My Tiny PlotJust Doing a Spot of Planning
I thought I would sit down with a nice cup of tea and my gardening notebook and do some planning. I don’t know about you but I encounter the same problem every year. I get too excited at the beginning of the season and plant up my whole garden with all the early season plants (Peas, Onions, Broadbeans, Lettuce etc) and then when it comes to putting the later season plants in (Pumpkins, Squash, Cucumber, Tomatoes etc) I have run out of space.
To compound the problem early vegetables like Radish, Spinach and Lettuce start to go over leaving holes in my garden that are not big enough to house say a Pumpkin because they are surrounded with plants that take a long time to grow (Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower to name a few). I need a plan.
I find that traditional rotation and grouping vegetables by type doesn’t work for me in such a small space. Plus, my kitchen garden IS my garden so I want to avoid the ‘allotment’ look.
It’s still testing me, but I’ll let you know when I come up with something. Does anyone do anything purposeful to avoid these issues?
Hi Gill, have you tried “Square Foot Gardening” concept?
You can try googling for spotty articles & blogs but there is a book written by Mel Bartholomew (American) like more than ten years ago that’s still applicable to these modern times.
ISBN 1-59186-202-7.
p/s: pardon my blogspot, i’ve not had time in keeping up with blogging and finding it a bit challenging in juggling with day-job, electronics hobby, vege gardening & my first child.
Happy Vege Gardening and cheers.
I’ve been trying the square foot gardening approach this year, and so far it’s working out well. It does force you to plan what’s going into each square right from the start – although there is still the temptation to get a early crop of salad leaves from the squares that will have a squash plant in later in the year…
Nope. Every year it’s the same problem. I never learn :(
This is how the garden grows and grows and grows, right? I keep finding new places to tuck things along the borders of the garden, next to the house, in between flowers and shrubs… Better too much than too little, right? I wish my area was better for container gardening or I’d just pot all of it….
I also have a vegetable garden that is both small and needs to look reasonably pretty (it’s right on the road, actually…although the road is only our small close). This year I’ve tried making three plans for the garden, to try and get it to be reasonably attractive and reasonably productive all season. I did the “summer/early autumn” plan first, since that’s the one that will be around the longest, and then sort of subtracted out what isn’t relevant for the “spring/early summer” and “late autumn/early winter” plan to see what space was available for filling. That way I planted my radishes and lettuces in appropriately sized patches for what was going to go there later. It’s working pretty well, although the funny weather has made things a bit “interesting”.
Hmmmm…..not that I ever follow my own good advice, but I’ve been doing lots of small rows, tall things like spring onions, carrots and early sowing of coriander close together and thus far thats working well. Smelly onions and coriander seem to hide the carrots from the dratted flies as well.
Spaces inbetween strawberry plants become spring cabbage homes, which looks great if you happen to have red flowering strawberries and choose a red/purple cabbage. Heres mine: http://www.theimpulsivegardener.com/2012/06/strawberry-plants-and-runners.html
I also only sow one half of bean pole tee-pees (the north side) and in the middle of each I have a courgette plant, which helps smother out weeds and grows quite happily in and amongst it all. Just be sure to lavish that area with a good mulch some time(s) in the summer as thems hungry crops.
Best of luck! Can’t wait to see what you choose.