bugs, so I plan to interplant onions, leeks, and shallots around my zucchini and yellow squash. I’m sticking lettuce in there too, mostly because there’s room. I don’t think I need as many onions as it would take to totally fill in around the squash.

In the map, the sweet peppers and the hot peppers look like they’re on top of one another, but like I said, the rows are actually end-to-end, so they’ll be about 32′ apart, to prevent cross-pollination.

The melons at the end of row 1 take up a lot of space, and I could probably get away with planting something quick like lettuce over there, before the vines get too big.

Row 2 starts with a variety of tomatoes. I’m planting two each of slicers, roma, cherry, and tomatillos. These are surrounded by various root crops such as carrots, parsnips, beets, and radishes. The other end of row 2 contains brassicas like broccoli, spinach, collards, bok choy, and kohl rabi. The remaining space is taken up with potatoes.

Crop rotation guides say to plant nightshades (tomatoes and potatoes) and brassicas separately, but I just don’t have enough brassicas to really fill up a row, and I can’t see leaving half the row fallow each year. I figure if the potatoes suffer somewhat from their proximity to the broccoli, well, I’m growing a lot of potatoes. And if the broccoli suffers… it’s broccoli… I mean, come on. Acceptable losses.

Not present on the diagram are all the herbs that I will be or already am growing in planters, as well as garlic, which I started this fall, and will start again next fall, also in planters. I just don’t want to do the work of fitting garlic’s odd schedule into my rotation at this time. Also, I plant to dedicate an entire bed to strawberries, which don’t rotate.

Any advice from gardeners reading is welcome.