Mr Yan 2017 - veg

[Mr_Yan]

Well I'm being ambitious this year and packing in my in ground bed at my community garden.

This is what I think the map will be:

In this each grid square is a square foot. The numbering on the sides lists off the distance relative to the edge of the garden.


Now off to start some of the broccoli and kale.

 

[w_r_ranch]

The watermelons will take over the whole garden... Five plants here take 50'X40' & I'm constantly trimming the runners to keep them contained. The sweet potatoes also take a lot of room.

BTW, forget the path, you have no way to get to it & it's going to be over run.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Thanks @w_r_ranch

I'll keep this in mind and work on a revision over the next few days.

Last year the watermelons stayed in an area smaller than this. I do grow the smaller melons - Crimson sweet is the largest melon I've ever worked with. The winter squash and pumpkins, on the other hand, are a force to be reckoned with. These overtook almost everything, including a staked up tomato, last year. I had a 6 pound butternut squash growing at chest level until the whole tomato plant was ripped down form the T post. I'll probably plant a row of dwarf sunflowers in the pumpkin row again as these seem to do a great job attracting pollinators and my kids attention.

I was envisioning a trellised / california weave system for the tomatoes so the 4 feet wide is actually one row so the access to the path is across the south edge of them. Then the sweet potatoes will be a combination of grow up the trellis and let them run into and mix with the squash vines.

As with most maps the top of this layout is north. If I were to mirror the layout the watermelon will be in the same area I grew them last year but I would have much better access to the rows of leeks / kale / onions / peppers as the east side is open grass field where the west side has a neighboring garden.

After getting my wheel hoe I find that long rows are easiest to maintain where blocks were easier without the wheel hoe. Now I cam simply push the wheel hoe along the row and finish a 50 foot row in less than a minute. I'm still having to adapt my mind to this row idea though.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Here's a new revision to my map. I'm still being bull headed and want watermelon and have sweet potatoes under my tomatoes. Thinking about it, the garden next to me had sweet potatoes in it last year and they weren't that poorly behaved. The vines stayed less than 10 feet long and didn't get thick at tall like my squash. Maybe this is a difference between the southern growing season and my almost northern growing season.

Again I have easy access from the top of the map (north edge) and the right side (east edge) but there are other beds to the south and west of me.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Now I get to tweak this again. I wasn't planning on growing potatoes this year but my neighbor gave me about 10 pounds of kinnebec seed and I just couldn't say no.

 

[Mr_Yan]

This year I tried making seed tape by gluing seeds to narrow ribbons of newspaper - I used typical white Elmers school glue. My thinking was I always get rushed when it is time to drop things in the soil then later run out of time to properly thin the seedlings. The tape could make an easy option to move the time consuming part to the dark cold winter nights. Buying tape is expensive though.

So I am testing it with spinach, beets, and carrots for this season. As you would expect the spinach was the first up: